Rick Santorum is Wearing Chuck Taylor's

Fellow human, it is election night 2020 in the United States. And Rick Santorum is (... still relevant?? and) wearing Chuck Taylor's under the desk in the CNN situation room. The world is on fire, we've blown through two different alphabets trying to track every hurricane in the Atlantic season, CV19 continues to indifferently steal only the most precious from us: loved ones, freedom, time ... oceans of meaning in the ellipses. The Trump Admin has been systematically breaking my spirit for years.

And I still have the vitriolic range to take issue with Rick Santorum's footwear. 

Hey Rick, did you pull a Nike sponsorship? Professional sport is canceled after all. Maybe it's brilliant. Maybe it's neo-dadaism. Maybe I've had too much lager in advance of the Kentucky/Indiana call and I'm over-excited to use the term 'neo-dadaism'. 

Four years ago I woke up under a scratchy flannel blanket in Northeast Nigeria, dead bolted in to in a dust-caked room to a florescent Trump wreathed in red with a violent yellow check next to his face. By 3AM West African Standard time, the election had been called. By 7AM I could function enough to stare into the soul of my boiled yams under an equally violent florescence. By 10AM I was receiving a lecture from our Nigerian operations team on a seedy set of outdoor couches about just getting on with it.

At the time, nibbling someone's home grown guava and nodding along helplessly, I'd taken the note that my American-centrist naval gazing was tired and naïve. Good people everywhere struggle to find oxygen for their agency under despots, dictators and rigged democracies. And/or we'd not escaped the wave of global nationalism and unilateralism that had moved across Europe. Brexit/Trump came in one breath. In sum: we're not special. This was my mantra some weeks later in DC following the inauguration. 

Crying in to my coat sleeve in front of the Ford Theater with a gaggle of extended family who all found it utterly hilarious to drench themselves in MAGA gear and watch me twist. The absolutely horrifying juxtaposition lost on them, but burning the insides of my eyes. We're not special. There are wonderful humans toiling under the same shit across the planet. I've been arrogant. We're not special.

                

Four years gone, and I feel that's not quite so. Some examples:

a) The Women's March in January 2017, in most ways a specific and demonstrated response to Trump's election, also occurred in at least 84 other countries. "Occurred" is too weak a term. "Was organized and attended en force," more like it. By many who've never lived or even been to the United States. I participated from Dili, Timor Leste. The cause resonated for reason(s) nestled middle of a venn diagram where the internal politics of the world's loudest democracy meet the essential rights of every human being. "Grab 'em by the pussy" turns out is highly translatable.

b) The Obama Bar and Grill in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan still exists. 'Nuff said. Also the tacos are terrible, and not tacos. Ok, now that's enough said.

c) While I don't imagine Harvey W and Donald T are the same human, there's a certain similarity isn't there? A time and a vibe. I had a male colleague in India tell me he was surprised by the #MeToo movement. "We always think that women have equality in the US, why can't we have it here?" he said. He reflected that if the women in the US are still fighting for equal rights, India must have much to do. It was maybe one of the most humbling conversations I've had. It put to words something I've struggled with for a while: that "equal rights and opportunities" is a bumper sticker. But to know what it MEANS in practice, what it looks like, smells like and tastes like is a very real learning process. The manifestation of a free and fair society isn't fully formed because it's fucking complicated, actually. We've got some activist elements in the US getting backhanded: "Nope, too far. We don't need 86 terms for gender on a census." But we are being watched constantly in places where "I'd like to ride the bus without being groped by phantom hands" is so radical as to cause group violence.

[BRIEF ASIDE: Flashing across the CNN screen right now is "KEY RACE ALERT brought to you by the Calm App." Respectfully, da fuq? And ABCs graphics budget is extravagant. Route some of those funds to George Stepho's coiffure]

d) Trump's Muslim ban ran on the news across the Muslim world. I watched far too much of it in Khartoum. Quite honestly, considering the state of inter-governmental relations between Sudan and the United States, I was looking forward to a reprieve from US news coverage there in my hotel, near Osama bLs pre-911 pad and Gadaffi's Corinthia. But twas wall to wall, and not just punditry, but his actual face. His unfiltered, rambling remarks running unedited for minutes that felt like hours in the lobby of the hotel. He is just everywhere. I wonder how many national news outlets went a week without saying the word "Trump" since 2016.

e) In March 2019, I was on the road out of my then
home of Auckland, NZ headed for some hiking when I got a text from my org's security director. "Are you anywhere near Christchurch?" I will not argue that the overwhelmingly warm showing of support and community that spilled out over the front yard of every mosque across New Zealand following the Christchurch shooting was a response to the Trump Administration. But more than one memorial was festooned with flags from other nations - New Zealand's large immigrant and transient communities demonstrating their solidarity. More than a dozen conversations with kiwis culminated ultimately in "We are different here than America. We have to be different here."

Indonesia, Georgia, Thailand, the Bahamas - imagine me buzzed and baited in to debate by people that will never vote in the United States, but have sure as shit formed an opinion about the president. My least favorite, and widely held opinion, is that "Donald Trump says what the rest of America is thinking." Vexing because this is the question, isn't it? Is he a caricature, or the ugly truth. 

[He is performing beyond a polling error in Miami-Dade]

The US is not the only properly democratic country on the planet. We are not the only country with free and fair elections. Honestly our electoral college is annoying to have to explain - to anyone. That includes American high school seniors. The filibuster. Gerrymandering. Lobbying. Laughable, all. We are not the best example of a modern representative democracy. But we're the one the world watches. 

[I've slept, gotten back to it and everyone is having kittens over how lose the race is]

I would like to show everyone that we can, in fact, democratically elect an asshole in a free and fair election, that he can claw at power like a caged animal, work to undermine democratic institutions as much as he likes, and we will still vote him out. That the peaceful transition of power will see us on to another chapter. This is what it looks like in the trenches when the people have the ultimate check on our leadership. This is what it takes to keep an aspiring autocrat in check. Use the tools you have, do not go quietly. 

[They've called Wisconsin for Biden. More soon]

Four days has now passed, and finally Joe Biden is projected President Elect. Kamala Harris is the first woman and first woman of color to serve in the executive office. Trump is golfing and having a small breakdown. It's over. I'm a puddle. But it's over. He might spin out, he might create more drama, there may still be dark days ahead, but four million more Americans voted for Joe Biden than another four years of Trumpism. A rare moment in American history where an incumbent wasn't given a second term - not only did a Democratic ticket and platform get elected, the Republican platform that HELD THE OFFICE was told GTFO. We don't do that. This was the most representative election in American history - or at least that's my guess based on the turnout. Access to a vote has expanded in a way that will not be undone. There are golden nuggets of significance for our democracy that will need to be unpacked. 

But today - we kicked his flabby vicious entitled idiot child ass to the GOD DAMN CURB and for ALL THE WORLD TO SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. And I will spend the day crying in to a heineken, meditating on how much better these tears feel than they did four years ago. This is good grief. Good grief.