I’ve been giving some thought to the chants of “Not my president” at various anti-Trump rallies, and which is a hashtag I’ve seen trending on Facebook. Plenty of people are crawling out of the woodwork to say that this is destructive of a democratic norm; that we all have one president and should unite behind him. (Him, of course. Still, always “him”.)

I think this is interesting, taken in conjunction with the fact that Hillary is going to win the popular vote, possibly by a large margin once California finishes counting. (By way of comparison, her losing share could be larger than the winning shares of Kennedy and Nixon.) That’s in addition to the Senate, which is inherently undemocratic in how it apportions power to the less-populated states, and the House, which sends an outsized Republican contingent than its voter share thanks to gerrymandering. And of course, once the White House and Congress are undemocratic, the unelected judiciary has to be as well.

This is especially ironic given that the original point of the electoral college was to prevent the democratic mob from sending someone to the presidency who was manifestly unfit for office. Well, now the democratic mob has spoken, they’ve spoken for Hillary Clinton, and thanks to the rules we’ve elected the other guy, who is manifestly unfit for office.

That no one is saying shit about this is striking. In 2000, I was utterly outraged that Gore won the popular vote and it meant nothing. I honestly believed that people would be protesting in the streets for four years straight. In 2016, my reaction is, “Fuck, again? That sucks.” This is what I meant by “we can normalize anything” in a prior essay. Two unelected Democrats with the popular vote margin in 16 years? What was unthinkable is now routine.

That brings me back to the question of democracy. The razor-thin plurality of the voters voted for the loser, and lost the Senate and House as well. In nearly no time at all, this will lead to the permanent (measured in my remaining lifetime) loss of the judiciary—made possible by the antidemocratic measures taken by the Republican Senate under Obama.

At what point do we say, “no, the hell with the norms, the hell with civic polity, this undivided, unified, undemocratic government is the step too far.” More importantly, how do we say it? There are no remaining levers of power with which to express ourselves. The Internet gives everyone a voice, which ensures the impossibility of a single united one. The public sector is nowhere near strong enough to stand in the face of the awesome power of government united against it. And the next elections are two years away.

So what does this mean? Not my government? Not my America? “I want my country back?” Yes, we mocked the Republicans who said that under Obama, and they are still deserving of mockery for using that language under a president who was elected democratically in every sense of the word, with a Congress not rigged in his favor, who governed according to historical norms. But of course, it also ensures that no one else can say it, however justified they might be.

But that’s what’s driving the fear, the anguish, the mourning for the death of a loved one, among the plurality of voters in this election. We had a belief that America was special, and that she could not elect a… a what? A Berlusconi? A Mussolini? A Hitler? That everyone took seriously the idea of country first, party second. That despite the partisan divide, the manifest flaws in this man which other Republicans had pointed out would be enough to prevent this catastrophe.

So no, not my president, I guess. Because it’s not the America I believed in long before I ever became a partisan. This is an undemocratic country where the people who hold power received fewer votes. Where vote margins in many places are far smaller than the numbers of people who are blocked from voting. Where half of the eligible electorate doesn’t vote, and where those people are most likely to be the most marginalized. And where the driving force among the people who do vote, and the media that covers it, is politics as tribalism and entertainment, not governance.

How can I possibly cheer on the success of a president when I despise the man personally, and bitterly oppose most of what he proposes? When his office works for a policy that will ensure the literal death and suffering of millions? (Have you seen the Ryan budget yet? Don’t sugarcoat it. People will die.) When there is a clearly defined, large, and profitable media geared up to support him no matter how bad he is? When he is a fascist? How do you possibly define “success” in those terms?

I’ll close with a memory, I can’t remember if it was from 9/11 or 9/12. Most people remember that time as when the country united and came together. What I remember about it was W’s first speech on television that I saw, a few unplanned words. I can’t remember what he said. I can find the bullhorn speech, the Oval Office speech, the National Cathedral speech, but not this one. But I remember watching it and thinking, in the moment, “This man is terrified out of his gourd. He’s not up to this job.”

Most people, of course, looked to the Oval Office and saw there what it comforted them to see. Some of them surely changed their minds later. I suspect most people who went through that conversion don’t think about it much.

The point is, it took me from January 20th until September 11th to understand that the office was held not merely by someone who I opposed politically, but by someone who I was certain would fail. I never felt that way about Bush’s father. (And I can’t speak to my feelings about Reagan, because back then, I was a low-information Republican.) This time, I’m certain not just on Day One, but long beforehand. And I was right the last time.

What now?

Responding more to some themes I’m seeing in the media and social media as they conduct their instantaneous, uninformed postmortems.

