In times like these, it’s hard to know what can make anything better or easier. But as the old saying goes, “laughter is the best medicine”, and given that this is a humor site, finding some comedy in this whole sordid mess seems like a good place to start. Not to mention that it’ll be good practice for when the Trump administration has its way with American healthcare and the old saying becomes literally true. 

WINNERS:

Taking a deep breath, staring blankly into the middle distance, and muttering “Fuuuuuck”: Became America’s new favorite pastime overnight

ISIL: Let’s not kid ourselves here

Gallows humor: This one should be self-evident, considering you’re already reading this

Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Reince Priebus: The fact that I’m listing all these people as winners should be reason enough for you to take immediate, decisive action to stop them

Daring to harbor some tiny sliver of optimism, only to be immediately dragged down into crippling depression: Who knows, maybe Trump’s spending-heavy proposals will expose the hypocrisy of the Republican Congress! That would actually be—

No. You’ve gotta be kidding, right? Steve Bannon? The avowed white nationalist and anti-Semite who ran Breitbart? He’s going to be Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor?

[Takes deep breath, stares blankly into the middle distance]

Fuuuuuck.

Harambe: The late gorilla encapsulated the rapid demise of our society by appearing on a good 11,000 write-in ballots, which made him conveniently relevant for this exercise, as our social media #experts insisted that I #namedrop him in my #content as a way to #interface with #millennials

Irony that’s too tragic to be funny: Are you fucking kidding us, Mike Pence

Brazilian-Americans: In addition to our Brazilian passports suddenly gaining an immense amount of social capital, Brazil beat longtime rivals Argentina 3-0 on Thursday night, a welcome bright spot in a dire week

John Kasich: We should have known from the moment he stayed in the Republican primary race despite not having any chance of winning: we’re all pawns on Kasich’s country-wide chessboard, marionettes dancing to his twisted beat as he plays the ultimate long game for 2020

Rammstein: Will never need to release an album again thanks to the royalties from everybody ironically playing “Amerika”

Hideous, loathsome people: The real winners of 2016, at every level

Cats: I was lucky enough to spend the past few nights with a cat curled up on my chest while I slept, the sort of small comfort and reassuring presence that is, at times like these, more essential than ever, and to counteract the somber and sobering nature of that sentence, here is a funny video I hope you’ll enjoy

 

LOSERS:

Having any faith, confidence, or expectation that things will turn out as you want them to: Once again those of us trusting in this old standby have been painfully let down

The capacity of the American people to take a hint: You’d think all the “endorsed by the KKK” and “these parallels to Hitler are unsettling” and “seriously, the candidate himself said he likes to ‘grab [women] by the pussy’” would have gotten through to the American public but NOPE

oh well really looking forward to the Literally Satan/Yes, That Mephistopheles ticket sweeping the 2024 election

America’s political talent pool: Given that the four people who rose to the top were Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein, it appears that somebody replaced all the water in the pool with concrete

Ted Cruz: Yeah, his ploy to endorse Trump paid off in the end, but I refuse to count him as a winner, and maintain that his personal trajectory shall soon resume its inexorable arc towards calamitous embarrassment

Competence: Donald Trump won the presidency despite neglecting to fundraise, running a baffling ground game, and surrounding himself with a constantly changing circle of syncophantic but inept aides who nonetheless were the only ones stopping him from even more disastrous decisions—a clear sign that the ability to do something successfully or efficiently is no longer a valuable asset in our political climate

The notion that actions have consequences: Donald Trump is now the president-elect, capping a terrible year for everyone raised to believe in this fundamental axiom

The Shadow Government, Illuminati, Freemasons, Global Jewish and/or Reptilian Syndicate, Alien Overlords, or whatever secret world order you choose to believe in: Donald Trump’s win over Hillary is either proof that they don’t exist or that they have really weird taste in puppet rulers

Competence, pt. 2: Up against a disjointed Republican Party that seemed to be tearing itself apart at the seams over its nomination of Donald Trump, the Democrats managed to lose the presidency and win a combined total of eight seats in the House and the Senate, a reality so self-evidently and tragically hilarious that I’m not even going to add a joke here

God: Has to be seriously regretting the covenant He made with Noah to never again flood the world to cleanse it of the wicked

Thinking that you’ll get out of this piece without reading a series of clumsy analogies and explanations attempting vainly to put this past week into some sort of context: It’s hard to know where we—nah, just fuckin’ with you. We’ve all been through a lot since Tuesday. Here’s a couple more videos that will hopefully make you laugh.