So Now Your Life Is Over

Whatever will you do?

The first thing I must tell you is that I’m so sorry for your loss. Sorry, not sorry. That’s the way the ball bounces. The way the dice tumble, the way the cookie crumbles. How could all of your calculations have gone so unbelievably wrong? If there’s a god in heaven, or even a God in Heaven, how could (insert correct pronoun here) have let this happen in a democracy? How? Why? Unbelievable! Impossible! Inconceivable!

You feel that you have been hoodwinked, bamboozled and led astray. Oh the fraud, the deception, the ignorance, the interference! Now it’s time to really consider leaving America just like you said you would. Hmmm. Where to go? Where to go?

I’ll let you in on a little secret, and I know it sounds trite at an earth shattering moment like this when your whole bourgeois world has come crashing down around your battered psyche. I know it sounds as if I don’t care about the time, effort and sacrifice so many millions of people have made; as if I could ignore the megatons of paper and red, white and blue ink have been dedicated to encourage people to do the right thing, which they obviously didn’t do. I know I appear oblivious to all of the billions of dollars of airtime have been sponsored by American business and power brokers since the very beginning of election season, co-opting your civic agency with their idiotic reminders. I know all that. nevertheless, my secret is still relevant and it is easily referenced by two little words. Gloria Gaynor.

Oh Bowen, you juvenile. You sophomoric asshole. You think this is a joke? Is that the best you can do? I expected more from somebody with your dubious gifts, and now you mock the exceptional American electorate which has clearly made a fatal error? How can you be so glib and disinvested in this, our secular religion?

I warned you. I very patiently explained that you were in the American Box. I told you that you were too emotionally involved, but you wouldn’t step away from the ledge. You took a leap of faith, my poor fellow. You couldn’t resist going all in. I gave you every opportunity to see it my way. And, quite frankly I’ll give you many more, because I treasure your rationality and sanity, perhaps even more than you do. That’s why I was chilling with a martini last night watching the excellent ‘Queens Gambit’ on Netflix and listening for the first time to the brilliant Yuja Wang bang out some serious Rachmaninoff instead of allowing this gameshow drama play my emotions.

You ask how can I be blind to the gross errors in policy that will inevitably result from this bad decision. I told you bad decisions were being made 12 years ago, but did you listen? No you were saying a New America was being made and that it was a turning point. I told you it was just populism and identity politics, the same thing I said in 2016. No, no, you told me, it was really going to be massive difference that time. America had never seen the like, and of course this was the most important vote of our lives, and I’m sipping gin? Didn’t Churchill have a snappy answer to that? I’m afraid I’ve had a bit more Bombay than usual to get into the spirit of chess openings.

I’ll tell you what else, even if you don’t want to hear it. I got up at the crack of dawn today, because I’m still not adjusted to whatever time regime we are now on, and I watched this fascinating video.

The trains are going to be running today, tomorrow, and the next day, because there are people who can dedicate themselves to making things work that don’t depend on rhetoric or popular memes. This is America’s meritocracy and infrastructure. We have a deep bench. We’re working today.