I have to admit: I think most of my anger and anxiety can be traced back to politics and what has happened the last four years. I get triggered in a myriad of ways, but I feel like if this orange son-of-a-bitch hadn't cheated his way to the White House, I wouldn't be so angry.
I am already racked with panic now. All of us on the correct side of things have been so traumatized in thinking we had this in the bag in 2016 before Republicans stole the government that we look at the polls and go, "No! This can't be true!! Vote-vote-vote!!!" We have gaslighted ourselves.
Yet I remain steadfast that we have the moral high ground. First of all, Trump and Republicans used voter suppression and Russian interference (the former is a crime, the latter is treason) to win in 2016. And second of all, Hillary Clinton still won more popular votes than Trump; she got screwed because of the Electoral College ... and because of voter suppression and Russian interference. So any guilt we on the left side have is misplaced self-flagellation. Clinton didn't lose because she didn't visit Wisconsin. She lost because Republicans fucked her over.
I think, or like to think, we Americans are now hep to this cheating. Add to it the shit job Trump has done running the country, and Joe Biden has a more solid lead in the polls than Clinton did. (It helps that Republicans haven't torn him down over the course of a quarter-century like they did her.) I am absolutely convinced that if Trump somehow "won," he did it by cheating. You won't change my mind.
And yet I am still scared that there might be enough genuine Trump support to be the final piece of scaffolding in this Republican house of treason cards. Nate Silver put me in a tizzy, and prompted me to do this blog post, because the messenger had to remind us that Trump still has a theoretical chance of winning. I understand he is looking at this from a statistician's point-of-view, but really, I don't need to hear that shit right now. Not when fascism might deal American democracy a fatal blow.
But then I, you know, hear things. A lot of the scary news comes from FiveThirtyEight, in particular how Trump has in fact increased his popularity with young Cubans and Black men. Now why in the hell would those two groups side with him after the bullshit he's done (well, not done since he doesn't work) over the past four years? And I'm scared that the mainstream media has a blind spot in healthy minority, non-English-speaking communities, where apparently there is a massive disinformation campaign planting bullshit conspiracy theories about Biden and Kamala Harris on social media platforms like Facebook. People who want to fuck with us can find brand new ways of fucking with us, and like with 2016, we will realize their tools of destruction too late.
Hey, I want to think Everything Will Be Over on Tuesday. And my mind thinks that, logically, Biden is going to win. And yet my mistrust of polls and experts and my own thoughts is a form of brainwashing by Republicans that feels like oppression. I'm feeling how dictators what me to feel.
I decided that on Tuesday, between work and home, I'm going to grab a Coke and a beer, and probably drink both while watching election coverage. Drank the last of a bottle of shoju four years ago, and that was the only way I didn't go crazy then, break the bottle of shoju, and slash my neck with the shards.
No comments:
Post a Comment