Act Three: It Is What It Is

The evening snow drifted, ever so gently; less a flurry than a component of the air itself. It neither fell, no rose, but swirled about. Snowflakes in the air as there is blue in the sky.

In the distance, a rabbit grazed. The only mammal I’d seen in days. Deliberately sought quarry a month ago, now he was simply a welcome distraction. More so since the chickadees had left some hours back. When it’s too cold for the chickadees… I shivered.

I’d done my best. I’d tried hard. No lack of dedication, effort, or intent on my part. That I hadn’t closed the deal didn’t mean I’d given one inch in the struggle. My legs ached, my arms were sore; victim of hours in the cold, both hiking and stealthy near immobility. Where a suburbanite trophy wife might spend 40 minutes leotarding out yoga routines at a storefront gym (or at least she once did so, before everything came to a halt), this bearded old geezer is spending days at a time in a combination of taut alertness and relaxed immobility… yoga and meditation, while in a deep freeze.

Oh, how my knees ached. My face too. I don’t have a thermometer. I guessed it was around 9 degrees Fahrenheit (which is negative something or other in Celsius).

I sat. Still. Watching. Waiting. Never quit. Never give up until the last moment.

I waited until the earth turned. Then it was dark.

Another day, another elk not shot. I’m not too upset about it though. Hunting is not about meat. Fishing is not about fillets. Simpletons who think hunting is all about the kill probably think Jesus was worried about lanolin when he discussed sheep.

Very cold and even more tired I hiked out. In the pitch black. Grudgingly accepting the need for a flashlight on this gloomy night, I set the tiny device on “low” and trudged slowly into the narrow beam. There’s no need to rush when you’re alone; in the dark on a mountain, crunching through the icy snow.

As always, my Dodge felt like a spaceship after a day in the woods. Lights, buttons, instrument clusters, and (once warmed up) HEAT! The glories of truck dash heat to a cold soul are limitless!

Back in the mundane / online / fake world nothing has changed. Election Calvinball continues. A nation that can pipe 500 channels of shit to a pocket-sized TV hasn’t demonstrably counted accurately… not because it can’t, because it doesn’t want to.

Among my skills are that of a statistician. Not a Facebook expert of the day statistician; the sort of Dunning-Kruger monstrosity that was an epidemiologist last month and will be a constitutional scholar next month… but a real genuine, did the homework and got the degree, and fuckin’ wrecked the curve for all the muggles while I was at it, statistician.

Therefore, election farces are particularly painful to me. If I want to count anything from cans of beans in a supermarket inventory to the hairs on the average Wyoming bison’s nutsack… I can do it. I’ll get the answer, I’ll get it right. It’s what statisticians do. It’s a matter of hard work, proper sampling, actual (non-bullshit) mathematics, and WANTING TO KNOW THE ANSWER.

If it’s really important, I’ll include appropriate quality control. Why wouldn’t I? Is there any reason why votes are counted once and once only by one team in one place per State? Nope. It takes a legal battle just to check accuracy? Why, just to keep lawyers employed? We all know it’s a matter of carefully avoiding a hard look at the messy sausage making of Republic.

It could be different. Team A counts once in Shelbyville. Team B counts once in Springfield. Both keep their numbers under wraps until they reveal at the same time. Not one minute sooner. Not one minute later. They follow the rules while counting. After the reveal, while the people consider if the two counts are similar or not, transparency is provided. The video from 24/7 surveillance is released. Everyone swears under oath that they didn’t pull hinky shit and crosschecks abound. Mean lawyers prowl about while they do it. Election monitoring should be complete, total, and heartless. If ballot counter #43B from Shelbyville picked his nose at 11:43pm in the hall, after taking a dump, during the election count… it’s on the internet and released for mockery all around. If voting place 237 has 100,000 votes I’d better damn well have cctv footage of 100,000 people walking through that fucking door. Not one less, not one more. It’s possible to be that accurate. It’s possible to be that transparent. Common sense helps. Here’s a hint; taping up windows is not transparency. Anyone confused by that?

At the end, all physical ballots are carefully stored… for fifty years or maybe forever. If we need a third count… then shut the fuck up, roll up your sleeves and count again. Just fuckin’ do it. That’s why you kept the ballots in the first place.

Then keep them archived; available for research, historians, and vicious bloodthirsty lawyers. If someone cheated when John Quincy Adams won generations ago, I will find out if the evidence is properly stored and I was set to the task.

It aint rocket science. But it does require will. We have no will. Nobody on either side is particularly invested in truth. Why not count CA a second time? Why not audit all 50 states. Why not do it every damn election? It’s counting… it gets to the answer. So do it and know the truth instead of not doing it and letting the press paint pictures in the sky.

If Biden won then by God lets find out down to the gnat’s ass exactly how much he won by and find of for sure so I’ll happily shut the fuck up and pray for his good fortune on January 20th. No need for a lawsuit, curiosity ought to be enough. Instead, half the populace celebrates fishy data and argues against an audit in one out of fifty states (Georgia) and the other half has to go into sudden death overtime; just to get a check. After a full year of shoving campaigns up my ass, now, with the ballots in hand, suddenly the election needs only a nominal glance. Fuck that! Release the accountants!

I went to the woods to clear my mind of this fog. It was a good time for it. I wish I could have taken y’all with me. Y’all needed it too.

The press, in my absence, had a coronation for Biden, as it did for Hillary and Obama and Al Gore. Two wrong, one right, and one still in the weeds. Nothing to see here folks, no bias in our choices. Also, shut up peasant.

They’ve granted “president elect”, which has a specific legal meaning to a person who’s actual official situation remains “some guy”. They did this through the imagined powers of propaganda. “If we say it is true, it is true.” I’d say AP has “balls” but that would be assuming their gender orientation.

