Sunday, July 26, 2020

One Hundred Days

There are one hundred days until Election Day. One hundred days until we Americans get an opportunity to vote out the WORST MISTAKE EVER made by an electorate, by which I mean the contra-democratic Electoral College. A lot can happen in one hundred days, especially in this year of out-of-control pandemic and civil unrest which has prompted a federal response which sure looks like a dress rehearsal for putting a dictatorship in place. Current electoral projections show Trump taking a shellacking, but do not take into account voter suppression, a favored tactic of the Republican Party.

It's going to continue to be a long, tragic year, the one hundred days will drag out because of the COVID-19 time dilation effect. I'm resigned to the idea that things are just not going to get any better, not in an existential manner. Of course, there is a feeling of unreality here in my neck of the woods, where the pandemic seems to be under control, for the most part, and civil unrest hasn't really broken out... but there's a feeling that, just out of earshot, the country is a hell-blasted shitscape. It's this shitscape that will determine the outcome of the election, and I sincerely hope that people come to their senses, and that Little Gloves will leave the White House willingly.

One hundred days... I don't even know if suspense is what I feel, and I'm comfortable enough not to feel dread personally (I'm a cishet white guy, even as a Trump-hater, I'll be among the last to feel any oppression). There's an emotion I'm feeling, but it would require a multisyllabic German name to adequately express. I have one hundred days to figure out what that name might be.

2 comments:

Anathema Device said...

'Stress' is a good enough term for what I'm feeling, as an outsider who is still deeply affected not just by who your president is, but by the anti-science nonsense being spread from the USA (witness this Qanon/antivaxxer/Sovereign citizen influenced crap https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-27/leaders-respond-to-bunnings-karen-mask-video/12494382 which is sadly becoming a fixture in our country too)

'Worried suspense' is also a term, but 'stress' covers it.

I thought we were close to an apocalypse after 9/11. But this confluence of the far gaining power around the world, the pandemic, and the continued influence of Russia and greedy puppets (here as well as in the USA and UK and other countries) feels like the true death throes of western civilisation.

If you can get Biden into office with a solid majority in both houses of Congress, it will give a lot of people hope that they can get rid of their own incompetent right-wing governments. Whether that ends up being true depends on a lot of things, not least on the death of Rupert Murdoch and other elderly rightwing powermongers, and an uprising of smart, connected leftwingers as a political force.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

It's truly amazing how insane the Anglophone world has gotten lately. I guess we have to lay our hopes on New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland these days.