Things fall apart, the center cannot hold – William Butler Yeats
In retrospect I should have known.
That ‘Real Americans’ were never going to put a Black woman in their White House.
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
In retrospect, I was wrong.
To believe that the American ‘majority’ would ultimately prove to be too ethical, too responsible and, yes, too intelligent.
To elect a lying, bigoted, self-absorbed, delusional con man.
The best lack all conviction
In retrospect, I should have known.
That what ‘Real Americans’ wanted most of all from this election was approval to hate, envy and marginalize other Americans.
Americans who don’t look like them.
Americans who don’t think like them.
Americans whose skin color, gender, sexual orientation or liberal disposition render them less entitled to the American Dream.
While the worst are full of passionate intensity
In retrospect I should have understood.
That The Great Dissembler knew what he was about when he preached The Gospel of Hate, Racism and Envy incessantly. From start to finish,
He was preaching to the choir all along.
Surely some revelation is at hand
In retrospect I should have realized.
That the only way Democrats might have competed was to similarly fan the fires of hatred, bigotry and envy.
Surely the Second Coming is at hand
In retrospect I should have grasped.
That this election was never going to be about policy.
It was always going to be about the enmity between ‘Real Patriots’ and The Other.
The darkness drops again, but now I know
In retrospect I should have known.
That the American I was born into…
The America I went to war for…
The America I believed in…
…is not this America.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
In retrospect it should have occurred to this old man.
That this is The Great Dissembler’s America.
And that I have, somehow, become a stranger in a strange land.
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
FreeGNV 
Our mistake was to think we lived