I read a lot of leftist commentary, and of course there’s been a smattering of “Bernie woulda won.” Right, the Socialist Jew would have gone down gangbusters in this cycle. There’s very little doubt that the Wikileaks ratfucking depressed some turnout, but that’s not saying Bernie would have won; that’s saying that beating Bernie hurt Hillary. Bring up Joe Biden, and maybe you’re talking about someone who might have carried it.

Likewise the people who think of Hillary as a “tragically flawed” candidate; give me a fucking break. I have zero doubt that Trump is going to make good on his pledge to try to put Hillary in jail, but that’s because if he doesn’t, no one is going to fucking remember any of Hillary’s so-called “scandals” unless there’s a constant barrage of biased media hatred banging the drum. Also, he’s a motherfucking tyrant, and that’s how tyrants do. History is going to forget about 95% of the bullshit that seemed oh so fucking important on Tuesday, and 2016 voters will look even more astonishingly ignorant than they do today.

Meanwhile, the endless cries of “What should the Democrats dooooooo?” are ridiculous, especially when it’s from non-Democrats offering “advice.” We just lost a razor-thin election folks, and no one would be saying shit if the percentage point had gone the other way in a few key states. Sure, we could analyze our navels endlessly and re-examine the beating heart of the Democratic party; much more accurate to say that the margin was pretty much up to the antics of James Fucking Comey. The GOP is facing serious, endemic, and critical divisions in their coalition of Neanderthals. We have a much more minor conflict between our resurgent progressive wing and our more moderate mainstream; our “divisions” shouldn’t eclipse the fact that everyone agrees on the mainstream position, but some people want to take it further.

Aside from that, there’s one more distinction: we have a common enemy and fuck all to do between now and the next election. My prescription is to take a page out of the British playbook and form a shadow government; make it damn clear each and every time a Republican policy attacks the poor and middle class exactly why their policies are harmful, and make it equally damn clear how a Democratic proposal and a Democratic Congress will do better for them. If we believe our policies our better because they’re reality-based, get that information out there. Every damn day, not just during an election, when 96% of the coverage is horse race.

Beyond that, trust in being right. The Republicans haven’t had to put together a governing coalition for years, and the last time they did, not only did they fuck it up so badly we still haven’t cleaned up the mess, but they did so quickly. Each third of the Republican party wants policies that will fuck the other two-thirds (and of course, the rest of America). We’re about to be served a platter of war, recession, race hatred, misogyny, and attacks on anyone born without a trust fund.

The core thing the Democratic party should be thinking about now: the GOP wing of the media is going to spend the next two years telling their viewers how tasty their shit sandwich is. These people don’t read the same damn newspapers we do. Your job: reach them with your message. Find low-information voters who are getting fucked and teach them why it’s important to be a high-information voter.

We believe our ideas are better and their ideas are shit. Their ideas are about to fail explosively, miserably, and catastrophically. Be ready for that.

While we’re on that topic, we keep hearing about how the Democrats (and the news media) need to learn how to “listen” and “reach out” to those special, special snowflakes in “flyover America.” (I put that in quotes because I’ve never once heard anyone seriously use the term “flyover America” except when someone is saying that other people shouldn’t use the term “flyover America.”) Those people are hurting, poor things, and we must pay extra-special attention to them.

Bullshit. We pay attention to them, and it’s called “every Democratic platform since 1932.” Rural America seems to be dying because rural America has been dying for over a century and a half. We ain’t gonna to fix that in policy; urbanization is a worldwide trend. And we should acknowledge that if the tolerant people live in cities and the intolerant people are rural, it’s because the intolerant people fucking want to stay intolerant, and they’re never going to be our voters. We don’t reach them because we don’t want them. But try to get a message to their kids.

Here’s the deal: right now, most people are focused on how we’re about to lose the gains of the last eight years. The thing is, we’re going to lose the gains of the last eighty if the mainstream Republicans carry through on their threats, and barring wizardly usage of the Senate filibuster, they’re going to. That’s before we get to Trump’s platform or whatever the Freedom Caucus and Pence get into their precious little heads. If you can’t form a platform that defends a century of the progressive agenda, which all Americans grew up understanding as “America,” you don’t deserve to lead a political party.

Finally, let’s be extremely fucking clear about who is now explicitly a Republican. I don’t know how many Republicans are neo-Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists, or currently race-bashing women in hijabs, but I’m pretty fucking sure that it’s large enough to have been well over Trump’s margin of victory. Republicans want to say that “not all Republicans” are like that? Time to put your money where your mouth is and repudiate all of this shit. Because we are going to shame you like shit-stained baboons until you do. These people—and we’ll leave it to the social scientists to eventually tell us their numbers—are extremely fucking happy that your agenda won. When literal neo-Nazis are cheering on your guy, it is fucking time for you to say, “Shit, are these really the people I want to publicly associate with?”

