America the Constipated: How An Airport Ignoramus Showed Me Just How Crazy Things Are

The day after the election, someone told me it takes a real piece of human excrement to vote for a man like Donald Trump. A few days later, someone else made that case.

All I wanted to do Sunday morning was get through customs and get to my hotel. But the line at Lisbon, Portugal’s Humberto Delgado Airport was long so I knew I’d have to wait. I was arriving for WebSummit, a global-scale conference that attracts some of the best minds in the tech arena to discuss where the field is headed.

I was looking forward, not only to meeting some of these minds, but also to being away from America after it hammered its own thumbs by electing frankly one of the worst people to ever live in 2 million years of human history.

But after about 10 minutes, I heard a commotion a few rows ahead of me. A sloppy-looking white guy who seemed to be of mediocre intelligence at best, was harassing a Black woman, apparently tired from the six-hour flight.

He was railing on about how America needs to “tone things down” and how he has the right to say what he wants to this woman, who was clearly triggered and had asked him to stop his bloviating. I thought the guy was constipated and seeking a laxative in the form of bullying someone who couldn’t defend themselves. She moved forward and this idiot wouldn’t shut up. I got angry and began to head toward this fool. I was in a foreign country, in an airport. I could have gotten into a hell of a lot of trouble. I didn’t care.

Just at that moment, an elderly man in front of me passed out, perhaps from fatigue caused by the lengthy flight. I went to help tend to him until a medic could come. That took attention from the nonsense a few meters away from me. The woman being harassed moved away and the conflict stopped as the medic arrived to help the man who fainted.

When I got to the luggage carousel, I went looking for the MAGA imbecile, but did not see him. The woman was there. I told her that I’d stand by her until she got her bags in case this asshole came back, he didn’t, probably realizing the attention he caught, and the beatdown he could have caught.

I’m not a violent man, but I’ve been in enough fights in my life to leave me unafraid of violence. The election has left me angry enough that I’m willing to be violent when I see a woman who was minding her own business being harassed.

Paeninsula EVROPA

Being in Europe means being in an ancient peninsula of a very large continent that has had a long history of ideologues, tyrants and fascists taking over, changing the political landscape and abusing millions of people while millions more watched. Portugal itself experienced the regime of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, whose Estado Novo held the nation under 41 years of secret police surveillance, restricted rights and voting denial.

But the Portuguese I met were several generations removed from that, too young to remember that political regime. They are now wondering if a new far-right movement called Chega is rising as other right wingers are making gains in other parts of Europe. A Muslim man who had once lived in America told me that the Portuguese were shocked that America would elect Trump. He simply thought we were smarter than this. But the real fear, he said, is that there could be a sweep of ultraconservative politics around the world.

He’s right. History has shown that fascism rises following the emergence of two factors, 1) Inflation, and 2) Scapegoating. When people are having trouble affording the basics they get scared. Politicians who are not in power then find someone to blame. In our case it’s immigrants. In Nazi Germany it was Jews. With climate change increasingly impacting the world’s ability to grow food, prices will likely rise in America because Trump wants a climate catastrophe.

With higher prices, and a rise in migrants in cities, who conservatives already blame for causing derelict-looking downtowns and petty crime, it’s enough for rhetoric driven by the right to win attention from working and middle class people, the ones with something to lose.

Other conversations were similar. Why? One woman asked. Another woman, a restaurateur, said she expected an influx of Black expatriates as a result.

Professional Weasels

Despite having fun at my international nerdfest, my attention was turned back to the states. Trump has begun to select people for his cabinet, and calling it a freakshow would be insulting to freaks everywhere.

I mean Marco “I'm not a scientist, man” Rubio as Secretary of State? Kristi Noem – the lady who shot her dog – as Secretary of Homeland Security? Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host who served in the National Guard? Beetle Bailey is more qualified than this guy. Also Twitter ruiner Elon Musk and fellow professional weasel Vivek Ramaswamy will head a new Government Efficiency Department, or some stupid name like that. And as "border czar" Tom Holman, Trump's old Immigration Customs and Enforcement director and Archie Bunker's long, lost twin brother.

This is just part of a list of people who have obviously kissed Trump’s ring and pledged their loyalty to him no matter how bad he gets. In exchange, they get power positions they could never have dreamed of without Republican control of the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court.

It doesn’t take a genius, or a kindergartener, to understand the potential disaster on the horizon.

The great part, at least for now, is that the foolishness that is going to take place will be obvious, so it will be easy to call it out. It was fun during the George W. Bush era because his cabinet basically kept their hubris in Washington. But these people intend explicit harm to average Americans by forcing their ideologies on people, convincing themselves they are doing some good as if they were in a cult. If they feel breathing free air goes against their policies, they will outlaw breathing. If you get shot in the head and they feel like your blood would discolor the sidewalk, you will be penalized for bleeding.

If I sound paranoid, you’ll have to forgive me. I”ve just never heard of any time the leader of the free world wished to build concentration camps on American soil. Those who don’t believe this is possible are people who either have not studied this history in other places or have not experienced it.

But I try not to be depressed. There are millions of people out there who are thinking like me. There are others who instantly regretted the voting choice they made and now have to stand on business. Trump won 50.2 percent of the vote, while Kamala Harris won 48.2 percent. This means almost half the country loathes this man. He will not get the support he claims he will and neither will the people riding his lopsided toupee.

What I can do is continue to write, continue to agitate and use this space to give voice to the millions of my mindset. There are way more of us than there are people like that pig at the airport. They are people that I am glad to call my neighbors.

Madison Gray is a New York City-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in multiple publications globally. Reach out to him at madison@starkravingmadison.com.