What We Take Back

Be thankful! Come January, there will be a resurgence of good things.

I’VE BEEN SAYING Trump is toast for a good month now. But after his string of humiliations this week—loss upon loss in court; states certifying election results despite his repeated demand for recounts; the defenestration of Sidney Powell, the QAnon darling late of his legal team; his lipsticked lapdog at the GSA reluctantly, and classlessly, handing Joe Biden the keys to the car; Trump himself sitting behind what appears to be an end table, upbraiding a reporter to not talk to the President of the United States like that—it’s really, truly over. If you don’t believe me, believe Marc Elias, the heroic voting rights attorney largely responsible for that Jets-like streak of Trump court losses:

Marc E. Elias @marceelias

📺WATCH! The bottom line: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won this election by MORE than 6 million votes. They will be sworn in on January 20th without delay. No post-election lawsuit will change that fact. It's over for Trump and his allies.

Donald John Trump will never concede, because money, but he’s now entered the “pardon all my co-conspirators” phase of the lame duck period, which precedes the “grab as much cash as possible on the way out the door” phase.

To be sure, the president can still author a lot of misery in the next 54 days. The Second Wave is here, the Supreme Court just sided with the virus, millions of people crisscrossed the country for Thanksgiving, Black Friday exists. And Trump is going to make things as dark and difficult as possible, because he’s a vindictive little prick.

With that said, he will be gone come January 20, come hell or high blood pressure. Here’s a short list of things we take back when he leaves:

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Compassion
After four years of sociopathy, selfishness, and sadism, we have a president who actually cares, deeply, about people.

Irony
Back in 1997, The Onion ran a (satirical) piece in which the “U.S. Retro Secretary” warned that “if current levels of U.S. retro consumption are allowed to continue unchecked, we may run entirely out of past by as soon as 2005.” I feel the same way about irony during the Trump years. We broke the irony barrier. Truth is crazier than fiction. Veep ended because the writers read the newspaper and were like, “Sorry, dude, we’re out.” MAGA don’t understand it. Already on life support, irony died with Herman Cain. I welcome its resurrection.

Eroticism
The Rapist-in-Chief is the anti-aphrodisiac, his daughters and press secretaries and female associates un-Viagra, his MAGA cult an incel army—witness Ben Shapiro’s inability to make his wife’s P WA. The birth rate dipped during the arid, limp Trump years. Crippling anxiety and PTSD will do that. In 2021, we get to MAWA and MAHA.

Sports
I’ve been a big sports fan since I was a kid. It’s a wonderful escape from reality. From the early days of attacking the NFL for kneeling during the National Anthem, Trump—who once almost single-handedly destroyed the USFL—made it impossible to watch football without thinking of him. The pandemic, which is largely his fault, affected sports in a profound way. Yesterday we were denied the one good game on the Thanksgiving slot because of covid concerns. Even in the safety of the “bubble,” the NBA almost shut down because of social justice issues—again, exacerbated by Trump. I love LeBron and Co. even more than I did before for how they handled themselves this past year—they made the owners open their arenas for in-person voting, which absolutely helped Biden win—but it will be nice to lose myself in a game again.

Intellect
PBS, of all outlets, was criticizing Biden’s cabinet picks as “elite”—as if that were a bad thing. In sports, we want elite quarterbacks, elite scorers, elite defenders with elite speed. After four years of Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Diamond, Silk, the My Pillow guy, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Ric Grenell, Randy Quaid, Dan Oingo Boingo, Antonio Sabato, Jr., Jenna Ellis, and Paula White, we will once again have smart, competent, non-grifter professionals in positions of power.

Saturday Night Live
The show did yeoman’s work these last four years, perhaps to atone for letting that orange clown host in 2016. The writers have been consistently on top of Trump/Russia events—much more so than the news programs, alas—and haven’t been shy about lampooning anyone in Trumpland who deserved it. Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer, Kate McKinnon’s Rudy Giuliani and Jeff Sessions, Beck Bennett’s Mike Pence and Vladimir Putin, and Alex Moffat and Mikey Day’s Junior and Eric are all-timers. But Alec Baldwin seems to be imprisoned in some sort of Kafkaesque hell having to play Trump every week, and I’m excited for the show to turn the page.

Science
In the Biden-Harris administration, “Fuck Fauci” will not be a thing.

Pleasure Reading
There are so many fantastic books about the Russian mafiya, and Putin, and Deutsche Bank, and money laundering, and I’ve learned so much from them, and I can’t wait to not feel like my life literally depends on reading and retaining their contents. I want to read the Alexandria Quartet again. I want to get my Proust on.

Honor
I like presidents who don’t insult Gold Star families, or call soldiers “suckers” or “losers.”

Justice
On January 20, the tide turns, and a wave of justice sweeps through Washington. Will we drain the swamp? I don’t know, but we will certainly take out the trash.

Peace and Quiet
Om, baby!

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Photo credit: Keith Allison. Some members of the San Francisco 49ers kneel during the National Anthem before a game against the Washington then-Redskins at FedEx Field on October 15, 2017 in Landover, Maryland.