“Sigh, but not aloud; make no mourning for the dead.”

On election day, I promised myself a social media blackout to reset the moment a projected winner was called. It has almost been a week since all major media outlets – this includes Fox News – announced Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the projected winners of the 2020 election; it almost feels like a lifetime ago that we were celebrating on Twitter, on the streets, on our blogs. But I’m still on social media, following election news.

Usually when a projected winner is announced, a concession speech is given by the losing party. It’s been tradition for some time now, I believe. However, we have never had a Trump presidency.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Donald J. Trump has been building a case for election fraud months before he lost. He stated falsehoods about mail-in ballots in order to better discredit them in the eyes of his following. No matter how many times his tweets were debunked, this base – like any true cult – ate it up. They took to their social media and began spreading his bullshit as fact. It got so bad that even Facebook took action against Trumpian groups, shutting a few down in the process.

Now that the election has come and gone with Trump trailing behind President-elect Joe Biden, the full force of these lies have come into play. Lawsuits were filed and tossed out in swing states that Trump didn’t win, and had no chance in winning. The phrases “legal” and “illegal” votes were introduced and now parroted by his base. Fox News has even interrupted a speech given by Kayleigh McEnany for pushing this falsehood. MSNBC stopped thirty seconds into Trump’s speech, not being able to continue the livestream in good conscience.

Clearly, I was naïve last week. There was no way that the 74-year-old toddler president would concede with dignity. And shame of on the Republican senators that allowed this disruption of our democratic process to go on for so long.

As I was writing this post, my aunt informed me that President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have won Arizona, given them 290 electoral votes against Trump’s 217. This just adds to the collapse of Trump administration, as it is coupled with multiple Republican senators stating that Joe Biden should be receiving security briefings. Among these senators is Lindsey Graham. Karl Rove has noted that nothing Trump does will overturn the election results, while Geraldo Rivera released a statement that it’s time to concede with dignity.

But the best part of this news cycle is General Mark Milley’s, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, statement: “We are unique among militaries. We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. No, we do not take an oath to a country, a tribe or religion. We take an oath to the Constitution. And every soldier that is represented in this museum, every sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman, each of us will protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price.”