I don’t know where to start.

I started getting nervous about the 2024 election around the time the media went with the ‘Joe Biden is too old’ narrative. It got worse for me when the only political podcast I listened to agreed with this opinion. For my own mental health, I stopped listening to that podcast. It’s a great podcast, I just couldn’t even think of the possibility of a second Trump presidency. Plus, it’s not like the tangerine-tinged sex criminal is a spring chicken. If you take his obviously poor health and mental decline into consideration, Trump has probably lived a lot more years than Biden.

Then the war in Gaza began, and many Democrat-leaning voters announced they would no longer support Biden due to the Israeli military’s treatment of Palestinians. You really can’t blame them, but the other choice is Trump. What do they think Trump is going to do better about Gaza, except supply Israel with the best Palestinian-killing weapons known to man?

As an aside, while we’re on the subject of Israel, do you know why Evangelicals care so much about Israel? They actually don’t care about the state of Israel, or the Israelis, or Jewish people in general. It’s because they think Israel is where the battle for Armageddon will take place between Jesus and Satan, as detailed in the Book of Revelation. You know, because everything in the Bible has to be taken literally at every word and there are no such things, as parables, fables, metaphors, or figures of speech. But, I digress.

So, getting back to my anxiety-riddled election season, my heart sank when Joe Biden announced he wasn’t going to run for another term. I knew the Democrats would run Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket. She’s the vice-president, they really didn’t have a choice in the matter.

Since I occasionally write about crime, I’ve been inadvertently following her career since she was a prosecutor in San Francisco. Back then, I thought she was too soft on crime. But as far as voting for her as President, you can bet your ass I would. Again, look at the alternative.

However, I also thought that the country was not ready. In my mind, there was no way the country was going to elect a woman for President, let alone a woman of color.

Then I started having one of the most dangerous of feelings, hope. Not only was Kamala Harris handling the right like a champ, she picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. I mean, the guy is like America’s dad. How bad can a guy be if he played Crazy Taxi on the Sega Dreamcast?

A bunch of Harris/Walz signs started appearing in our neighborhood. We even put one out on our front lawn. My better half, Lady Gray, even put a Harris/Walz sticker in her car window. I realize that the city of Topeka is a blue oasis in the red desert of Kansas, but I was really starting to believe it was going to happen. (I also think that’s the first time Topeka has been referred to as an oasis, but here we are.)

Then, before I knew it, election night was upon us. I tried to isolate myself from any news. This included any kind of TV news or social media. I didn’t want to know any results until it was all over. Of course, I didn’t tell anyone close to me, that would be ridiculous.

So, that night, Lady Gray and I were working in our office. She had the election news running on the TV in the background. No problem, I thought. I have some pretty isolating headphones, so I don’t have to hear the TV.

Within minutes after sitting down at my desk, I had to get up to get something I needed for work. As soon as I put my headphones down, Lady Gray said to me, “Can you believe Kamala Harris only has this many electoral votes?” I forget how many votes there were, but Harris was in the double digits, while Trump had already surpassed the 100 vote mark.

My anxiety got the best of me because I snipped at Lady Gray and said, “I don’t want to know!” Before she even had a chance to respond, I apologized. I explained that I didn’t want to know the results until the election had been called.

Unfortunately, by that time, the writing was already on the wall. A few hours later, the election was called for Trump.

The next morning, the first thing I did was remove the sign from our yard over harassment fears. While there were no Trump signs in our neighborhood, I already knew a few nearby houses were in the Trump camp. I suggested to Lady Gray that she should remove the Harris sticker from her car window just in case. She begrudgingly obliged.

There were a myriad of reasons why Trump won the election in such overwhelming fashion. I can’t get into all of them, but I will get into a couple, mainly hate and willful ignorance.

The day after the election, I got into a spirited debate with a former Facebook friend. She said Kamala Harris lost the election because she ran on a platform of women’s ‘health’. Of course, she meant abortion. I presented to her several different occurrences of girls and women dying because they couldn’t get the reproductive healthcare they needed to survive. She blocked me. Before that, though, she told me there are no women bleeding to death without abortions. Fake news, I guess.

Then, in another Facebook discussion, why in the year of our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Four Anno Domini, do people still care about trans-women in women’s sports and women’s bathrooms? Too many people on the right honestly think that people only transition to women in order to cheat at women’s sports and look at women in a restroom. Those are such niche and specific accusations that they make no sense.

And I know I’ve said it before, but doesn’t the discrimination against trans-women remind you of another time in history when a group of marginalized people were banned from sports and washrooms?

See what I mean about hate and willful ignorance. Trump supporters are so willing to ignore reality just to fit their hate into a narrative they can justify to themselves.

I have trans people in my life who I’m desperately concerned about. Lady Gray is friends with immigrant families that she’s worried about. I’m sure everyone out there who didn’t vote for Trump is worried about someone if not about themselves.

I wish I had the answer to how we can survive until 2029. With the number of felons, charlatans, fools, and predators that are about to come to power, I’m afraid too many of us won’t.