Democrats need to reach out to sane independents and Republicans not because it’s a good strategy, not because it might help win an election, but because it’s the American thing to do. Republicans own those people until they say otherwise.

I’ve dealt with the last 36 hours by radically restricting my news intake; for the first time in 20 years, all news apps on my various gadgets are turned off, and I’ve been filling the 2-3 hours or more I normally spend daily on informing myself with comic books and a rewatch of Westworld.

And even so, what crept in through these filters is scary and utterly unsurprising. Numerous reports of “Day One” followed by some racist or hateful attack. A hijab torn off a woman in a Midwestern Target. An anti-gay note left on a car in North Carolina. Swastika graffiti in Philadelphia. Philadelphia.

So apparently I missed some rallies last night that I would have attended, protesting Trump’s election (and the hitch in my throat as I wrote that is precisely why I’ve been secluding myself from the news). That’s not the news. What is the news, and should be on the minds of everyone in this country who does not support Trump, even if they’re Republicans, is this: “These temper tantrums from these radical anarchists must be quelled. There is no legitimate reason to protest the will of the people.” That’s a tweet by Sheriff David Clarke, tipped by Politico to be in the top two for heading the Department of Homeland Security.

Radical anarchists. That’s the language being used about protest rallies, about a community of stunned and shocked people who were told consistently and with certainty that they would not wake on Wednesday to the America they’ve nonetheless inherited. “Radical anarchists” are bomb-throwers in the 1920s. Peaceful protesters are, until now, protected by the Constitution. But as we’re about to be reminded, Constitutional protections mean nothing when a government wants to subvert them and the courts are filled with judges who support that government.

This is the language of fascists. I didn’t expect to see the tarring of half the nation as the enemy until the first bad thing happened to Trump’s approval rating, but of course, I was being optimistic. It happens immediately. It will go on relentlessly. It will be cheered on by the people who elected Trump, and it will not be opposed by the supposed rational Republicans who many are foolishly expecting to somehow save us from the oncoming debacle. That track record is established: they fell in line behind their candidate, of course they’re going to do the same now.

Meanwhile, the brave pollyannas on the left are posting calls to action about how now is the time to fight even harder for what we believe in. They are forgetting the J. Edgar Hoover FBI, the use of the bully pulpit by Mussolini and Hitler, the awesome law enforcement powers of the federal government when wielded by authoritarians, and the insanely powerful surveillance techniques that America now owns. We are about to become the enemies of the government, and we’re talking like it’s just politics as usual. I give it a year, maybe two, until the new authoritarian worldview becomes normalized and the rank-and-file in the police and law enforcement start to get with the new program; some will adopt it gleefully and immediately. After that, of course, the people start to fall in line with how they’re being policed.

I don’t know offhand of a historical precedent for an authoritarian state to elect its way out of authoritarianism. I can think of two obvious examples where liberal democracy was established after the governments in question were invaded, conquered, deposed, and reconstituted. There are other countries that had revolutions. But normal, sane, peaceful elections? No, that’s not the path back from authoritarianism; once you start down that road, the authoritarians themselves build the barricades to prevent future loss of power.

Most people reading this will probably think I’m being overdramatic. But I remind them, it’s been only 36 hours, and already I’m labeled a radical anarchist.

My Twitter feed is full of attempts at hopeful messages among aghast liberals: “Sleep well. Tomorrow, we organize.” These people are fucking kidding themselves.

And Facebook, my cohort of somewhat less-liberal (but still mostly Hillary-supporting) friends and colleagues, are telling me that I’m being extreme in my reactions, and it’s not the end of the world.

It isn’t? Let’s start with this. With the agreements we’ve made during the Obama administration, the world was just maybe going to be able to restrict itself to a global increase of 2°C. Trump’s stated policies put us on a track to 4°C or higher. 4°C is when the global food chain breaks down. Sure, I’ll be dead before that happens, but do you have children? Thinking maybe of grandchildren someday? They’ll live it.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen a dozen mentions of Obamacare, as if that’s what’s on the table. Has anyone listened to any Republicans? The mainstream goal is to dismantle the New Deal and the Great Society with privatization and state block grants. God only knows what the evangelicals and the Trumpistas want to do; I haven’t been listening, because I thought we’d never be here.

