Aloha and Namaste everyone and welcome to Impolitic with John Heilman, a puck and

Odyssey joint featuring fresh topical candy conversations with the people who roam the

quarters of power, influence in America from Washington to Wall Street, Silicon Valley,

Hollywood and beyond. And on this day, I got to say every single one of those people, along with millions of

others at this moment, are processing one way or the other, positively, positively, negatively,

ambiguously, the scale, the sweep, the significance of what took place last night on the

national stage.

The confounding and dumbfounding nature of it, the juxtaposition of holy shit, and duh, of course,

in reaction to it, the feelings of profound uncertainty, mixed with clarity

and resolve, the adrenalized rush of manic energy, twinned with deadening exhaustion,

in the sense that the big hairy thing that transpired has turned the future, not so much into

a foreign country, as Thomas Wolfe would say it, but into like a distant planet.

The disoriented and disheartening, feeling that we are lost and that all is lost. And then having that feeling

savagely beat down by, you know, a one firm conviction, which is that even if we are not sure

exactly where we are, even who we are anymore, there are noble missions and small kindnesses and fights worth having looming

close on the horizon so we better start getting in shape. And that in the final analysis,

the only genuinely plausible response to Donald Trump being re-elected now is the 47th,

the President of the United States States having already been the 45th

is to dust ourselves off stiffen our spines and say all right motherfucker bring it on we ourselves

are bringing it on already and what better way to kick off this newish era than by reassembling the fabled,

fabulous Puck super friends. That's me and Peter Hamby and Dylan Byers and tackling another

massive, monstrous political moment and exploring it and its aftermath in our own inimitable

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