I hear New Zealand is nice. Canada is too, but the winters are long. Any chance Mars is inhabitable?

My musings are in overdrive for one overriding reason: More Americans have voted for Donald Trump in this election – millions more – than voted for him in 2016. Despite his war on science and the deaths of 230,000 innocent citizens. Despite the hemorrhaging of jobs. Despite his serial lying, his Orwellian trampling of truth. Despite the kids in cages. Despite his groveling to foreign despots. Despite being impeached for trying to corrupt this election. Despite his stoking of violence and kudos for morons who block public highways. Despite his plundering of norms and escalating assaults on democratic institutions, most notably (as we will continue to see) his desecration of the electoral process itself.

Even if Joe Biden likely manages to craft out a victory in the days and perhaps weeks ahead, we have still disgraced ourselves. We have messaged the world that we are internally sick for the foreseeable future. Throughout the 2020 campaign, Americans who rightly loathe Trumpism have been fond of saying, “That is not who we are.” But (dare I say it again) more people in 2020 have voted for Trumpism – for demagoguery, for white nationalism, for malignant narcissism, for blatant corruption, for banana republic amorality – than in 2016, so we do need to acknowledge that for roughly half of America, this is precisely who we are.

And those of us who voted this year for sanity and the renewal of American values are compelled to share this benighted land with those people, to breathe the same air. Alas, they’re not even masked. They’re literally willing to die for Trump and infect us on the way out.

Now comes the post-election hellscape, the dangerous limbo that so many of us had dreaded all along. Trump pumped out the usual lies last night, launching his long-expected fake narrative, claiming without a shred of empirical evidence that he has “won,” even though tens of millions of mailed votes are still being counted in pivotal states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – conveniently forgetting that baseball is a nine-inning game and that all runs scored in the eighth and ninth are just as legit as those recorded earlier.

He warned on Sunday, “We’re going in with our lawyers,” which is a fancy way of saying that the Covid super-spreader intends to infect the vote count and drive a stake into what remains of the presidential election process. He said last night, “We want all voting to stop.” (The voting has stopped. All that remains is counting.) And today on Twitter, he’s ranting about “surprise ballot dumps” – his nonsensical term for legitimate mail ballots cast by voters who didn’t wish to risk exposure to his pandemic.

And you thought perhaps that the Bush-Gore election aftermath was traumatic 20 years ago? Well, brace yourselves. As Bachman-Turner Overdrive sings, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet / B-b-b-baby, you just ain’t seen n-n-nothin’ yet.”

Assuming that all the votes are counted, we will surely discover that Biden has won the popular vote by a healthy margin; at this update, Biden leads the tally by 3.5 million (bigger than Hillary’s margin). That alone would spell victory in any other western nation, but alas, we remain tethered to the archaic remnant of slavery called the Electoral College. It is Trump’s lifeline, the ventilator that is keeping him alive. He’s fortunate to reign in a land where the loser – the guy who gets fewer votes (twice) – can purport to pose as the winner.

Even if Biden ultimately prevails in the remaining swing states (seems likely), he’ll be plagued by the unvanquished voices of Trumpism, by Trump himself (because in exile the guy will never shut up), and by an obstructionist Republican Senate (because Democrats apparently failed to win that win chamber). All told, the American people have spoken – and all we got was more cacophonous noise.

Granted, it’s possible to look on the bright side. Susan Hennessy, a former national security attorney and current editor of Lawfare, tweets: “I know people wanted a Nov. 3 panacea, with Trump and Trumpism expelled in one fell swoop. But…nothing can be healed until we reclaim the presidency from Trump. It’s step one. We’re on track to do it. This is America, once again, saving itself.”

But I’ll side with Richard Haas, a veteran foreign policy expert (president of the Council on Foreign Relations) and registered Republican. He said it well last night on Twitter: “Whatever the ultimate outcome of this election, this is a deeply divided country along political and cultural lines. Bodes badly for governing at home and for building a consensus as to the country’s role in the world. Sobering by any and every measure.”

So let’s see…New Zealand and Canada are out. What’s good for binging on Netflix?

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