Election Day: Save the planet and shut up those bleating Trump supporters

During this pandemic, every little tweak in my health makes me wonder. Is this morning fatigue the first sign of Covid-19? No. People with Covid can barely walk to the bathroom and need a three-hour nap to recover. Is that lightheadedness a Covid fever? Nope. My temperature at the gym never went over 36.6 (97.9).
But then last Tuesday I worried. Three straight days of headaches led me to my pharmacy and a check of my blood pressure. I popped a 143/100. That’s odd. I’m retired in Rome and my only stress is getting enough foam in my cappuccino every morning. I’m normally at the tranquillo rate of around 110/70. Tuesday, however, I seriously wondered if Covid’s long tentacles had grabbed me. The pharmacist asked me what could’ve caused it. No, I hadn’t been in a big crowd. I hadn’t gone without a mask. No death in the family. However, I know what I did do that day.
I wrote about Donald Trump.
The Trump effect
I’m getting dangerously worked up over an election in a country where I haven’t lived in nearly seven years and ever want to again. This is the effect of a president so corrupt, so evil, so repulsive — and the cult that follows him — that even 5,000 miles away my blood burns like the forest fires he blames on mismanagement.
Stressing from another country is not easy. As I wrote last Tuesday, we American expats are lucky these days. We are above the fray. We don’t live in the most Covid-ravaged country in the world. We don’t meet brain-dead Trumpeteers more interested in image than substance, not to mention equal rights and democracy.
We have wonderful lives over here. Saturday I got away from it all with a lovely five-mile walk along Appia Antica, the original road the Ancient Roman armies used to take them to the Adriatic Sea. It was 70 degrees. The sun shined. It wasn’t crowded and those who did walk and cycle along the 2,300-year-old stone road lined with Mediterranean pine trees all wore masks. My girlfriend and I had luscious cannelloni and a half bottle of red wine at an outdoor cafe on the road, one of the prettiest in Europe.
Sunday, with Italy’s restaurants all closing at 6 p.m. every day, Marina and I had lunch outside at Raf, a modern, hip restaurant near the Vatican. My tagliatelle and smoked salmon in sesame seeds made me swoon like Meg Ryan in “Harry Met Sally.”
Cautiously confident
But Election Day in the U.S. is today and stress is building again. Marina has soldered closed the doors leading to my fifth-floor balcony in case Trump wins. I remain cautiously confident. I think Joe Biden will beat Trump into orange Tang but my worries go beyond that. What loopholes will Trump and his evangelical-leaning Supreme Court find to overturn the results? Will we win enough state senatorial races to flip the Senate?
And how many innocent people will get shot today as their Dear Leader’s loss becomes more inevitable and his call to “Stand back and stand by” is amplified?
I have a Democrat friend in Colorado who says she’s locking her doors and not coming out all day. She, like 95 million other Americans, voted early. Trump needs to win it in today’s turnout from people who think God exists but a virus that has killed 237,000 Americans does not. Walmart has changed its mind and returned guns to its shelves for sale. The United States today could very well emulate the “shit countries” Trump so gleefully humiliated.

Here is why I want Biden to win in a route that will look like Liverpool versus Southend United: It’s not just saving democracy, stopping Covid’s ravaging path and ending the most racist period of my lifetime.
I want to shut up the Trump supporter.
I’ve been told by people I greatly admire, particularly my hero, Bill Maher, “Hate Trump. Don’t hate the Trump supporter.”
Screw that. Screw the Trump supporter.
No hands across aisle
It says something about a person’s character when they support a man whose list of sleaze, corruption and lies is too long for cyberspace, let alone this blog. I don’t think every Trump supporter is a racist, but racism isn’t a deal breaker for these people and that’s almost as bad. I’m not going to break bread with them. I’m not going to exchange ideas with people who attacked Pres. Obama’s heritage for eight years. Sitting around signing “Kumbaya” with rednecks who think Black Lives Matters is a terrorist organization will not bring the country closer.
For four years I have trimmed my life of the pond scum who cheer for Trump like a herd of seals at feeding time. Because of social media, living 5,000 miles away does not insulate me from the mindless drivel these people spew. On Facebook, email and Twitter the list of people I have blocked or ignored include my best friend of 35 years, two ex-girlfriends, a former high school baseball teammate, a former basketball teammate, a couple classmates, an ex-sportswriting colleague, my former real estate agent and countless drones laughing that I wear a mask every day.
Many have the same reaction when I bring up the biggest effect Trump’s presidency has on my life overseas. I tell them that the U.S. has gone from the most powerful, most respected country in the world to one that people pity. Buddhist monks laugh when I ask them about Trump. Italians say he makes Silvio Berlusconi look like Winston Churchill. An expat I interviewed last week compared the United States’ struggling democracy to that of her adopted country.
The Republic of Georgia.
They don’t care
To all this I read the same response on social media: “I don’t give a shit what some other country thinks of us!” (I edited the various misspelled words.)
That attitude is part of the problem. That jingoism, that bigotry, is what got Trump elected. Four years later, the U.S. has dropped economically, politically and intellectually all over the world. The world’s watchdog has become the world’s rabid mutt.
As The New York Times’ Roger Cohen wrote Thursday, “The presidency and dishonesty have become synonymous. Alliances are founded on trust. When that goes, they begin to dissolve. Hence the talk in European capitals of the need to ‘contain’ the United States, a verb once reserved for the Soviet Union. America, under Trump, has lost the credibility and legitimacy that were cornerstones of its influence.”
I’ve felt that here. I’ve never had anyone overseas hold my government against me personally but the level of respect I once received is nowhere to be found. No longer do people tell me they dream of living in America. Italians no longer ask in wonderment, “Why the hell did you leave the U.S. for this place?”
It’s indefensible
In this U.S. government, I can defend nothing. In every presidency of my lifetime I found positives. Lyndon Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam but signed the Civil Rights Act. Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace but formed ties with Red China. Ronald Reagan ignored the AIDS epidemic but built a strong economy. Bill Clinton was a lousy husband but sent the unemployment rate to a 30-year low. George W. Bush invaded Iraq but did the most to fight AIDS.
I’d list Trump’s biggest accomplishment but I’m not one of the 1 percent who got a massive tax break.
The worst day of my nearly seven years in Rome is the night Trump won four years ago. That day I belatedly declined an invite to Democrats Abroad’s watch party/victory party at a nearby restaurant. I decided to celebrate at home alone while watching CNN. Early in the coverage I received a text from Adrian Dater, my old Denver Post colleague and adept political observer.
He quoted a learned pollster who had just announced that Trump is going to win.
He was right
As Hillary Clinton’s chances slowly slipped away, I went to bed dreading the worst, as if knowing an asteroid was headed to earth and I might not wake up. But I did wake up — to a TV screen filled with fat, boring-looking white people celebrating wildly in a ballroom.
The next four years were worse than my biggest nightmares of a Trump presidency. The most blatant racism since the early 1960s. Rollbacks of environmental controls. Rigging elections with foreign governments. Daily lies. Now a pandemic that has rolled through the U.S. like Trump in a buffet line and no plan to fight it.

