Well, after reviewing last week's post, I want to reiterate that I unequivocally and in no way believe in the power of the jinx. My argument has always been: if I had that kind of magic power, to speak results into existence, things like election cycles would be way less stressful than they currently are. Like, the Trump campaign would be devolving into a series of self-parody singalong events or enduring publicly shaming vocal challenges from undecided voters resulting in an obvious surge or voter preference for the Harris campaign, putting the result comfortably out of question.
But see, I only got the first parts and not the results. Everything looks the same as it has since Biden dropped out, promising-but-too-close.
The only thing I did manage to do was watch the Detroit Tigers and San Diego Padres crash out of the baseball playoffs after advocating for both of them last week. But again, I accept neither credit nor blame. I also said at the time whomever was playing against the Yankees and Dodgers would be acceptable as well, so I am now a massive NY Mets and Cleveland Guardians* supporter. Since both teams are currently down in their respective series, I feel like it's safe to say that without incurring any legal liability for any failures going forward. I don't think there's a more pure expression of engaging with modern sports than indemnification, I think you'll agree.
What you're reading so far is the anxiety brain leakage of a man in the late stages of a presidential political cycle. I've been doing this blog thing for 20 years now, which means this is my sixth cycle where I've created a public record of my experiences as a partisan (in particular) and as a voter (in general) and an American (in the goofy-ass abstract). You don't have to go back and look it up, you can absolutely trust me when I say in all the previous ones, I took it all super well, with maturity and grace, with no recordable signs of undue alarm and/or full-blown tongue-swallowing panic. I understand these points are all potentially falsifiable as it's all in print, but also it's all in print, so you don't have access to my facial expressions or physical state at those points to get a real picture of my emotional wellbeing, not really, or at least not in any way that would be admissible in a court of law.
Just like now, you don't know if I'm fine or not. I can even say "I'm really not OK, you guys," and maybe, like Donald Trump, I can just say after the fact "I was being sarcastic, you know I was being sarcastic" about, say, injecting yourself with bleach to ward off COVID, with all the credibility implied therein.
Honestly though, two-plus weeks out, I'm in a really interesting place. I felt fairly sanguine for a couple of months, then absolutely panicked last weekend when the vibes online amongst the lefties I follow all went sour for no discernible reason. The vice president was on Fox News and The Breakfast Club and could be going on Joe Rogan's podcast for some reason... Basically I need Harris out there in public to reassure me that I don't only have Trump to listen to. I think the biggest big-picture takeaway is that being on the left, freakouts are just part of the process, unfortunately. I think we imagine that the people on the other side are just so locked in and certain that they don't experience the same kind of spasms of self-doubt that make us so charming and fun to be around in Octobers of election years.
But like most things we assume about The Other Side, I suspect that it's not true, it just manifests in different ways. I don't spend a lot of time in right-wing online outlets, but I see it herniating into the shared spaces expressed as rage, mostly working the refs (the evil "left wing" press, state election officials, Taylor Swift) and assigning blame to their perceived problem-area bad-actors (immigrants, Jewish people...). The targets differ from lefties and the means of expression hit differently, but these are questions of tone rather than content. When I say "I'm not sure I trust this country to vote for a woman" and they say "the NOAA and FEMA make hurricanes using satellites," we're saying essentially the same thing.
Anyway, I voted yesterday. I dropped off my mail-in ballot and it's behind me. I thought I'd feel a bit of relief as there's literally nothing else to be done, but there's literally nothing else to be done. All the noise persists, but the end of all the means has already occurred, for me at least. I'd love to feel disengaged and unburdened, but apparently that will come when I'm dead and/or these inconveniences of "representative democracy" are behind us. Depending on how things go November 5th, maybe one is closer than the other.
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*It's an improvement over the previous name, but *only* on the merits. You could have picked literally anything else. "Guardians" is so bland it becomes off-putting. Not the the point of making me root for the Yankees, mind, for that would have had to renamed the teams R*dsk*ns or something.
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