The fact is, everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike, are living in a fantasy world where certain things about America remain true no matter what happens. We’re exceptional. We’re an example to the world. We’re the leaders of the free world. We’re all the things that were taught to us in grade school, at an age when it’s not learning history, it’s learning mythology.

Lies. Today proved that this is a load of complete and utter bullshit, made forgivable only because four generations of Americans who passed it down believed it too.

All of that mythology is based on national actions and global institutions that built that. No one ever convened a meeting at the United Nations and said the president was the leader of the free world. The president held that position, insofar as he actually did, because we were the most powerful nation on Earth, and our allies tolerated that position. We worked for the common good, often enough, that it was allowable for America to hold the position of power it did.

And it’s not just military power, although that’s a hell of a large thing. The dollar is the world’s reserve currency. The national debt is the safest place to invest. The American economy is large enough to tolerate even Great Recessions. All of these things combined are what made America exceptional among nations.

All of these things are now in jeopardy, if I’m to take at face value the things that Trump has said during his campaign. And even if I don’t, I have zero confidence in his ability to assemble a team that won’t manage these principles into oblivion.

Meanwhile, at home, I’m trying to think of historical precedents for which established legal norms are not at risk, and the most recent thing I can come up with is women’s suffrage. We trust in Congress not to make radical changes, or we trust in a president to act as a brake on those changes, or we trust in the courts to be the arbiters of the rule of law. All of those mechanisms have either failed tonight, or are going to in the next four years.

If you believe, as I do, that even the mainstream Republicans govern from an ideology that is divorced from reality—and which will now have additional Republican insurgencies to deal with from even more discredited and reprehensible points of view—you expect this presidency to fail, and fail badly. It’s not a question of cheering on that outcome; it’s a realistic assessment that no one who is about to control the levers of power has any experience with actually governing.

And what happens to the Trump supporters when that happens? If the recession that apparently started yesterday takes hold, whom will that hurt? Everyone in the middle class on down. What happens when Republican economic policies pass, and the red states discover to their horror that they’ve actually been relying on a safety net that paid them more than they paid out?

I’ll tell you what happens: they listen to Fox News, and Breitbart, and a dozen new sites that I haven’t heard of now, but which will be mainstream by 2018. They listen to Trump, who will react exactly as we can expect him to act when his numbers drop: by blaming the immigrants, or the Senate Democrats, or the few levers of power he doesn’t yet control.

If that sounds like blaming the Jews, it’s exactly like that, in that I won’t be in the least surprised if that explicitly happens.

Twitter reminds me that the Republicans haven’t swept federal power since 1928¹, which was also the last time we elected someone with no elective or military experience. Many people are noting that this was followed by the Great Depression; my understanding of history is that there wasn’t exactly a one-to-one correlation between those events, but that Hoover’s mismanagement of 1929 certainly made 1930 onwards as bad and as long as it was.

Whatever problems that come next, and there will be problems, are going to be met by the same level of incompetence, but this time, with all of the character flaws, corruption, lies, and outright manipulation that marked the campaign. Chris Christie is in charge of the transition team. Rudy Giuliani—the person whose name gave birth to Giuliani Time, when police sodomized a black man with a broomstick—will be in charge of Justice.

The country would be unrecognizable in four years’ time, except that with the quality of our media, the outrages of 2017 will be normalized by 2018, and so on through the term. The last time we had a Republican president, America tortured its military captives as a matter of policy, and we’ve been debating that ever since.

There is nothing we can’t normalize.

The sole historical bright spot I can conceive is that Hoover was followed by Roosevelt, and desperate times led to the beginnings of the social fabric that we are about to blow to hell. Perhaps that will happen again. But Hoover didn’t have the modern American military, didn’t have nuclear weapons, didn’t have the fractious news media, and didn’t have the worst parts of the Internet. And by most accounts, Hoover was a decent man. We are set up to fail on all of these counts.

I have no doubt that some form of political resistance will form. I am certain that someone will come up with a strategy to attempt to slow the disaster, and that Democrats and perhaps even horrified Republicans may coalesce around such. But at the moment, the best we can hope for is that the Republicans, so surprised by their victory, will fractionate as badly as we all expected them to in the face of a loss, and that Chuck Schumer turns out to be a master of 4-dimensional chess.

These are thin hopes. I would be happy to hang my thoughts and political efforts on something better. But I suspect that no one, least of all the people who voted for it, have any fucking clue what we’re in for.

¹Update 11/11, 2:39 PM: I’ve been reminded since, and I can’t believe I forgot, that the Supreme Court decision which handed the election to W also gave him the 50/50 Senate when he already had the House.