Democracy is not the perfect system, but if it is used properly it is said to be the best form of governance until another is found.

The system is often abused and misinterpreted by many, especially those who are not educated about it.  It is supposed to be the decision of the majority, even though the majority is not always correct in their choice.

This week’s general election in the United States when Donald Trump was elected for a non-consecutive second term as President was a real test for democracy and spoke volumes about the psyche and the level of public morality in America.

Over one hundred years ago, on the 26th July, 1920, H.L. Mencken wrote in The Baltimore Evening Sun the following:  “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”

In the last edition of this Journal, in this space we said the contest between Trump and Kamala Harris placed the American people on trial.  Now that the verdict is in, as Harris did so graciously, the world must accept the decision of the people, although tens of millions find it unacceptable, are saddened and even embarrassed.

Today we adopt the views of the columnist Rex Huppke in USA Today who wrote:

“I never want to hear the words “America is better than this” again.  I never want to be told about America’s better angels.

I want honesty.  I want an admission of exactly who we are as a country, and let’s be damn clear about that definition:  We are a country that just elected – that just willfully chose – one of the most cruel, unscrupulous and transparently self-serving political figures in modern history to be president.  Again.

We just elected a convicted felon who has normalized bullying, spread hate like an industrial sprinkler and shown us over and over and over again he sees laws as irrelevant and self-enrichment as sacrosanct.  Faced with a billowing ocean of red flags – from indictments for trying to overturn the 2020 election to the coddling of dictators who rule enemy nations – a majority of Americans cast their vote for the man who is a totem of the worst in all of us.

So, spare me the wails of “This isn’t who we are!”  I’ve got bad news for the sane and decent among us: This is exactly who we are.

America just chose mass deportations and chaos and hate.

We’re a country that supports the mass deportation of immigrants, a promise Trump made and will undoubtedly keep.  When families are pulled apart, cities and towns are raided by federal law enforcement and the people who once worked in communities and made homes there – some for decades – are penned in detention camps, it is the voting public that approved such a thing.

If legal citizens get swept up in the chaos, so be it. It was the voters’ choice.

When an unhinged and unqualified billionaire like Elon Musk is put in charge of slashing the federal government to bits, that will be what America chose.

When the Department of Education is abolished and our education system falls into the hands of right-wing ideologues and religious zealots, that’s the outcome of the choice U.S. voters made.

When Trump’s tariffs hit and drive-up prices across the board for consumers, it won’t be the fault of the myriad economists who told us what would happen.  It will be the thing a majority of Americans chose.  It will be the economic pot they chose to be boiled in, even though the Biden-Harris administration has the economy rocking.

As The New York Times reported on October 30: “Consumers are spending.  Inflation is cooling.  And the U.S. economy looks as strong as ever.”

When Trump does away with his own legal cases – trashing the rule of law his party once claimed to stand for – that will be what the people wanted.  When he turns the U.S. Department of Justice on his so-called enemies, when he goes after Democrats and others with malicious intent and calls in the military to stifle any form of dissent, keep your mouth shut about that being un-American.  It’s now 100% American, because it’s exactly what people in this country willfully chose.

I don’t want to hear a damn word – ever – about anyone not realizing just how bad things could get.  I don’t want to hear about how grocery prices were too high so you figured voting for Trump couldn’t hurt.  I don’t want to hear how you didn’t like either candidate, so you sat the 2024 election out.

The stakes of this election could not have been more clear and could not have been broadcast any louder.  Vice President Kamala Harris ran as smart a campaign as I’ve seen. She reached across the aisle and offered a big tent for people to seek shelter.  She was qualified – as a former prosecutor, a former U.S. senator and a vice president – in ways Trump could never imagine.

Face it, America. We’re a country that picked Trump – a second time.

America chose the guy who cavalierly said he’d be a dictator for a day.  Voters chose the guy who denounces our allies and cozies up to our enemies.  Voters chose the guy who is an adjudicated rapist, a role model to none, an often-incoherent and always hate-fueled loon who has turned Americans against each other in ways I never thought possible.

Voters chose Trump.  He won.  Cruelty won.  Bullying won.”