All that’s on the line tonight is tens of thousands of lives, the American economy and our standing in the world. That’s all.
Living here in Rome, I have recently thought about Caligula, considered by many as the worst emperor of the Roman Empire. His similarities to Trump are scarily similar. Caligula also led for four years, from 37-41 A.D. He financed his life through legalized looting and stopped anyone who stood in his way (by murder, not firings). He called himself a god and his palace was known as a brothel to feed his locomotive libido. After Caligula presided over an extended period of famine and then bankruptcy, he was murdered.
Today is Donald Trump’s judgment day. Let the American people judge Trump as the Ancient Romans judged Caligula. May Trump go down as the worst human being ever to serve as president, as a man who put his onion-skinned ego ahead of human lives.
It is time for the planet’s blood pressure to return to normal.
November 3, 2020 @ 7:55 am
Thank you for a frank assessment of our national nightmare. I too hope that this election is the end of him, although his supporters are so off the rails that I have a lot of anxiety about their response to his loss. They will not go away quietly.
November 3, 2020 @ 8:56 am
Only twice in the last four years have I been too upset to sleep at all through the night: When Trump was elected and when the U.S. failed to qualify for the World Cup. It could happen again tonight because Trump does have a path to victory. My greatest wish is Florida goes early to Biden and we can relax. Another four years under Trump, with a packed Supreme Court and especially if the Republicans keep the Senate, would be mind-boggling bad. They want to go after my Social Security and Medicare, just to start. Obamacare would be gone. Environmental standards would be gone. Decency? Forget about it. Gay marriage? Yeah, right. And schools would be compelled to teach a GOP agenda under the catchphrase of Patriotic Education. Even if Biden wins, it’s going to be difficult to undo the miseries of the past four years. Another four years of Trump would make it impossible in our lifetimes.
November 3, 2020 @ 2:28 pm
Hey, John — great blog –Americans vote today on whether they want to continue to live in a Democratic society, or at least what’s left of our democracy after four years of the nightmare presidency of a truly despicable, soul-less human being. I may be joining you as an ex-pat in Italy if the nightmare continues — I’m optimistic, however, about a Biden victory.. Pray for us.
November 4, 2020 @ 1:17 am
Oh my gosh.
Florida went red.
I am astonished. It wilk be a close callm Regardless it will end up going, I am really astonished that so many Americans once again chose .. this.
November 4, 2020 @ 4:03 am
Thank you for describing what all sentient beings have endured the past four years. And now, he has, in an early morning speech declared himself the winner. As the child of Italian immigrants, this has been such a painful chapter in their American Dream story and now it has seemingly become an unending nightmare. Who are these people who can vote for such an abject failure of a human being such as him. God help us.
November 4, 2020 @ 8:07 am
Thank you for this. I am astonished and despairing every day when I see how so many of our generation, the kids of the sixties, have turned out. I have hope the young people of today will do better.
November 4, 2020 @ 10:11 am
It’s now the morning after the election, and Trump has tried to claim victory like the best of the autocrats. I’m still optimistic that Biden will win when (if) all the votes are counted, but I mourn for my country, and am mystified at my fellow countrymen. Truly bewildered.
I feel similar to you about breaking bread with supporters of Trump, and appreciate your succinct analysis of Trump and his supporters. I worry more about the morality of his supporters than I do his own.
November 4, 2020 @ 12:03 pm
Thanks John for your insightful analysis with which I totally agree. Good thing I am already on blood pressure meds.
November 4, 2020 @ 4:38 pm
Your article, John, gives me the creeps! In fact, it’s no difference for me who will be your president but I respect Americans very much and would like to answer the question “who are these people voting for Trump”. All is simple, Trump speaks language of American working class, if you respect them, of course. Anyway, I wish you were more tolerant as our life is not only politics but something else we live for. You really shut me in spite of that I am not a supporter of Trump. Good luck! Natasha
November 5, 2020 @ 5:27 pm
Great article!
November 7, 2020 @ 10:56 am
Thank you again for sharing with great eloquence what most of America has been feeling the last four years. Today we hope they announce Biden president. Our relief is equal to the fear we face. Trump is sure to encourage his crazies into violence. And the fact that so many Americans voted for this racist, lying lunatic is enough for many to want to leave this country despite the win. Thanks again for your words.