There's a million reasons people have given me for voting Trump, none of them rational. But the classic tropes of fear and disgust won out again. I'm old enough to remember the 2004 election, then it was gay people. Now it's trans people and dark-skinned migrants. I really didn't think those old tropes would work this time, but it just keeps working. Americans will just keep falling for it, apparently.

While it's depressing that we're reminded of the power of dumb at hateful people yet again, we should remember that nothing actually changed in that regard this election. We're just discovering what's always been there beneath the surface. I don't think the malaise we're feeling now is so much about what Trump will do - sure scores of people will die from bad policy, but that's nothing new. Rather, we're upset about what this reveals about ourselves. But we shouldn't be upset about the act of revelation, because it tells us what we need to fix.

Leftist memes did not lose dems the election. Voter apathy and the sheer popularity of fascism did.

I'm not necessarily attributing blame here, but I'm pretty sure that OP is suggesting that leftist memes helped lead to this apathy. Say what you will, Trump voters were excited for their candidate... somehow, despite the list of reasons not to being far too long to be listed here. But many on the left either were just lukewarm on her, just considered her the lesser of two evils, or were protest voting third party or abstaining for one reason or another, mostly over Palestine. And there were memes galore to make clear to everyone what the general mood was. It doesn't exactly inspire enthusiasm to those that need that a lot of enthusiasm to even bother (those people are frustrating, btw). I don't know how much it actually contributed to or propogated the apathy versus how much it just reflected the apathy already there, but a case could be made either way.