Flag in the dust

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things. – G.K. Chesteron

I saw the American flag on the ground the moment I stepped outside my house on Friday morning.

It had apparently fallen from the front door grating where my landlady had put it.

Any other day I would’ve immediately picked the flag up and returned to its place on the door.

But on this day, I just kept walking.

After a majority of American voters gave Donald Trump—a convicted felon--a return ticket to the White House, I’m starting to wonder if people really appreciate the importance of the Stars & Stripes.

My father fought for that flag in a little shindig called World War II, which was started by a guy named Adolph Hitler, whom Trump deemed worthy of praise.

When I look at the words “E pluribis unum” now all I see now is a meaningless phrase in a dead language. Maybe we should think of changing our national motto to “Hooray for me and fuck you” because that’s the direction we’re heading.

I suppose I sound like a sore loser and an elitist, but this is not just a case of my party losing to the other party.

We’re talking about man who lied about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, who bragged about grabbing women by the privates, who encouraged a mob to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6 after lying about the 2020 election, who was indicted for stealing classified documents, who gave tax cuts to billionaires, who has called his political adversaries the enemy within and who has promised to take revenge on everybody he doesn’t like when he returns to power.

Did I leave anything out? Of course, I did. This is Donald Trump, after all, and the list of his misdeeds stretches for miles.

I got a bad feeling early Tuesday when my TV remote crapped out on me—it was like God was trying to spare me from the bad news.

Now the Democrats are tearing into each other after this abysmal loss, which is understandable.

But I’m hearing it from all angles: Kamala Harris was too far to the left, too far to the right, too supportive of Israel, not supportive enough of Israel, and of course, the rancid classic “too woke,” a term used to describe anything right wingers don’t like.

Cry Uncle

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that the PC crowd can be a swift pain in the ass sometimes, but not enough to make me support a gibbering despot who calls himself “the Father of IVF” even though he didn’t know what the letters stood for until earlier this year.

As far as cancel culture, book bans driven by Republican legislatures have surged to roughly 10,000 titles and draconian anti-abortion laws in Texas led to the death of a teenaged girl. We've got a cancel culture, all right, but it's not coming from the left.

According to Google Trends, search results for “did Joe Biden drop out” have peaked last week, and spiked on Election Day, even though the president had dropped out of the 2024 race this summer and endorsed Kamala Harris.

Gen Z voters apparently didn’t know about the Access Hollywood pussy grabbing video until it was recently posted online.

People continue to describe Trump as a great businessman, even though he filed for bankruptcy four times.

I stopped by a neighborhood variety store on Tuesday evening and the guy behind the counter--a Middle Eastern man and a Muslim—told me how he had voted for “Uncle Trump.”

Really? Well, a Trump advisor said that the president-elect wants Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza and Lebanon in the next eight weeks, so Uncle Trump may have a harsh surprise for you, buddy.

There’s also a large part of the young male population in this country who will never vote for female presidential candidate no matter talented and intelligent she is.

Online abuse, harassment and hate toward women has soared in the days since the election, with phrases like “your body, my choice” and “get back to the kitchen” exploding on platforms like X and TikTok, according to Bloomberg.

Ersatz pundit and all-around schmuck Bill Maher opened his show the other night by saying “Losers have to look in the mirror.”

The line was so lifeless that even the hooting yahoos in his audience who applaud his every single word remained silent--until he shamelessly cajoled them into giving him some modest applause.

And, yes, losers should look in the mirror, so you can find out where you went wrong.

But the winners need to look in the mirror, too, and ask themselves why they voted for such a hateful, mean-spirited, dimwitted fraud.

You think he’s just like you? You think the alleged billionaire who consorts with the likes of Elon Musk and JD Vance knows your pain?

It looks like I've got a lot to think about in the coming year.

Somebody eventually picked up that flag outside my house on Friday. I don’t who did it, but it sure as hell wasn’t me.