And yet, he’s still here

Well, they voted. And counted. And waited.

Amid post-election anxiety, the internet copes with memes – Hyperallergic
An entire genre of internet memes emerged in the past few days to parody the unbearable slowness of Nevada’s vote count. Final results in the Silver State might not be announced until Saturday or Sunday, according to election officials. Without offending the dedicated poll workers and volunteers who are counting the votes in Nevada, the memes flooding the internet are fair in their assessment that the state is taking its sweet time to announce its election results.

And waited.

Nation never wants to see color red or blue ever again – The Onion
Exhausted after 48 hours of following cable news coverage and continually refreshing their web browsers, Americans from all 50 states and the District of Columbia told reporters Thursday they do not want to see the color red or the color blue in any context or for any reason ever again.

And eventually —

Joe Biden captures the White House – The Economist
The Republican president falsely claims to have won the election, says it is rigged and has filed multiple lawsuits to try to disrupt the vote-count. But however he may rage he is only the fourth president in a century to have failed to win re-election. He is also the first president since Benjamin Harrison, in 1892, to have lost the popular vote twice. That underlines not only Mr Trump’s unpopularity but also the advantages his party draws from America’s electoral system.

At the moment Biden has 77,083,979 votes to Trump’s 72,159,215. You would think, given the last four years, that it would have been a landslide.

Lest we forget the horrors: A catalog of Trump’s worst cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes: The complete listing (so far): Atrocities 1- 967 – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
Early in President Trump’s term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, and crimes, and it felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors — happening almost daily — would not be forgotten.

But I wonder how many of those 967 (!) misdeeds have simply been dismissed as fake news by his base.

What is the internet doing to boomers’ brains? – HuffPost UK
It has become a familiar story: The older relative, the intensifying Fox News habit, the alarming Facebook posts, the inevitable detachment from reality. Losing a parent to the conservative cyber-swamp is such a common experience among millennials that it has produced an entire sub-genre of documentaries, books and online support groups. What it has not produced, however, is a satisfying answer to a simple question: What is the internet doing to our parents’ brains?

You can’t just blame Facebook or ‘the internet’ for this, though.

The misinformation media machine amplifying Trump’s election lies – The Guardian
Trump himself is the largest source of election misinformation; the president has barely addressed the public since Tuesday except to share lies and misinformation about the election. But his message attacking the electoral process is being amplified by a host of rightwing media outlets and pundits who appear to be jockeying to replace Fox News as the outlet of choice for Trumpists – and metastasizing on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

What a strange country. But should we have been surprised?

I guess I just expected a little more from this country – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
How can a nation capable of turning the simple act of revealing the gender of your child into a wildfire that burns down an entire state be so insistent on screwing things up? How could a country, one that birthed the timeless love story of 30 brown-haired white guys named Chad competing in an elimination contest for the chance to marry a woman, lack the emotional depth required to make the right decision for the future of all of us? How could a people that had to be explicitly told not to eat Tide Pods be so short-sighted? Or are some things simply beyond explanation?

Trump’s not taking this loss well, to say the least.

Trump is attempting a coup in plain sight – Vox
The Trump administration’s current strategy is to go to court to try and get votes for Biden ruled illegitimate, and that strategy explicitly rests on Trump’s appointees honoring a debt the administration, at least, believes they owe. One of his legal advisers said, “We’re waiting for the United States Supreme Court — of which the President has nominated three justices — to step in and do something. And hopefully Amy Coney Barrett will come through.”

Trump won’t accept defeat. Ever. – The Atlantic
The Trump family being what it is, expect the illegitimacy myth to be exploited for commercial purposes too. Paradoxically, Trump’s loss may well increase the loyalty of his most ardent fans, who will be angry that he has been unfairly deprived of his rightful role. They will now become loyal purchasers of flags, ties, MAGA hats, maybe even degrees at a revived Trump University. They could become the customer base for Trump TV, a media company that will set itself up as the rival to his brand-new enemies on Fox. Maybe they will buy tickets to rallies and other public events where he plays familiar old hits such as “Lock Her Up” and “Stop the Count.”

He’ll be kept busy, when eventually he does go.

6 lawsuits Donald Trump is going to have to deal with when he leaves office – CNN
Aside from those half-dozen suits is the question of whether Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice for his attempts to impede and inhibit the investigation into the 2016 election and Russia’s role in it by special counsel Robert Mueller. In a back-and-forth during congressional testimony in July 2019, Mueller, a former FBI director, suggested that he believed Trump could be charged once he left office.

But will that really be the end of him?

Trump, who never admits defeat, mulls how to keep up fight – AP News
Would Trump ever concede? “I doubt it,” said Trump’s longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone, whose prison sentence was commuted by Trump in July. Stone asserted that Biden, as a result, will have “a cloud over his presidency with half the people in the country believing that he was illegitimately elected.” Allies suggested that if Trump wants to launch a media empire in coming years, he has an incentive to prolong the drama. So, too, if he intends to keep the door open to a possible 2024 comeback — he would be only a year older than Biden is now.

What a horrid thought.

Update 26/11/2020

What if Trump won’t leave the White House? A hostage negotiator, an animal-control officer, and a toddler whisperer have advice – The Boston Globe
Give him a five-minute warning, use food as a lure, remind him he has something to live for.

Photo Saul Loeb