It’s finally over. Now the real nightmare begins.

The nastiest Presidential election in modern history (maybe in all US history?) is behind us. It began nearly 2 years ago when Ted Cruz threw his hat in the ring. Against all predictions, Trump beat all the other Republican candidates to win the nomination for the party. I was one of those who saw no chance for him; I actually thought (and a part of me still does) that this started out for him as an ego-feeding publicity stunt and got away from him. When he began getting large crowds that resonated to his hate- and fear-fueled message, his narcissism kicked in and he couldn’t stop.

Anyhow, here we are. We now have 4 years of a Groper-In-Chief.

I’m depressed for two main reasons. The first is obvious: Trump will be our next president and will set out on his first day to dismantle all the accomplishments of the last 8 years. For the first time in modern history we made health care available to everyone regardless of their pre-existing conditions or employment status. With the signing of the Paris Agreement we could begin tackling anthrogenic global warming.  We were beginning to have a productive dialogue around reasonable gun regulation. We had largely undone the ill-will created around the world during the Bush/Cheney clown show. But not all that goes away as this asshat and his toadys pander to the idiots in the far right and tear down Obama’s accomplishments with both hands. And the list goes on, too depressing to write.

But what’s even more depressing to me is not that the polls and pundits got it all wrong, or even (for that matter) that Clinton lost; what is simply stunning to me is how many people got behind his candidacy. Oh sure, a significant number voted for him because he was the Republican candidate and they are party loyalists, and probably an even larger number were voting against Hillary as opposed to for Trump, but even factoring those out there are millions of people in the United States who believe that building a wall between the US and Mexico is a practical solution for our illegal immigration problem. And that we should ban all Muslims from entering the US because the threat represented by a tiny minority of them was simply too great to do otherwise. Or that a pussy-grabbing sexual predator who believes that women who have abortions should be charged with a crime, should be in the Oval Office.

Trump has tapped into a deep anger and frustration in a large part of our populace and once given voice, it will not readily disappear. It is not just surprising to me how many people found him acceptable, even admirable, it is deeply worrying. Of course we still have a long way to go before racism and misogyny are no longer societal scourges, but I had really thought we’d come a lot farther than this Presidential race indicates.

Trump gave voice to an extremely ugly subset of my co-citizens. How did we as a nation come to this? We have a huge group of voters (not a plurality, as final counts indicate; Hillary actually won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College count) who are so fed up with our politics as usual that they are willing to elect a buffoon like Trump, the most unqualified person to run for the highest office of the land since, like, EVER.

It’s what this election says about us as a country that is so depressing to me. I thought we were better than that.