On February 14, 2025, my wife and I put a lock on the storage unit containing just about everything we owned, turned in our keys to the apartment we had been renting, handed off the keys to our cars to our children and headed off for a nine month adventure that will take us to 23 or 24 or 25 countries (depending on our appetite for the Balkans). Originally this trip started as a 2 month retirement present to ourselves and morphed into this nine-month monster as a result of the 2024 election.
We have a lot of fight left in us, but the crushing blow of another trump victory had taken a severe and serious toll on my mental health. I have had challenges in my life, and so has my wife, but for me none of those compared to what had just happened in November. The American people had actually voted to dismantle the longest running democracy in modern history and hand the keys of the kingdom over to a racist, rapist, conman, felon, egomaniac, authoritarian. LIke Hitler and Mussoline before him, trump took power legally using the tools of the democratic system he intends to destroy.
Since leaving the country with the intent to clear our heads and regain our perspective, things have not gone well…not back in the US, and not in my own head. Sleeping has been a challenge most every night, and even after two months I lie awake at all hours trying to make sense of this all. It’s a process I labelled “cursing the darkness” back when I went through my divorce 20 years ago. It’s debilitating in many ways and of course does nothing to complete the mission this trip was supposed to accomplish: repairing my mental health.
I have tried avoiding the news. I try to stay off social media except for checking in on family and friends on Facebook, but that is a failed strategy because once you’re on Facebook, you’re on Facebook.
The haunting question is “why?” Why did seventy-seven million Americans hand over the keys to our country to a man intent on destroying it for the benefit of his friends and family as simply as we handed over the keys to our cars to our kids?
No level of analysis or even “cursing the darkness” has yielded any plausible explanations.
Enter a 14th century English monk, William of Ockham. He developed a philosophical concept that has come to be known as Ockham’s Razor. According to this concept, when faced with a complicated question, cut through the bullshit and accept that the simplest explanation is probably the right one.
The first thing I read on social media this morning through my bleary eyes was a question from a friend on Facebook: “Do people not understand that this exactly how dictatorships start? Or is that you understand what’s happening and you just don’t care?”
So as I reached for the keyboard to offer some trite wisdom, Ockham’s Razor slashed through the fog and led me to write:
“Door #2 Connor. I’ve come to sincerely believe many Americans actually want this. They’ve lost the game of life to people of color and immigrants and they are willing to give everything away just to even things up again. Sad and sick, but it’s the only explanation I can muster.”
The simplest explanation as to why seventy-seven million Americans voted for trump is that they had finally given up wanting to be one of Thoreau’s “mass of men who lead lives of quiet desperation.” They have lived their mundane lives taking what comes along and for the most part being just content enough to do the same thing tomorrow.
Then Obama happened. What the fuck? A black guy? He’s President? What’s this country come to?
Things suddenly became clear to the mass of men. People of color, immigrants, gay people…all of whom used to know their place in society… suddenly had a voice. And the mass of men did not care for what they were hearing.
Christian nationalism with its roots in the Reagan era was suddenly revived. Temples of hate hiding behind the facade of a certainly dismayed Jesus Christ began to crop up. With the promise of being led out of the darkness of a diverse, pluralistic society, people started funding those who gave them hope that these charlatans could make America great again. And by “great” they meant, let me get back on the couch with my beer without having to see interracial couples or two faggots holding hands in my insurance commercials.
The Christian Nationalists embraced trump as their best hope to turn the tide and the mass of men did the same.
The policies that trump has imposed in his second term are not going to help the financial situation many of his supporters face. Cutting school lunch programs is going to severely hurt these people. Cutting Medicaid is going to severely hurt these people. Tariffs are going to severely hurt these people.
But at least we’re deporting people who don’t belong here, and we’ve taken Harriet Tubman out of the Underground Railroad Museum. America seems greater again already.
The Grumblings 
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