In The Homestretch

It’s almost over. The year dawned with a roaring economy, cheap fuel, the lowest unemployment in a lifetime, and relative peace abroad. So, of course, we fucked that into the ground and created hell from thin air. The relentless slog of propaganda, pissing matches, bitching, bickering, blithering bullshit, cognitive dissonance, constant clusterfucks, con jobs, and endless hyperventilating hissyfits makes me wonder if humans prefer chaos and poverty to peace and prosperity?

For those among us who are still sane; take heart! It’s near an end. Today is the precise local maxima; the ultimate point of peak stupid.

We’re almost through this.

There’s no surprise in anything that’s happened. The calendar has always had November 3rd marked as the date of a catharsis for the hysterics. It is, was, and always will be, the crescendo of stress.

It doesn’t have to be this way. All we need to do is grow a pair and stand on our own two feet. So long as we ask DC to mandate and control everything from our choice in breakfast cereal to the money in our wallet… shit will always be dumb. If we trim DC back to its original form; a nest of part-time paper pushers who don’t have much to do with our lives; then these periodic psychotic nightmares will cease. But being an adult is hard. Attending to our own affairs is the burden of freedom. It’s easier to pretend the president is God and then blame him for everything. Thus, every election is the most important election.

Luckily, the spastics have gone all out. They’ll soon need a period to rehydrate. Even the strongest Kool-Aid only lasts so long. Since 2020 was an unhinged ten round circle jerk of asshattery… the wingnuts are going to have a hell of a hangover. Honestly, they still have one from 2016. Can you imagine a life so pointless and unfulfilling that an election 4 years ago is still causing angst? I can’t. And I write stories about talking squirrels!

Hopefully the adults in the room, folks for whom every year isn’t year zero, will get a little peace. We need it. This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve been through this before. Unlike the freaks in the streets, we know we’re going to have to go through it again. We’d like a nap first.

The good news is we might get a bit of comic relief. Perhaps we’ll happily laugh at the antics of the woke. Everyone likes watching While E. Coyote buy another shipment of crap from ACME.

I will vote tomorrow. In person. Like citizens have done in every American election since the founding.

I refuse to pay footsie with whatever “trust the mail/it’s too hard to leave the house” horseshit was brewed up in 2020. I didn’t vote by FAX in 1990 and I won’t vote by mail in 2020. That’s just me. Statistically, many readers chose a different route. That’s OK. I’m talking about my choices. Unlike the woke, I’ve no desire to make other people be like me.

Regardless, I will drive my privately owned truck, pilot it without a self driving AI, to a polling place that hasn’t changed in decades. If it rains I will get wet. If it snows I’ll engage 4×4. No big deal to me. If I have to… I’ll fucking walk. I’ll get there.

That’s how it was meant to be. I will get up and leave the house and wear pants and take care of one of the obligations of a true citizen just like an actual adult.  If I were overseas or infirm I might make other arrangements, but if I’m ever simply unable to get to the polling place because of mental limitations or simply a lack of gumption; I’ll probably just stop voting. Privately, I have said of one of the candidates “If you won’t leave your basement, you don’t get to be president.” I apply that to myself. “If I won’t leave my basement, I won’t vote.”

At the polling place, I’ll check in with the nice old ladies that seem to like volunteering. I’ll wait in line between 5 minutes and 3 hours. I won’t care one bit how long it takes. I’ll be among other fellow citizens. I’ll hear all the local gossip. Did you hear that Bill got a new truck, I think the wolves ate my neighbor’s calf, did you see that Frank’s combine caught on fire? The elk seem to be moving. Where? Still up high or along that one old road? Here’s a picture of my grandson…

When I’m done, the little old ladies usually give me a cookie. I fuckin’ love living in the country. I get a cookie! There’s no urban light rail/world class opera/concert venue that compares, in terms of culture, to a cookie made by Maude at the polling place.

I’m feeling optimistic about America! Are you? Can you feel it? Turn off your media devices and look around. It’s a good time to be alive. The misery of 2020 came from people… not from the universe. We’re doing OK.

The break in the storm is clear on the horizon. I can smell it on the wind. I can hear it in the addled voices on the hostile political ads. The freaks who airbomb into every media sound… terrified. I smell their desperation. I see their eyes.

I’m going to vote and there’s not a single fucking thing they can do to stop me. If the press reports there’s radioactive space lizards and angry unemployable pierced millennial half wits burn the cities down… doesn’t matter. I’m going to vote and enjoy it. I will experience renewal. I will eat a homemade cookie.

In 24 hours the situation will be obvious. We’ll be pretty sure where things are going. In 36 hours whatever’s going to happen will have happened. Maybe my meager PredictIt bets will get wiped out. Maybe the “polling reports” in the media are true. And maybe I’m a Chinese jet pilot.

If you haven’t already. Go vote. Do in person. Or don’t. I don’t give a shit.

Voting is only “building society” for the Fischer-Price crowd; politics is a “near accomplishment” for the fools and youths who haven’t actually done much. The rest of us are civilization. We keep things standing by just being who we are. Electing any particular turd sandwich to clomp around DC won’t change that. People who build are why we’re not living in mud huts. People who set cars on fire when their team doesn’t win lack the moxie to build anything. A movement of future cat ladies and miserable half-men. They know they’re pointless and it drives them mad.

If my guess is right we’ll have a few days to enjoy watching folks who are not on a first name basis with “real” discovering reality. Just as they did in 2016 they’ll face the choice of leveling up as real people or screaming at the sky in their cult-like self-prison. Pray for them… mock them if you wish… but also pray. “I shriek at everyone about politics. Why am I so alone?” What a sad way to live. Perhaps in time they’ll calm down and join us at the adult’s table. If not… fuck ’em.