Pestilence

The date today is March 5, meaning we're still a full eight months away from the actual presidential election, but I guess we're already past the tipping point where, if you're the type of person in the purely hypothetical position of writing a blog post once per week for example, you're sort of stuck having to write about electoral politics every single week. It doesn't matter what you might have finally gotten around to seeing, things of cultural and social significance that would more than merit a thoughtful critical appraisal or at least the thing I do that I think resembles that. Basically thoughtful critical appraisal, but with 50% more dick jokes. The approach makes it more fun to read, but way off the radar of our friends at The Atlantic or whatever.

The surprising thing is that even with so much goddamned stuff going on electorally, including the fact that I myself and two of my now-adult children actually cast votes, the only sort of an event that could shove the horse-race and manufactured narrative bullshit from driving every aspect of the news cycle has happened. Instead of trying to draw eyeballs and clicks by convincing people the results of the election will end in all our imminent deaths, the 21st century media has been presented with the unbelievable gift of a genuine news story that could actually result in many of our deaths. I would say "imagine the breathless, panting, borderline-erotic joy in newsrooms everywhere," but if you're one of the few people who sometimes accidentally land on cable news while you're switching between Netflix and Disney+, you've been able to see it for yourself.

The story has all the most potent aspects of the modern international journalistic standard, which is to say xenophobia and promises of looming death. If you need a metaphor for the state of the Fourth Estate, it's basically the first time grandpa had to bring his oxygen tank to Thanksgiving. We've even been given the opportunity to blame Obama.

Meanwhile the story that's getting slightly diluted by all the coronavirus stuff is a thing we could actually legitimately blame Obama for, by which I mean obviously Joe Biden. I will tell you I did not vote for Joe Biden. My oldest voted for Pete Buttigieg, who dropped out of the race the day after he dropped his mail-in ballot in the box. My middle boy and I, cheating the news cycle by actually voting on the day, both voted for Warren, who kindly waited a day to kneecap us both.

I'll be honest, I don't want to vote for Joe Biden. He seems foggy and dull, the only one of the many, many septuagenarians running who seems really committed to some age-appropriate doddering. I'm not super charged up about Bernie and his army of shitposting avatars of entitlement either. Luckily for both of them, I've given up on ideology and all my political motivation is rooted deeply in resentment and revenge, which I know makes me sound like a Republican. But it helps that the people I resent and want to avenge myself against are the current GOP leadership. I gave my first-time-voter kids the whole speech about how you don't vote for who you think will win, you vote your conscience and hope others see it the way you do, which sometimes works and sometimes you get fucking Trump. For all my civic-minded nobility, I really just want to watch Trump dislodge his dentures grinding his jaw through a concession speech. Policy schmolicy, people don't have healthcare, whatever. I need to watch that on a YouTube loop every day for the rest of my life.

My backup plan is for "the rest of my life" to culminate some time before any election that hobgoblin wins. If that's my goal, it's never been easier. According to most of the stuff I've read, all I have to do is cut back a bit on my hand-washing and touch my face a bit more.