Well... Election day has come and pass.

Trump is, once again in office.

I realize that the political board has been shut down for a good reason and in this situation, I think that it's far better that be the case given the circumstances. Truthfully? I voted Harris and Walz but I damn well knew that for the life of me they wouldn't win.

I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means, in fact I got a lot of my own issues and biases. Hell sometimes I admit that the way I word shit draws ire to the point where I come off a bit bigoted. Truthfully, I have awareness to that fault. But if it means that I have awareness to that fault then I would rather not vote for the person who I knew damn well that was going to be no good for office and at least try to take steps to better myself in that regard.

But this is the thing I do not understand. For the life of me, is that when people are trying to combat ignorance and hate with the exact same behaviors in a different coat of paint then what the hell did Democrats expect with Harris from the start?

More importantly, does the average Democrat realize that, when you look past the media bias and what the politicians seem to be advocating for, especially when there have been plenty of Democratic politicians creating the rhetoric that Donald Trump being a dictator or some kind of Hitler to the point where those words lose meaning, only for two would be assassins to become failed martyrs just for Trump to appear stronger... Did anyone expect that the average person who happened to be either Moderate or Republican to vote their way? No. It was obvious a good portion would dig their heels in, say "fuck you" and walk the other way to vote their way or not vote at all.

Between how the Biden administration failed to do any proper planning to pull troops out of Afghanistan, having a soft stance on the Isreal Palestine conflict, dragging out the issues with the student debt crisis, and then not handing the torch to Kamala a lot sooner than he did to build the platform that she needed to actually win. And even going as far to court republicans only for the exact same attitudes that voters had from 2016 and 2020, it just tells me that the Democrats have not learned a damn thing and only delayed the inevitable of a Second Trump term.

But I voted for Harris and Walz anyways because I know for a fact Trump isn't the direction we should be going, but we are now.

And while it is sorely tempting to use the post to front page on this article, there's a reason why I'm choosing not to do that. I don't want politics to be necessarily the front center of what I do on Newgrounds and I feel that would be in bad taste given what has happened in the past few years.

I'm not surprised by the outcome, but I am not angry at Trump.

I am directing my disappointment at Democrats, Republicans, and those who didn't vote equally, even a little bit of myself for trying to believe that we could change as a society after the last four years. I can understand the reasoning for why everyone did what they did for those I did talk with, but it tells me as a society that none of us are capable of knowing peace and learning how to not hate each other.

But I also don't want this to be another mere doom scrolling post. Truthfully, it is tiring to hear it that the country is going to fall apart because of the orange man who only understands McCarthy style politics, which is really what this is because it's not about trying to make a dictatorship as much as this is deeming what is "Un-American" at this point. Whatever that means.

I don't proclaim to have all the answers, and I don't want to say what we have to do as a society when none of us are really sure where to go from here.

I can only implore as many people that I can to ask ourselves... what can we do to face our demons and learn from our own mistakes?

Some people might tell me to shut up on that but you know what? It needs to be said. The United States is a young nation. We're all artists, musicians, game devs, writers, and animators. We can still work to make people's lives better, if not a little bit more happy. That's what I plan to do in spite of my faults so. You decide on how to handle this.