A New Yorker’s Postmortem on This Election

Well, this election has come and gone and taken years off our life with its vitriol. Colbert was right, too much venom and it feels like we all ODed. By the last few weeks I just wanted it to be over and after I went and voted I sat in the living room in silence for a good 10 minutes. I didn’t want to hear a damn thing about whatever was going on. And then I came back from whatever shit I did Tuesday, actually it was eating dinner, and the news just kept getting worse and worse. I got nervous, I got scared, I almost pulled a fucking surrender cobra. And I didn’t even like Hillary that much, it’s just… ugh.

I come from a county that is the most ethnically diverse in the country. No, the world. I’m doing a quick check, and it says 48% of Queens is foreign-born, and I’m trying to see how many countries are represented here, but it’s over 100, easy. I’m not saying I know someone from every country in the world, I’m not in Jackson Heights much, but I’ve lived in my childhood home for my entire life and I have seen the demographics change, and we’ve always been cool with our neighbors, except the people across the street who occasionally park their micro Scion in front of our house, and you can only fit one car there between the driveway next door, the hydrant, and the corner. Fuck that car and the people who drive it and park in our spot, you have your own sidewalk without a hydrant across the street by your own damn house. But anyway, yes, Queens is the true pavilion of nations, not Epcot.

You know what else is from Queens? Fuckface Von Clownstick. Sorry, PRESIDENT-ELECT Fuckface Von Clownstick. (That’s more proper, right?) So every kid’s like, “When I grow up I wanna become President of the United States,” so I should be prideful, the next president being a kid from Queens, right? Yeah, about that…

What they said.

I’m sorry, part of the country who heard this man talk and want to run screaming. I fear that I’ll be sorry again, part of the country who thinks a man who outsourced his campaign caps’ll bring the manufacturing jobs back. I saw a couple people happy about the outcome post that this was the first time that the Republican Party took the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time since 1928. And how was the Hoover administration?

I’m… actually, I’m not sorry, people who think this means all the—anyone got a handbook on every single slur? I mean all of them, is there a slur for residents of Monaco, for instance?—are open season for those “Real Americans.” First of all, go fuck yourselves. Is that un-PC enough for you, or am I now a whining little librul crybaby and you a gutless hypocritical prick because you can’t take someone calling you something without feeling attacked? I am a white non-Hispanic American, but I’m of darker complexion, and I’ve gotten the pat-down from TSA, I’ve been stopped by a cop in a foreign land and been scared shitless (and ich spreche kein Deutsch). I have been asked what country I’m from because I have “that look” (though mostly by the halal guys on the street). So if someone tells me to go back to my country, if someone attacks a white guy for looking different, if it becomes white-on-white discrimination, will it be the point where maybe this shit cli—no, it won’t, then I’m a gypsy wop whose ancestors should have been wiped out by the Turks, still not a real Amurrcan. And if someone physically attacks me… hopefully I remember enough of my years of martial arts to defend myself, but I hope I don’t do anything I’d regret.

(This is the now part where I’d play “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist” from Avenue Q, except people actually are worried about people committing hate crimes.)

Anyway, let’s talk, Donny. Can I call you Donny for a bit? Come on, Queens boy to Queens boy. Don’t fucking start that Manhattan tycoon shit, you’re from Jamaica Estates. As far as Queens goes, yeah, it’s a little secluded, a little hoity-toity, definitely unlike Jamaica Jamaica, but it isn’t Royal Ranch or Douglaston Manor. It’s not like the only way to get there’s by taking the LIRR because it would be two subways and three buses to get there from Midtown. Also LIRR is one word, right? You don’t say every letter, time is money and fuck the MTA for thinking I’m going to say that mouthful, or for most other things. I’ll give them the return of the W train, that’s the best news I’ve gotten all week. Anyway.

You been to your old hood anytime in the past, I don’t know, 10, 20 years? Take the F all the way to Jamaica-179th and walk? I don’t know the demographics myself, but I’m taking a guess that there’s that melting pot that they talk about all the time in this city. And no, not just different shades of white, but black and brown and beige and your hair’d probably be spinning, even if it is real.

You remember why New York’s the greatest city in the world, right? Because we dream big (okay, I’ll give you that considering the giant fucking building with your name on it—sorry, giant fucking buildings, plural, with your name on them). Because as much as this city can beat you down as you work your ass off, you get back up, you do it again, and yeah, you’ve got a chip on your shoulder and tell the rest of the world not to fuck with you and get outta the way because you’re from New York, but at our best we keep an idealism that tomorrow’s gonna be better for us, for our loved ones, for our city. All those immigrants—oh yeah, those people you spent the last year and a half decrying—working so their kids can have it better. And “making it here” isn’t about being rich or powerful, cause there’s a whole bunch of those guys, and for the most part, fuck those guys. It’s about if the city loves you back. Some article I read (I think?) said all you wanted once was to be king of New York. Only way it can happen in this city is if the people love you. So let’s go to the polls, shall we? New York County, let’s see, let’s see… you got booed coming into vote, you got booed coming out, and you lost the county you reside in by 77 points. Well I got some good news, the county of your birth was better. Queens, Queens… you only lost by 53 points. You didn’t even get 10% in the Boogie-Down. Yeah, hometown fuckin’ hero right here.

You know who the king of New York is right now, Donny, or you been stuck in your gilded tower tweeting at 3 AM? No, it’s not you, even though you somehow won the position of most powerful person on the planet. It’s a man of Puerto Rican descent who’s from the Heights. (Miranda 2020, anybody?) And we love him, even though it’s pretty much impossible to get tickets to Hamilton (ah, fuck, there were tickets that opened up Wednesday morning for November 2017, and I just remembered now and it’s definitely too late). And he loves us. We especially love our homegrown and especially if they give us a reason to be proud of them. I’m a performer, I want the same thing to happen to me. And whether we like it or not, barring a million votes magically pouring into the states of Ohio, Florida, Michigan, and denial (which more often than not are the answers to “Where is this bonkers news story taking place?”), or the new movement urging the electors to become faithless which hasn’t happened to such an extent since 1836 and would probably lead to civil war, we somehow have to have to want the same thing to happen for you, to find some way to make us proud.

Personally I don’t have a lot of faith, short of you pulling out a party horn and shouting “Surprise, fooled ya!” I have to believe that you’re going to do a lot of the things you said you would during the campaign because a tiger doesn’t change its stripes, an alligator doesn’t suddenly let you pet it. And if you do, shit, a fraction of them, especially a lot of the social stuff like annulling gay marriages or a woman’s right to make choices regarding her own body, or if you repeal Obamacare and do absolutely nothing to replace it, or if you start World War III by nuking China and the Middle East in one fell swoop, then fuck you. If you didn’t actually mean everything you said but used it to gain easy votes and just emboldened a party intent on doing a lot of those things, then fuck you. As of now, these things are on your agenda, so fuck you. You got four years of at the least a plurality of America since you’re down 300,000 in the popular vote, to stop thinking “fuck you,” Mr. President-elect (hurgh), and come up with something we can all be proud of, so this nation actually becomes one nation; under the deity, deities, or lack thereof of your choice because Congress shall not establish a religion or have one superior to the others, please read the constitutional amendments that are not the 2nd; with liberty and justice for all. So far the only thing we agree on is “fuckin’ de Blasio” and maybe “fuckin’ MTA,” if you’ve taken it at all in the last 10-15 years, though I doubt that. Definitely not the subways or buses.

Oh, and fuck Staten Island, you won there. But let’s be real, no one cares.