truth in advertising

Take a breath.
If you're trying to wrap your mind around this most recent charade we call an election, let me offer some perspective.* Those of you who are galled and appalled, now you understand the burning outrage felt by bigots over the past eight years. So here he is, folks, your obama karma! What, you didn't think there would be a price to pay? An interesting thought, but let's call it bullshit, as karma is probably just an invention by which disempowered people are encouraged to feel "better" about themselves.
So here's a better perspective - perhaps now you're beginning to understand how most women, poor people, and every "person of color" have felt about every president from washington through the bush baby. Rich white males on parade, from george to george! That human being up there, while perhaps president of something, is NOT my leader. I don't know him, and he certainly doesn't know me.
Or yet another? In the big picture, there is no difference between trump and clinton. None. Put either in office, and four years from now, nothing of any real substance will have changed. I'm not saying the surface differences won't be infuriating, but...
We will still live in a system that perpetuates abject poverty, both here and anywhere else in the world we do "business".
We will still be a country with less than 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners.
We will still spend nearly as much on weapons of death as the rest of the world combined.
And if it is to be trump, we will finally have a president who represents what we've become. Not for a long time has there been a president who accurately reflected our national personality in the global community. Not since FDR, if ever. After World War II, the american economic empire kicked into high gear. Our empire has been more understated than the romans or ottomans, but far more pervasive. And no less bloody, with our wars, the forced "relocation" of indigenous populations, and the genocidal dictators we've kept in power. We have a thousand military bases on foreign soil - what's the going rate, one barrel of blood to one barrel of oil?
And despite our great P.R. - i mean, we've got the United Nations, right? - we have grown increasingly dismissive of that body when we don't like what it asks us to do. We have violated U.N. Security Council resolutions over forty times - more than any other member nation, by far. By our own definition, we fit the description of "rogue nation". Iran, North Korea, and us. Good company.
Is a compassionate black man, a true representative of what we've become?
Was a genial father figure like dwight eisenhower a true representative?
A greedy, deceitful, violence-loving narcissist.
Trump would be, at long last, truth in advertising.
Yet ironically, he might be the best thing to ever happen to this country. With one exception, every president since nixon has been a friendly face. It's caused a cognitive disconnect between our behavior and our self-image. If we finally have a president whose personality is as repulsive as our policies, the american people might at long last stand up and say, "No. This is not who we are. We do not accept this."
Of the people, by the people, for the people. Our founding fathers, being rich white men, lacked the motivation to create a system where those words could actually be manifest. But perhaps in spite of themselves, they pointed the way.
Of, by, and for. It's time to not just live up to those words, but do them one better.
A country of all people. So obvious, it's been staring us in the face.
A country by, and for...
All people.

*And mind you, i'm not saying we should just accept this and deal with it as best we can. If a plurality of americans insist on having the president we actually elected, there's an easy way to accomplish that - a unilateral national labor strike. No one works, or enacts business of any sort, until the democratically elected president is installed, and the electoral college abandoned.