(Illustration out front: Edvard Munch‘s ‘The Scream,’ lithograph version, found here.)

This early-evening Wednesday is still too premature to adequately address the absolute horror shock from this morning. I turned out the lights last night before going to bed, even after re-checking CNN for further election update results (as a stress-reducer of sorts, I’d been watching “Castle” on Amazon), and went quickly to sleep with fretful knowledge that no matter if T-Rump was actually numerically ahead right then, Kamala Harris would eventually win out, even maybe (hopefully) in a kind of Blue-voter tsunami. Indications in the last week or so gave credence to that wonderful sense of optimism.
However, upon waking this morning, I abruptly discovered a daylight nightmare had happened. Not only in the presidential race, but the GOP had re-taken the Senate (House is still in dispute as I write this).

Despite the shock value in the seemingly telling ease of/in the T-Rump victory, I have fallen all of today into maybe an unrealistic, quiet dream sequence in some freaked-colorized episode of The Twilight Zone,  which is not as poetically-intellectual as one would possibly think/imagine. Questions plague; foremost of those, what the fuck happens next? Especially after Jan. 20, and the dark possibilities starting that day.

However, Harris conceded in good, passionate form (NPR): ‘“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for … But hear me when I say … the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”‘

She displayed the warmth and humanity the T-Rump and the entire shit-driven MAGA Republican party utterly lack and would never be exposed to any viewing. Harris campaigned as a winner and jumped into a hard, fierce saddle taking over for Joe Biden to ride a full-steamed ticket to such a point that she fucking-sure-as-shit should have won.
(Fucking soundless scream!)

Anyhow, I may not know what/how to write/describe this political/cultural earthquake decently right now (maybe never), but there are others far-better talented, and one of those is Charles P. Pierce — first, from yesterday afternoon at Esquire:

If the former president* wins, then a majority of the country as defined by the Constitution—and we’ll get to that in a moment—will have voted in the affirmative for racism, mendacity, authoritarianism, and blind animal vengeance. After four years of his presidency, and the four years of his ex-presidency that were somehow even more damaging to the republic, there are no excuses left. If you voted for him, you voted for a crueler, dumber, and more vicious America because that’s what you wanted, and you want that America to be led by a mentally bedraggled clown. He’s not Hitler. He’s the rebel leader from Woody Allen’s Bananas who, when he finally overthrows the dictator, demands that all citizens change their underwear every half hour, and that underwear must be worn on the outside so the government can check.

Again Pierce this morning on the ‘asterisk‘ pinned on the T-Rump:

Not this time. The asterisk is not coming back. Donald J. Trump is the chosen president-elect of the United States in every possible way you can be, a winner in the popular vote and a winner in that marble mausoleum called the Electoral College. The asterisk is not coming back, because this time I am absolutely sure that a majority of my fellow citizens will get exactly what they want. They will get pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists and an end to any federal prosecution of the incoming president, now and forever. They will get attacks on the free press and on political dissent that they have been slavering for. They will get validation for their rage, and an outlet for their promised vengeance, beyond their wildest fantasies. They will get the chaos for which they voted, and which they apparently fervently desire. And there is absolutely nothing that God, man, or the Constitution can do about it, because we did it to ourselves.

With the Senate gone, because Sherrod Brown lost to a car salesman and Jon Tester to a guy who can’t remember how he shot himself, we will get J.D. Vance one occluded coronary artery away from the Oval Office, Stephen Miller as Secretary of State, Alina Habba as Attorney General, RFK Jr. at HHS, and Elon Musk as Secretary of Breaking Shit. (The Democrats had better renew their love for the filibuster in a hurry.) We will get at least an attempt at mass deportation, 200 percent tariffs (which the new president now has permission never to understand), and blowback congressional investigations until hell won’t have them. (That last threat will be mitigated somewhat if the Democrats manage to flip the House of Representatives.) We will get all these things because we have expressed our earnest desire for them through the only true means allowed to us—our votes. We will get all these things, but we may not be getting Social Security checks much longer.

[…]

There’s no blaming the Russians this time around. There’s no blaming media malpractice. There’s still some blame to attribute to voter suppression, but majorities elect the people who suppress the votes, which means that majorities accept the fantastical bullshit that is the rationale for those laws in the first place. The American people, which is all of us, got together on Tuesday and chose everything that’s coming for close to the next decade. This mandate was not seized. It was not conjured up by some trickeration on the part of Balkan teenagers. It was granted in the way all legitimate mandates are granted—by the vote of a majority of the people.

Both stories, I’m sorry to write, are behind a paywall — for me, however, Pierce is the only reason to subscribe to Esquire. He’s been around a long time and is a journalism wonder, and way-worth the price of admission.

Let’s close this soundless, typed hallucination in color with a clip from the Zone:

Despite it all, or not, once again here we are…