The town I live in – Huntington Beach – has been making the news a lot recently and frequently for all the wrong reasons. Most recently, after Trump had lost the election but dangerously kept spouting the bizarre ’election was fraudulent, I am the winner’  narrative, many locals – gullible, delusional and easily riled – gathered in support. Right after the election and well into December when Biden had been announced the winner, they thronged along Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) near the pier waving their ‘Trump 2020’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ banners. For me it was a bizarre phenomena – a grotesque losers parade. Didn’t they get the memo?

Yet still Trump continued with his unfounded claims – all rejected legally – that there was widespread voter fraud and that the election was ‘stolen’ from him. All the while simultaneously since November, when he lost the election, the numbers – deaths and cases – from Covid-19 really spiked, he totally checked out of leading through a crisis and instead turned his gaze inwards. It was a grotesque, macabre comedy – if black humor is your thing. Psychologically speaking, he’s the classic narcissist, only concerned with being the centre of the story, devoid of empathy and the ability to think outside of his own selfish needs – I want to win the election again – whilst a country is bought to it’s knees due to a virus. It’s a bizarre situation to see it unfold on such a big stage. The total lack of self-awareness – a gigantic, mega scale of hubris.  I have no doubt in my mind that 2020 and the Trump debacle will be written about in centuries to come – an epic failure of historical proportions – his colossal mishandling of the pandemic will be his epithet and legacy.

Yet still he has his cultish fan base – 70 million people voted for him – who for the most part seem devoid of critical faculty and lacking the brains and insight to call him out for what he is; a failure and a con man. One afternoon I was cycling – a favorite lockdown pastime – down PCH towards to the pier and in the distance I saw a youngish (40 something) dad and his two children riding towards me, Trump flags flying alongside. As they got closer I shook my head at the dad in disdain. ‘Jesus Loves You,’ he said to me.

I thought it quite a fitting comment. The evangelical / religious section of his fan base is large and there is probably a delusional cross over between believing in an imaginary bearded man in the clouds and blind faith in the real orange man ‘ruling’ from the White House. A clear case of cognitive dissonance. I shook my head at him as he cycled past as I find the whole ‘sore loser’ aspect of Trumps last days very distasteful. Why would you bring your kids out to show support for a racist, misogynist who lacks morals? Its a free country I guess and they have that right, as do I to shake my head in disgust.

Things have continued to get worse behaviourally for Trump in his dying days of power – more of the same Twitter tantrums, fake accusations, shocking pardons, lack of leadership and an ingracious inability to concede defeat. A total sore loser.  All regular and continued motifs from his four years in the White House. I notice on my weekend cycles along the pier the numbers of supporters lining the route has dwindled. His behaviour surely turning many of them off of as I hope it quickly dawned on them that they have been mugged off. Maybe, finally, they realized, everything Trump didn’t like and agree with wasn’t fake news as he called it but the truth? Hopefully experiencing an epiphany – the election wasn’t fraudulent. We live in a democracy where the people spoke and a clear majority of people fairly voted for the other guy. Let’s put the noise of Trump behind us and look forward and treat him for what he is – a car crash now in the rear view mirror.