Today, I had the fantasy that everyone in America had been shipped to an alternate universe where  thugs and criminals became kings, and the rest of us got to work, pay bills, pay more taxes (we are not corporations, are we?), grow ill, suffer, and worry. I have a friend who believes Elon Musk manipulated vote tallies with his satellites. Could this be true? The vote counts came in very quickly. The Grouchy Old White Lady finds this assertion mildly disturbing and dimly recalls hearing Trump himself say the election was already sewn up before votes were cast. Something certainly does not sit right, but what is it? That Democrats did not realize how undereducated Americans are? That with the great strides women have made since the 1950s (before THAT, they went to work during both World Wars and long before that, too) in gaining some parity with men, America still seems inherently misogynist? Or am I just blaming here? Perhaps I am not looking in the right places for the answers to my questions which are basically simple: why did Trump win? did Trump legitimately win? what exactly was the vote count? what demographic voted for him? how was the vote count tallied?

During the Orange One's former tenure during COVID (remember his saying that bleach and sun would cure it?), I received a fair amount of UFO news through the Internet. Now I am hearing about UFOs again -- a distraction for the American people, they said the first time. Talking about fake news, I have also received daily hurricane warnings ever since Hurricane Milton because my algorithm must have signaled I was interested in the topic; all of these "hurricanes," if they are cited on my hurricane phone app at all, are tropical storms hovering around Honduras or out in the middle of the Atlantic. But the Internet is great at fear-mongering. We do have a few things to fear -- like making RFK, Jr, a former heroin addict, anti-Vaxxer, and sometime lawyer head of the US health department. Will this really happen? Wait and see. Meanwhile, the GROWL is wondering if we can somehow cross back over that wrinkle in time to a saner, more rational America in which a talented woman won the election with qualified law-abiding people to advise her. This fantasy is less lurid and certainly less excitingly horrible than the current reality, which is sad, really. Perhaps Americans are so addicted to social media that they crave relentless spectacle, which seems to be what they asked for. They probably would have voted for Nero or Caligula. Give them bread and circuses! (wait, hold the bread.)