PJ and I sat huddled over my ballot in early October. We were at his kitchen table. His daughter came close, a melting chocolate bar painting her fingers.
“No!” we both shrieked, setting off a lifelong and terribly specific phobia.
“Nothing can go wrong with this one.” We were one second away from slipping on rubber gloves and using tweezers and a glue pad to lick the stamp. We both wanted a beer, but would not dare compromise sobriety before this ballot was in the hands of a postal engineer. When we had completed the surgical application of ballot to secret envelope, secret envelope to envelope, and envelope to my bag, we let out a breath. I went to the post office and prayed for an accidentally good day from the Czech Post Office.
I know it’s cliched at this point, but this is the most important election of my lifetime. And it doesn’t really have anything to do with Republican vs. Democrat. It’s the fact that Donald Trump is a walking bag of feces from any animal you’d care to name. He is the most miserable person who has ever walked the planet.
He’s a billionaire – he was born into a billionaire family – and he never stops complaining. Everyone is against him. He’s marauded by all. Dems. Crooked Hillary. Sleepy Joe. Little Marco. Lyin’ Ted. Low Energy Jeb. (Also Dems and their voters are thieves, scum, and garbage, but Dog forbid if someone on our side calls his people that.) He’s a charlatan, stupid, allergic to reason and intelligence, and in the last decade he hasn’t made one successfully coherent thought out loud. His ‘speeches’ sound like Captain Beefheart lyrics read backwards underwater in ancient Babylonian. When Donald talks, he sounds how a snake regurgitating another snake looks. On top of this, he is human herpes. He does not stop and he will not go away. He is an unrelenting source – day in, day out – of grievances, hate, anger, and attacks. I have never cast eyes on a Tweet in which he simply wishes someone a happy birthday, congratulates a team on a victory, sends out a positive message to the world. Everything has a carve, a swirl, an attack. Merry Christmas, even to the CROOKED Dems, who are trying to LIE THEIR WAY TO A VICTORY WHEN IT’S CLEAR IT WAS RIGGED! Also, happy New Year. But not to Shifty Schiff and Crazy Bernie!
Ten years of this. The exhaustion is overwhelming.
He has upped his crazy game. He rambles incoherently for 57 minutes before tap dancing, evidently, to Ave Maria. He clearly forgets where he is and who he’s talking to. But yes, let’s give him launch codes. And yet, the press paraphrases each linguistic assassination into coherence. ‘A diverse analysis on political theory’, ‘Trump discusses intricacies of ancient clerical music.’ If Donald can spell ‘intricacies’ in one go, I’ll vote for him right now. But only if he dances for me while I cast it. This man is a clown and has no business being in the Oval Office.
Across the aisle from him, his opponent Kamala Harris answers tough questions and has the ability to maintain a clear and coherent thought all the way through to its conclusion. She’s smart, serious, and appears to be a fully functional human adult. Yet we are told to analyze everything she does and says with cynicism and wariness. She smiles and laughs – she’s not serious. She once stuttered while answering a question – she doesn’t have her shit together. Friends on Facebook cooling on Donald won’t commit. ‘I don’t know’ I saw a friend write to another ‘she was appointed’. Another friend told me after the ‘debate’ that he didn’t like her position on healthcare. This policy, mind you, posited during the same debate in which Donald accused Haitian-Americans of abducting and eating Ohioans’ pets.
If Trump attends a dinner without alienating a European ally, forgetting who he is, or poking out his eye with his fork, we give him a cookie. If Kamala doesn’t have a spot-on, socially-conscious, grammatically perfect answer to an impromptu 12-part question on the future of America after the nuclear age while she’s eating a tiramisu, people raise eyebrows and cluck their tongues.
“I, like, hate Donald, but, like, she stuttered during that nuclear thing. So, they’re basically the same.”
“They are not the same. She has a brain. She’s smart. He can’t tie his shoes or open garbage truck doors. He doesn’t make any sense at all! At all! Why won’t you just vote for her???!!!”
“But, like, one time, I think, I heard her, like, change her mind in, like, the middle of a sentence, and, like, I didn’t like it. So, you know, I think they’re like the same.”
This is when I, like, drink until I, like, hear angels.
I have faith today (election day). I do. I am nervous to have faith and hope, but I do have it. The reason is, I think others – Republicans included – are as exhausted as I am and as ready as I am to get away from this era of anger. The era in which we all loathe each other for our choice of political candidate. This era in which we have all lost friends because of our choice of political candidate. The era in which we rip down each other’s signs for their political candidate. This didn’t happen before Donald. It’s Donald. He ushered in this era in a divide and conquer strategy and it’s worked. We hate each other. It’s Donald. It’s all Donald. A vote for Donald is a vote for continued misery and anger.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. On the other side is a pair that emit optimism, good humor, togetherness. Moving forward is the key. There’s no question that Kamala Harris is the only option in this election. If for no other reason than to protect the domestic animals of the greater Midwest.
