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Writer's pictureLeonardo Del Toro

The Day After...2024 Presidential Election

Nothing could have prepared me for the 2024 presidential election


A scene of the movie The day after with a Trump's head

After knowing that we would not win the 2024 presidential election, the wine buzz turned into a sour feeling in my gut, so I tried to hit the sack to escape reality. I felt sick, and I was in shock. But there was this restlessness above my eyelid. I knew I would not sleep that night. I woke up at 1:30, and my seldom-seen insomnia was right there waiting for me. I was awake all night, and after taking a series of natural remedies and tossing from side to side, I finally fell asleep for two hours at the end.


The next day, I paced around the house; there was nervousness in the air. My wife talks fast, nervously, and nonstop, which she never does, so I knew we were in trouble with a doom-sinking feeling. I could see a MAGA person in the ether, happy to see our suffering, the big part of their victory. I try to stay focused, but I'm plagued by thoughts and concerns racing through my head. I need to leave the house, or I’ll go crazy.


I go for a walk. And even though I live in a highly liberal state and city, I feel everyone is looking at me, and soon, someone going by in a car will throw something on the back of my screaming: fucking liberal! Other people are walking around, and I am sure they are doing the same as I am, trying to cope. I think about what went wrong. Was this unprecedented defeat a black swan? A harbinger of good things to come in a distant future? And in the end, is there a silver lining? Or are Americans just a bunch of assholes? I assert it to myself. I'm convinced that they are. I should have never moved to this country; I knew better.


I must retreat. I promise myself never to look at the TV news again for a long while. I must divest from all of this and keep my sanity. So much attention has been given to the enemy, and with the power of our attention, they defeated us in a humiliating fatal blow. We must ignore the impostor at any cost.


Will I be able to write about politics as usual? Will I be arrested by the Presidential Investigative Commission? Will our favorite comedians be arrested along with the news people from the left? Stand-up comedians will now have a bigger role, being at the forefront of resistance. If they cower, we are lost.


It feels just like another day, but it is not; I can feel it in the air. Cars go by, and there is no chaos or revolution. No one is calling me names like fucking liberal! And nothing is out of the ordinary. Is this just a bad dream? Yes. That’s it; this is just a bad dream.


In the end, I think the media and the internet just control us. The repeated attention paid to our social media is making us crazy. I'm going crazy, and I can think critically. Imagine what this is doing to stupid. But I'm the one who is in control, and all I have to do is to retreat. We have created our own reality, or rather, the media has created a reality for us. All we have to do is turn it off.


For months, we have been poisoned by a load of algorithmic AI-based media. That explains why Americans voted against their own interests. We no longer have control over our decisions. It is all created and packaged for us. I'll have to go off the grid for a while.


Zen thoughts come to my rescue, and I stare into the emptiness and realize that thinking does not exist and the only thing that does exist is what you see in front of you. Not even what’s in the back of your head exists because you can’t see it. This is the best I can do to remain calm.


And all politics happening a world away in Washington are nothing but illusions. If I ignore them, they simply cease to exist, and my life goes undisturbed. But that only soothes my anxiety for a moment. I know everything will pass one day, but we’re not there yet.


What is very revealing is how wrong we all were. We must conduct a sweeping introspection about this 2024 presidential election. How could we be so off the mark? Republicans were right to stand with Trump; we're wrong. The crowd size didn't matter; we were wrong. There is a lot of learning to be made here. For now, I must forgive myself for being so stupid and arrogant. Retreat, regroup, and wait for better times


Will I lose my Social Security? I’m 66 and a step away from retirement. I know this is within the realm of possibilities, and this is my biggest fear. How much will all of this affect me in the end? I simply don’t know. 


The saddest feeling is to know that the country I once knew I loved no longer exists, and that makes me feel I no longer belong here. To what country would I like to move? Maybe I’ll spend a few months of the year in Brazil, where I’m from, and life is cheap there. Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. That is a possible silver lining out of this whole problem. And a MAGA gosht says: yes, go back to your shithole country. With pleasure, I say. The US was already sucking, and now it sucks much worse.


In the 2024 presidential election, we were so wrong in saying, "That's not who we are." This is exactly who we are. America chose to flush democracy down the toilet, they did it cleanly and openly. But they might not like it when they see what they just bought.


Will sheer incompetence crush the new government and prevent them from running this same government? Will Americans easily submit and turn into a country like Russia without mounting any resistance? Of course, they will.


We don't know, but one thing is sure. The states will have a bigger role. The idea of state independence and governance will rise. With the sweeping red wave victory we just saw, we only have two entities on our side: state authority and the military.  


Obama care will end, EPA protections will end, all our institutions will be dissolved, and Elon Musk will control our economy, taking all our money so he can send some of us to Mars to live inside a cave.


Mass deportations will resume to the tune of billions of dollars without any financial benefit whatsoever, and a huge labor shortage will begin. The good news might be that climate change might finish our society faster than the new president will. Or maybe another pandemic will strike us, not to worry, nothing that our worm ate my brain Kennedy couldn’t handle.    


I’m still in shock, as many of us are. I’m not sure what to think and what to do. Maybe we could mount an intense resistance to all of this. Boycotts, active noncooperation, lawsuits galore, or just do nothing and watch them collapse on their own incompetence. Do I have the patience and resilience to be a revolutionary? I don't know yet. Like rats and cockroaches, we will adapt to anything.

I'm done. I'm exhausted, and I will no longer participate and hear news about the new government. It does not deserve my attention. I will completely divorce my hopes for the United States right now. I feel robbed and fooled by tyranny that was already there before it officially became openly tyrannical.




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1 Comment


Guest
Nov 08

I feel the same, as you man. I have been reading into Project 2025 now that we have to know what the hell is going to happen, it does NOT say they will cut social security. It does mention Medicare and repeal the Biden policies, inflation reduction act. Also, I really doubt there will be mass deportations and crazy tariffs. That would really hurt consumer pocketbooks and lastly his cronies. Follow the money, there is no money to be made by that. I predict we will see some "show" buses of allegedly "bad rapist" migrants on TV chauffeured to the border. Trump will then tap his shoulders and make a big show. But yes, the planet, womans right to choose…

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