Well, that happened.

The 45th President of the United States is Donald Trump.

Goddamn.

Hmm.

So.

This is a disturbing result, without a doubt. He's a lunatic.

But, I'll say this: the guy told a big chunk of Americans exactly what they wanted to hear. He knows how to play to a crowd. Mind you, a good deal of what he said was outright lies -- but, apparently the US is in a "post-fact" phase of its life right now, and it doesn't matter.

There are a lot of Americans for whom life has gotten tougher over the past few decades. My parents retired about fifteen years ago from a company with whom they both spent 35-40 years, with good pensions. They were never let go, their job was never shipped off to Mexico or China, and they earned decent money with high school diplomas. They both grew up relatively poor, and elevated themselves squarely into the middle class: two vehicles, owned their home, vacations in Florida, raised two kids and sent them off to uni/college and out into the world.

And a lot of people these days couldn't ever dream of that luxury. Precarious employment at best, dodging downsizing all the time, in debt up to their eyeballs and beyond, and a general lack of hope for a better future. Things haven't gotten better, they've gotten worse (unless you're in the 1%, of course) -- and it's even tougher if you've just come out of uni, $40k in the hole, and can't even find your first job.

Alright, then... who's to blame for this lousy situation? Is it a series of government policies that quietly but steadily dismantled safeguards in the banking system so that the foxes ran the henhouse and allowed things like subprime loans to get out of hand? Is it a climate of corporate greed that let businesses shut down factories with good jobs in the US and reopen them in foreign countries, where workers get paid a pittance and you can just flush everything down the drain? Is it a general unwillingness to let the government build programs that actually help people in meaningful ways, thereby lifting up all boats (so the saying goes), because of baked-in hatred for all things governmental?

Nope. It's not. It's those damn Mexicans, coming in illegally and stealing all our jobs. It's those damn Muslims, not assimilating into White Christian English America and installing Sharia law. It's the blacks and the gays, getting all uppity and asking to be respected and, y'know, not killed by cops. It's the tree-huggers, because it's cold outside today and therefore climate change is a hoax made up by China and Al Gore.

All of these explanations are wrong, of course, and the data clearly back me up on this. But it feels right, doesn't it? It meets the Colbertian definition of "truthiness" -- go with your gut, not your brain. And the actual explanations as to how we all got to this point take too long to explain, not to mention implicate the general public in its own downfall by allowing it to happen.

Enter Trump. He tells you what you want to hear, and he tells it loudly and repeatedly. George W. Bush did the same thing with Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction; by the end, you had people looking to kick Saddam's ass because NINE-ELEVEN, NEVER FORGET, THESE COLORS DON'T RUN.

Thirteen years ago, the US was fed a never-ending stream of lies about Iraq and its supposed weapons of mass destruction. This election, the US was fed a never-ending stream of lies about how Hillary Clinton was the devil incarnate. Both times, a good chunk of the American public fell for it. (And, just think, back in 2003 there wasn't even Twitter.)

This whole election thing.

Listen. We've gotta have a talk about Donald.

The Republican party, for all its faults, has been good the past few decades for rallying around whoever's leading it. There may have been ideological chasms within the party, but gosh-darn-it, they kept them pretty quiet.

I think this is fairly common within most right-wing parties lately, frankly. Ol' Stevie Harper kept his ducks in a row in Canada for over a decade, but of course this was also due in part to his personal OCD tendencies. He forbade people to talk to the media: his cabinet, public servants of all stripes, his dog (probably).

Fast-forward to the past few months and the Republicans. A lot of the party's stalwarts are in open revolt against their candidate -- and, rightly so, because Trump is a total dick. But, you know, the primary process produced this result, and that's what those parties go with these days, and a lot of people voted for him, as opposed to Marco "The Golden Boy" Rubio, Ted "The Canadian" Cruz, and Ben "Living Proof Brain Surgeons Aren't Necessarily Smart" Carson.

So, people in the primaries voted for him. And a lot of people have bought into his message -- and, incredibly (to me), stuck by him despite all of the crazy things he's said (and all of the insane tapes that have come to light recently).

Two things jump out at me about this.

One, the True Trump Believers (TTBs) will stick with him, no matter what he says. And, because his schtick is "anti-establishment" and always has been, any ridiculous, offensive or incredible thing he says will only cement the TTBs' belief that their man is who he says he is: an outsider who says exactly what's on his mind (even if that includes, say, explaining to a reporter privately about his propensity for grabbing women by the pussy).

It's not unlike people who believe in a divine power, and are faced with a shitty situation. You go to church every week, read your bible, say your prayers, and your young daughter still dies from leukemia? Well, "the Lord works in mysterious ways." And "it's all in God's plan." He's "testing our faith." From my perspective, though: mysterious = dickish, this "plan" seems to cause one of the humans he "loves" an extreme amount of personal anguish, and if your God is omnipotent why would He want to "test" your faith in Him? To a sceptic, this makes no sense.

Two, this is indeed going to split the Republicans in two, at least for now. You'll have a small stump of Trump devotees, and you'll have a group which will follow the more-mainstream branch of the party (your Paul Ryans, your Mitch McConnells; questionable people, but hey, that's where a lot of 'em are at). It's hard to say which camp the Evangelicals will end up in; my money's on the conventional-Republican side of things.

