There are no adequate words to describe what happened on Tuesday night, at least none that seem appropriate for an election result as incomprehensible as it turned out.
American voters preferred Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, a man who outfaced every norm in politics, was openly disrespectful towards women and minority groups, instead of a woman with long history of governance and the candidate who American people also don't like or trust for her handling of email.
America chose to jump into the chasm. Barring the unexpected, people elected Trump. What will happen in the near future is anyone's guess. Those waters are unexplored. However, if campaign past is governing prologue, there are going to be remarkable and existential changes in the country.
Trump has promised to take away health care coverage from 20 million people, with no actual idea how to replace it. The new president has called for the largest tax cut in the history of US and describing climate change as a deception and has no noticeable policy for the problem nor interest in resolving it for that matter.
Donald Trump has talked about prohibiting entire religious groups from entering the US and forcibly removing other ethnic groups. He is not a conventional Republican but a nativist who is bringing his of anti-Semitism and racism ideas with him into a White House. He will have the power to nominate justices to the Supreme Court as well.
What Donald Trump can do with these ambitions will be the largest test of America's democracy since the passage of civil rights legislation and, perhaps, the Civil War. America ends this presidential campaign more bitterly divided than at any point in recent history.
Like many other celebrities, comedian Patton Oswalt spent Tuesday evening talking about the presidential election results on Twitter. He summed up election night in one tweet on Nov. 8:
What I've learned so far tonight: America is WAAAAAAAAY more sexist than it is racist. And it's pretty fucking racist. #ElectionNight
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) November 9, 2016
Unfortunately, Oswalt has a point. After taking a step in the right direction eight years ago by electing its first black president, America is now elected for the president a man who not only earned the support of the nation's white supremacists but was recorded saying he could grab women "by the p***y" because he's famous.
