I can’t believe that
Florida is this close again. In fact, it
isn’t close. Trump was out ahead. This
is nerve wracking. I have to go to head
to a meeting. I’m in a cab and have no Internet. This is going to be too much. I had to leave the TV and the Internet in my
room this morning. Now I’m in a cab, reluctantly
off to talk to discuss matters that are suddenly, completely peripheral.
It is enervating to look at the Electoral College map and
not know what’s going to happen. It
keeps flipping back and forth and each time and you don’t know where it’s
heading. I’m looking forward to flying
home and catching my breath.
Shenzhen is cloudy. I
remember I was here, in this very city, eight years ago when Obama won the
first time and there was a huge glow to everything. I am counting on that glow for today. It is unnerving to be thinking that I will be
stuck in a meeting till after the decision is likely to be made. I wish I could just get this over with.
There had better be Internet at this place I am going to. I will need to be rude and ask them, insist
on a password. Nerve wracking. Getting off the highway, heading over to this
scheduled engagement. I’m not sure if it
is in a place I recognize but the name seems familiar and there will be lots of
places to go after this meeting that should have Internet.
Today may be the first time I’ve tried on the notion of
accepting a Trump victory. That would be too much. That would really no longer be anything to joke about. We have got to pull it through in the next
few hours. I want to rest easy but I cannot until I know that he's
defeated. It felt good to write “he’s
going down”the last few days and now I am not so sure. This
then, the rejuvenative quality of the U.S. election cycle which forces the violent turning of the soil, for better or worse.
Our system of government is about to be sorely tested. Oh dear. It’s 3:48PM.
(Hence quarter to four in the morning back home on the east coast) Donald Trump is four electoral votes from
wining the presidency. I’m once again
traveling from one place to another. By
the time I reach the airport, it’s likely to be official. It will take days, four years perhaps, to
absorb what just happened. I just want
to run away from it all. Some metaphors
are too strong. It isn’t the Nazi’s
marching down the Champs de Elysee but it feels like an occupation, which is
probably exactly how the right felt when Obama was elected. And now I am supposed to feel the same
thing. We didn’t take the Senate. We didn’t get anything accomplished.
Comey will forever be viewed as having single-handedly swung
this. We'll look now for something to explain what everyone dismissed. This is like a senseless death. What do we learn from what just happened? The
surge of Latinos didn't matter. The
legacy of Obama didn’t matter. People
who are charlatans sometimes win ‘big league.’
Good guys (or gals) finish last.
This is dizzying. I feel all alone, with no one to talk to, riding
around in a city that didn’t just vote.
I certainly don’t want to have business meetings today. This is just too real. Way, way, too real.
I can’t take it. It’s grey out.
Notably grey. The same way it was
when George W. Bush had his inauguration.
This is vile. And now where will
this leads us?
It happened. I have
been without the media all day. I want
to turn to the media, the New York Times and the Washington Post mostly, to get
their help. I want them to help me make
sense of this. I feel so alone out here
in Shenzhen this morning and now in Beijing.
This is such a lonely, hollow feeling.
I realize, like bricks falling upon me, that I had a certain faith in
the media. These are reasonable intellectuals
they are saying we’ll win. It’s all but
certain we’ll get this. We didn’t. We got him now, for four years. I suppose like most people I’ll be absorbing
this slowly, every day for four long years.
It feels like a call for notable life adjustments and purposeful organization. I have no appetite for “work” whatsoever. Absorbing, swelling like a wound.
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