There are no take-backs on this one.

I’m a new Rolling Stone subscriber and relatively happy with their mix of stories. Feels like Grantland without all of the sports. Front and center on their website this morning is Americans Didn’t Vote for What Donald Trump Is About to Give Them, an opinion piece by Jay Michaelson. I have enjoyed Jay's work in the last couple of months, but the opening of his recent thought piece doesn't sit well.

If, like me, you’re being kept awake at night thinking about this election, this explanation helps. Yes, people were willing to put up with Trump’s criminality, coup attempts, and extreme xenophobia, and that is still terrible. Many were also on board with scapegoating immigrants for our economic woes, which is as factually preposterous as it is morally offensive. 

But they didn’t vote for MAGA. They didn’t vote against women, or wokeness, or coastal elites, or climate regulation, or government regulation in general, or queer people. Not directly, anyway. They voted against the incumbent party, like every other developed country in the world this year. The shock waves from the Covid-19 pandemic — inflation, empty shelves, housing prices — are global and this is a global trend. Everywhere in the world, voters have chosen to throw the bastards out because of the economy.

There is an eloquent word for this perspective in the English language—bullshit. I can't speak for elections in other countries but here in the United States, no one can tell me they voted for Trump only for economic reasons.

You can’t vote for a shriveled, ugly, artificially-orange, racist, fascist, sexist, narcissistic, convicted felon with scores of indictments still hanging who is known to have raped and sexually assaulted women, friends with enemies of the state, declared bankruptcy multiple times, stole a ton of Top Secret government data, a decade's long fraudulent debtor, chronic liar, litigation whore, an amazingly bad dancer who can’t open a truck door, and tried to overthrow a legitimately elected competitor in a failed coup d'etat against the United States and go on to defend your decision and action with a simple, “Oh, I didn’t vote for him…I’m angry about the economy.” 

Voting isn’t like eating fish! You have to eat it all. The bones, eyeballs, head, tail, fins, guts—Everything! You can not, may not, pick apart your reasoning in any way that will ever be acceptable or make sense. And when the real atrocities start you will never be able to say: “I didn’t know…” or “I didn’t think…” This will be even more damning if you have women in your family—daughters, granddaughters, goddaughters, nieces, sisters, a wife, or an ex. Your reasoning for voting as you did in this election will never be a gray area. It is a simple black and white question did you vote for him: yes or no?

I get why Jay is trying to eke out a silver lining to this outcome but you’ll never make me feel better, not by a centimeter, by trying to defend casting a vote for Trump. The only excuse I’ll ever accept is if you can provide evidence that your life was at risk—a gun to your head. 

American voters voted for a candidate promising mass deportations, authoritarianism, reactionary anti-feminism, ethno-nationalism, and a mean, vindictive spirit of revenge, grievance, and retribution. Shit is about to get very real, very soon. And, quick history lesson, the Nazi party was voted into power in 1932 largely because of economic discontent. Once in power, parties do what they want to do, not what voters actually voted for.

If this was about a protest of how the economy has impacted your finances then all you had to do was elect someone else, and there were plenty of alternative candidates from smaller political parties to choose from. There will never be a feel-good or feel-better moment that comes out of this election. We don't need any more gaslighting bullshit about what happened.