America looked in the mirror and it didn’t like what it saw. In horror, we stared at the reflection of ourselves and we saw the face of Donald J. Trump.

He is a little or a lot pudgy. He lies about his health and is obsessed with the notion of looking younger. He is narcissistic. He has a thin veneer of superficiality which he takes to ridiculous extremes.  He is prematurely blonde and sports an absurd hairdo. Our President wears makeup in an attempt to look…hell, I don’t really know what he’s going for here. Do you see 72 year old men trying to look this way (on purpose mind you) in other countries?

He is obsessed with the notion of accumulating personal wealth. He is selfish and self-righteous. He is loud mouthed and dim witted. He is famous for turning what he describes as a small, one-million-dollar loan from his father into a real estate empire. It turns out that he received 413 million dollars from his dad. So, what…he fudged on his resume.  

He can’t or just doesn’t read…anything…and gets his news from T.V. He is lazy, almost to a fault. He doesn’t like wearing condoms. Who does? Yet, I would think if you are going to cheat on your wife with another porn star, maybe exceptions could be made.

While on the subject of this type of sexual activity, America’s celebrity spokesperson in this area used to be Charlie Sheen. He once supposedly said that he doesn’t pay strippers to have sex; he paid them to go away afterwards. Thank you, Charlie. So sometimes you have to pay a little more. What’s the difference? I guess when you pay porn stars to keep their mouth shut and Russian prostitutes to urinate on you, you have to pay even more…a lot more.  

He claims to love the United States of America, but doesn’t like paying taxes, being drafted or doing public service of any kind. He is revered by Christians, but doesn’t make any concessions to that code of conduct.

As we all know this man has major character flaws that are on display daily and simply too numerous to mention. To be honest, none of us are this bad. Yet, Trump has the worst features that we all carry with us to some degree or another.

However, here is the separation and what keeps us from being Trump; most of us have at least have some self-awareness. Not everybody, mind you. There are still people out there that live in their vans and try to kill liberals, whom they have been told to hate.  

When he made these elections all about himself, we said ‘OK, but let me look into the mirror again.’ We didn’t like what we saw. It was time to take a personal inventory and make some changes. We decided we can’t continue to live like this. I think most Americans want to be better. We need to take responsibility for our actions and behavior. We need to make amends and apologize for what we have done to those that we love. These are things that this demented demagogue will never do.   

So on Tuesday, November 6^th, we took that first step. We flipped over more than thirty Congregational seats in the United States House of Representatives; the most seats flipped in a generation. We held on to most of our Senate seats and picked up seven Governorships across the country. Finally, the Democrats are now firmly in control of something. We pushed back and pushed back hard. We separated ourselves from Trump and all that he stands for and represents. It was in fact a blue wave strong enough to wash the orange make-up off of that scary clown face.

Fellas, here is how we did it. We did what we should have done all along, we turned to the women in our lives. You know…the smart ones. We turned to the young people. We turned to new voices in the LBGTQ community and we turned to other minorities and disenfranchised groups. They showed us the way and the light. What did you expect?

When America stopped being lazy, when we got off our fat asses and turned out the vote, we began the process of taking our country back. Let’s never forget that when America votes en masse, the way it did this month, the Republicans have never won. They can’t win. With their new idolatry of Trump, they don’t stand a chance.

Americans simply do not agree with the Republican agenda. The Republicans know this and it is why they engage in voter suppression, the gerrymandering of voting districts, fraud and have other “mishaps.” Take Georgia for instance, they didn’t have the proper electrical hook ups for their voting machines in a large predominantly African-American precinct. What did those would be voters do? They did what they have always have done, they waited and waited some more. They waited for hours to excercise their right to vote. Hell, we once made them wait 100 years between emancipation and the voting rights act. We have to overcome a lot to win anything and that is exactly what we did  this year.

If there is anything positive that this ugly face in the mirror has done, it has energized our Democracy. That scowling, angry orange puss has shown us what can happen when we are asleep at the switch.

I hope that very soon Trump turns out to be nothing more than a dreadful stain in our history books. Something that has to be taught in schools, so young people can learn from our mistakes. They must know that this type of thing can happen again, if we are not vigilant. We could show his bizarre surly visage to children and say, ‘This is the face of pure evil and what can happen to our country when we take democracy for granted.’ This was the face of America for a brief time in our history. It was our ugly side, but one that we were able to make beautiful again.

It is my sincere hope that someday soon when we look in the mirror, we will see a beautiful face, our good side. It is a face full of character, courage, intelligence and wit. We will see the face of compassion, empathy and grace. We will see the face of determination and resolve. It will be the face of the real America, the country that I grew up loving.

- David Mac

<- If you like what you're reading and want to support our efforts, click here.