It’s the night before
Only one more sleep
A few more hours
Tomorrow morning and we will have inaugurated a new president. Our President: whom we elected to serve country and fellow citizens. Who has taken an oath to protect us; who has promised never to be above the law, but ensures he will enforce the law that was created before he was even born.
I say ‘we’. I’m in Canada, and as an ex-pat I know that I speak for myself, but I can also feel the collective wishing and hoping all around me. The palpable relief. Tomorrow, there will be Kamala Harris. Tomorrow, we don’t have to call that rabble-rouser “Mr. President”. Tomorrow we can replace shock and ire with a quiet respect for the rule of law. For democracy.
Tomorrow we can pretend that everything will be back in its place. If not right away, then soon. The dying will slow down. The coach will veer from the edge of the cliff. A sensible, positive man has taken over the reins of power from the sociopathic despot who almost drove the entire wagon off the steep rise, into the canyon. Horses and constitution and Bill of Rights, country and civility and all, along with him.
Tomorrow ‘they’ will make sure the trouble-maker is accountable for his brash and unforgivable lies. And rhetoric. Because this rhetoric, finally spoken out loud and repeated, 280 characters at a time, with the contempt that had (pre-Trump) been shielded by common decency, this rhetoric just about started a war in my country. And in my family of origin.
Tomorrow, I can hope that somehow, I will be able to have a conversation with my stateside brothers and sisters, most of whom are locked in a smog of hatred and blame. They accuse me because they have been given permission to blanket anyone with the slur of “The Liberal Left”. “Socialists”, as if I should be ashamed of Socialism-like-the-Fire Department that keeps their houses from burning down, or Socialism-like-street-lights. “Goons indoctrinated by far-left social justice race-baiters”. Tonight, this is what I am to them.
But tomorrow, there will be Kamala!
