I am not going to build up to this. We all know the format thanks to David Letterman. Assuming a major loss in November by the Republicans, meaning lost White House, lost Senate majority and Democrats pick up seats in the House, these top ten things are likely to happen. So, here goes:

The top 10 things the GOP remembers after a failed Trump re-election bid

10. The Deficit: Say what you want but President Obama handed a strong and growing economy off to President Trump. In two short years after Trump’s inauguration, and enabled by the GOP, Trump grew the deficit by $2 trillion. I am not going to put the Covid period into this amount — we need to keep this on a “all things being equal” level. …

President-elect Biden, like Barack Obama before him, is not in an enviable position. The mess being handed off to him is perhaps like nothing an American president has ever faced.

The weakened and frail state beyond our borders is magnified by the chaos this president has created domestically.

The division that characterizes our nation can only be compared to one other time in our history. Then it was over the right to enslave humans and now it is over do you love him or not — the “him” here is Donald Trump. …

Standing on the edge, the tips of my shoes balance me on the railing — I may have gone too far forward and so pulling myself back seems unlikely. Leaping is the only way forward.

Survival be damned, the consequences of my act are mine and mine alone: the deep, turbulent waters of Lake Assumption await. This article is based on the assumption that Donald Trump loses his bid for re-election.

On the day after the world accepts that Donald Trump has lost, the defaced American flags with his scowl won’t go away but will likely increase. The defaced American flags with the large blue swath in the middle won’t go away but will be even more belligerently displayed — this is probably a good thing, though. …

There’s a lot wrong with us right now, too much really after four years of Trump.

If we add the previous eight years, when the Republicans led my Mitch McConnell obstructed every single policy put forth by President Obama to do to rebuild our country after The Great Recession, then and I would say things are critically bad in the United States.

The pandemic has shined a bright light on many of the weak spots. It has become glaringly obvious, for example, just how flawed America’s approach to health care truly is. …

When I first entered, I was struck by the the celebratory mood. The place was filled with time-worn men and women who had figured out long ago how to sand down the edges just enough to make life bearable. They had learned how to ensure that commitment and loyalty to grander ideals, such as patriotism, never waivered. Chatting and smiling like they hadn’t a care in the world, few paid me much heed.

I subtly scanned the room for open seats and saw just one bar stool. The guy occupying the stool next to the free one had sensed my uneasiness and offered a warming smile followed by a small nod of the head: yes, this seat his free. …

Historians will be pondering for years, how did the phenomenon of Donald Trump happen in the United States. Many will look to the end of the actual years of Trump, and at the most extreme elements of his following, and say it was all based on racism. Others will look at the incongruity of the support evangelicals gave to a man who openly bragged about physically dominating women he wanted to be intimate with — whether they wanted it or not.

Trying to understand Trump cannot rely solely on the Trump years; rather, we need to understand what happened over the course of decades preceding Trump that so traumatized a nation that had formerly been the world’s moral policeman, albeit a flawed one. …

Shhhh, please don’t clack on your keyboard so loudly.

A few billion people are hushing me. Floating away on the wings of quiet, so many of us are letting out involuntary whimpers of relief.

The squawking and shrieking of Trump’s Tweets haven’t set our cerebral synapses aflame for over ten days now. Honestly, it feels like a double whammy: the greatest smoothie ever mixed with the soothing relief of a never-ending spa day.

Since the exiling of Trump from Twitter, parts of life have come to remind me of the first time I tried flotation therapy in a small spa in the Dolomites of the Southern Tirol Region of Italy. Also called sensory-deprivation therapy, I was suspended for an hour, weightless, in the small pool. Years of stress oozed out of my body leaving my appendages tingling. …

When Donald Trump won four years ago, I told friends and relatives, and anyone who would listen, that we will regret this.

Give him a chance. The traditions of the office will calm him down, they so naively told me.

I fumed and argued and called many people idiots and traitors in the first year of Trump — and then, for my own sanity and health, I stopped talking about Trump altogether. I requested friends, who even by his second year in office still thought he was doing a good job, to never bring him up.

Upon meeting people from other countries, I simply offered up an apology. I am sorry that my fellow countrymen are so ungrateful, and so ignorant of world history, that they elected Trump. Many foreigners would put a hand on my shoulder, as they tried to calm me. Still others would say they were grateful for my heartfelt apology. …