Would that I could do the same. “I say I’m rich and handsome, so I am.” Alas, I’m a resident of reality. I can no more wish an elk to appear before my rifle sights than I can wish for wings. Upon reflection, I don’t want that anyway. I prefer a real world where sometimes the elk elude me and sometimes they don’t. That’s better than a fake world where I’m served fluff and told it’s elk backstrap. No wonder the “think = reality” people seem strange and deluded to me.

In roughly a month, someone will be President Elect. It may be Trump and it may be Biden and at this point I’m not ruling out the election of Mr. Rogers from the “Cardigans for World Domination” party, with the Ghost of Stalin for VP. No matter what anyone says, mid-December is when it’ll happen and not before.

The last week was entirely gaslighting. Also, when I look at the math and statistical shenanigans afoot it bothers me. I wanted a nice clean huge obvious “Trumpslide” to preclude this mess. It looks like that may very well have happened. But “margin of cheat” seems to have grown. I don’t know is there was any possible number of votes great enough to elude what’s happening now.

Trump, love him or hate him, knew what he was getting into. Presumably he had appropriate plans. Or not. If you’re surrounded by lying cheats every day you surely have a plan for the election? I sure hope so. If he didn’t plans against cheating, he’s a idiot.

I look forward to a brutal slugfest to really suss things out. Even if Trump lost I wanna’ fucking know he lost. I’m shockingly confident still, in the face of overwhelming odds, that Trump may have Trumpslided. I know… it’s crazy right? How can I possibly have any hope left. I don’t know. Yet I look forward to the exciting conclusion of Act 3 in the coming month. Trump versus the Uniparty is indeed the ultimate cliffhanger.

Back to the truck.

I order a burrito at Taco Bell on the way home, a team of five employees can’t quite manage the drive through. That’s when I start to think Trump may truly lose. I can understand math but the folks at the restaurant can’t pour a Pepsi. How can Benford’s law be explained in a way they’ll understand? For them, it’ll be Biden, because the TV said so. It would be Spongebob Squarepants if the TV said so. Their vote is just the same as mine too.

A people without careful thought can be stampeded into beliefs without basis. I see it everywhere. I read that somewhere there’s a curfew… to stop COVID. Because a virus only stalks at night; like vampires? Slick marketers can sell this, even though it makes no sense. We have fifty states and one of them killed more COVID victims than any other. The guy from that state is on the TV lecturing how to manage the situation. Why him and not the 49 other governors who killed fewer people? Marketing! They can sell extended warranties on a toaster, they paired politics to sneaker choices, and they will never stop trying to sell me an electric car. They can probably, they can convince the sheep Jesus worried about that a nation awash in spontaneous Trumptastick boat parades voted for the walking corpse that barked speeches to a couple dozen people sitting in little circles. “I’m calling a lid at 9:00 am. Because life is hard and I’m sleepy.” Yeah that’s a winner alright. If you want me to believe that I need a very clear vote count.

These are the thoughts I have as I drive home. No elk quarters in the truck, but a soul at peace, which is what it’s all about.

2020 isn’t over. It’s the eight month of “a few weeks to flatten the curve”. There’s no end in sight. People are forgetting what life was like as recently as February. They won’t give up. Having ruined Halloween, they’ll set their sights on Thanksgiving. “If you gather with family and render gratitude to God for your good fortune, it means you want grandma to die.” Then comes Christmas. Then comes life. Put it all on pause; childhood, education, jobs, adulthood, and just sit on your ass waiting for someone else to live on your behalf. A nation of shut-ins lorded over by insufferable Karen-ific cat ladies.

I’m not really sure if I care. They can wreck society but I can still hunt. I might get another shot at elk later on. I have tag options remaining. Or maybe I’ll go back and get that rabbit. I still have firewood to cut.

My thoughts improve. I haven’t gone ice fishing in years. Maybe that’s the new plan? Is 2020 the year when I finally start sitting in a tent on an iced lake drinking bourbon and staring at a 6” hole drilled in the ice? Why not? I hope they open the border to Canada. Better fishing up there. And poutine. I’d forgive a whole lot of 2020-ish hell for a plate of good poutine.

While I’m hiding, others are doing good work. Monster Hunter happily recounts the obvious statistical mess. Trump fights now just as he has done every day for the last four years. The press lies, just they have always done… though with less subterfuge now that the mask is off. Biden sleeps. Kamilah sharpens her knives. Hillary tosses in the uneasy sleep of an angry Lady Macbeth. Obama smirks and Pence stands there like the human board he is. Act three doesn’t need me.

I stop at a gas station and hammer this post into my Neo2; a writing device with less technology than a calculator. I’ll post it when I find Wi-Fi. I used to stop at Starbucks analogues all across the great nation. Posting my contrarian thoughts conveniently from within the belly of the beast. Rants about freedom and self-reliance from the same Wi-Fi serving the Bernie-Bots and thankless unemployable Trustafarians. No longer.

Coffee shop Wi-Fi was one tiny cog in the wheels of a society that’s falling. Today there’s no Wi-Fi. Last spring, we fought over toilet paper. Next month we will fail to celebrate that most humble and honorable tradition; Thanksgiving.

All part of the infrastructure that fell. No handy coffee shops in the post-apocalypse wasteland of today. Just for a little sense of what can be lost, Google up photos of Iran from the 1960’s; you’ll find college girls in miniskirts. It looks as modern as London. Then pull up a photo from 2020. This has happened before.

I pace about and stretch my legs. It’s a long drive home. My knees are sore from the cold. I’m already thinking about ice augers and pike. It’s been a good week.