I think that by the 2018 midterms, the Trumpites will have shriveled up into a small branch of the party; maybe they'll even take up the banner of a currently-much-smaller party (like the Libertarians, the Constitutionalists, the New Black Panthers (heh)). Then the mainstreamers will regain the Republican name, and things might go back to what passes for normal in that wacked-out country down there. Memories are short.

After the Democrats thrashed them in the 2012 election, there was legitimate soul-searching amongst the leadership of the Republican party. They produced a report which said, quite rightly, they need to learn how to appeal to non-white voters, women, and younger voters.

But this was the party's leadership talking, not the rank-and-file. So what did said rank-and-file do in 2016? They nominated Donald Fucking Trump as their guy to run for president. Thus, there's a huge disconnect between the average Republican voter -- the kind that would vote in a primary, anyway -- and the leadership of the party. Hell, this leadership wanted Jeb Bush as their dude, and we all know how that turned out.

Now, yes, of course, there was a massive split on the left as well: Clinton vs. Sanders. But let's not forget how Bernie, even after the dirty tricks pulled on him by the party's elite, both before and during the convention, still comes out stumping for Hillary. For once, the left-wing party (heh) is the united one! Their hands certainly aren't squeaky-clean, and yes, I'd have loved to have seen Sanders get the nomination, but that wasn't going to happen, let's face it.

All of this to say, I'm schadenfreude-ing pretty hard right now.

Strategic voting.

Well, isn't this nice: someone's telling me how to vote.

To this person I say: "Go fuck yourself."

I'll vote for whoever I want to, for the reason I want to. It's my vote. Don't tell me how to use it.

Here's the truth:

I advance-voted yesterday because Monday the 27th looks like it's gonna be a busy one for me. (Actually, in a way, it's going to be pretty free-and-clear; I teach all grade 12 classes, and a shit-ton of 'em are going to be working the election. Why? They get paid $160, they get to put it on their resume and/or university application, and that looks fuckin' goooooood.)

And yes, I voted for John Tory, even though I really want Olivia Chow in charge. I voted this way because Tory is the person who has the best shot at winning who isn't named Ford (in this case, Doug Jr.). This is called "strategic voting," and I feel absolutely no remorse for doing so.

Last election, Drinkin'-Buddy Dave (DBD) and I were hanging out with some mutual friends a few days before the vote where Rob Ford won (handily), George Smitherman placed a shockingly-distant second, and Joe "Joey Pants" Pantalone barely rippled the water by placing third. The polls were all saying this before the election, although they didn't really show how big a lead Ford had on Smitherman; there was actually a glimmer of hope that Smitherman could've won.

"I'm voting for Pantalone," mutual-friend Y declared. "I don't care about the polls. Pantalone's who I want, so that's who I'm voting for." Meanwhile, of course, J, DBD, Y, his wife L, and everyone in the room (and indeed anyone who'd followed city politics for any length of time, even casually) knew that Rob Ford was a fucking idiot; exactly to what astonishing degree we'd only learn later, of course. And no, even if you put Joey Pants' and Smitherman's votes together, they wouldn't have defeated Ford's plurality -- but if the media had framed it a little differently in the last few days, maybe they'd have had a shot. (Water under the bridge, though.)

I felt Y's unilateral declaration, despite (a.) what the polls were saying at the time, and (b.) Rob Ford's obvious lunacy, stubbornly idealistic and naive. I mean, maybe, if Ford was polling at 50%, Smitherman at 20% and Pantalone at 15%, alright then, it's clear who's going to win, protest-vote for Pantalone and go home and have some ice cream. But, despite my own political leanings towards Pantalone, I voted for Smitherman, because the polls were suggesting something like 45-35-15 at the time; a longshot, but still a shot.

In short, George Smitherman was the least-bad shot at a winner.

And we all know how that turned out.

Thus, with a Tory-Ford-Chow poll running at about 40-30-20... it's close, man. Closer than it should be, if Etobicoke/North York/Scarborough knew what was fucking good for them. (Yes yes, downtown elite, sipping a latté with pinky-out, going to the ballet later tonight.) But, y'know, cautiously optimistic that Tory can hold on for a win.

This is, of course, a ludicrous thing for me to say. I've been a teacher and union activist for almost two decades, stretching back to my practice-teaching round of 1997; that fall saw the two-week walkout to protest the PC's Bill 160, which did a lot of fucked-up shit that we're still trying to undo. And who was later the leader of the Ontario PCs, who ran in Don Valley West, and who advocated for public funding of private, religious schools, and who green-lit an ad during Kim Campbell's glorious election campaign in '93 that may-or-may-not have made light of Jean Chrétien's facial paralysis? That would be one John Howard Tory.

In an ideal world, Chow's way out in front, Tory's saying some interesting things but has no shot, and the Fords are out somewhere calling people "kikes" or whatever it is they do for fun. Instead, we've got Doug Fucking Ford handing out $20 bills, people in TCHC buildings impressed with his little dog-and-pony show (and apparently voting for Fords in crazy-high turnouts), and now I've gotta burn my vote on... John Tory.

...and they say municipal politics are boring.