Today is the day.....

Today is the day. I voted by mail a month ago so it’s a little anti-climatic for me, but here we are. Election day. Early reports suggest a huge turnout. It’s a beautiful fall day. Perfect weather for standing in line with your neighbors, or for hanging flags off the back of your truck and bro-racing through the streets. Rumors that Trump declared victory “by a lot” at 7am are, thus far at least, unsubstantiated. I will keep you posted. Also, podcaster Joe Rogan endorsed Trump at the last moment, so there’s that in case you are standing in line still undecided and are the type to be swayed by guys with a tenuous grasp of basic science.

I do suggest that we all play a drinking game to keep things loose. Every time you hear the word “rigged” you have to do a shot. I suspect the entire country will be drunk as monkeys by noon. Which might not be a bad thing.

*****

I do wonder what other countries are thinking right now. He we are, the so-called leaders of the free world, erecting barricades to keep the nutters from going over the walls again, and somehow doing it all with a straight face, as if we don’t want to admit that our democracy has been driven to the absolute brink by a bronze slathered reality TV goon with the mental capacity of a 5th grader. Donald Trump is the most uncomplicated man in the world. His grievances have grievances, and his lizard brain cannot compute basic political juice like “maybe pissing off half the electorate was not a good idea”. Stories of pregnant Texas women dying while surrounded by doctors afraid to intervene without first consulting a lawyer are not a good look. But then again, neither is your supporters dressing themselves in garbage bags. Europe is surely pleased there is an ocean between them and what has to look like a floating insane asylum.

*****

As a boy I remember my Mom voting, with me and my brother in tow. Up to the borough building we’d go, where everybody knew everybody else. Poll workers would see my Mom coming and flip the book to her name so it was ready for her to sign. There were no angry looking dudes hovering around the fringes. The atmosphere was almost festive. Like a holiday. In those days candidates were kinda dorky, wearing those class reunion-type stickers with their name written on it, and a few of them would be outside the building passing out pamphlets and stuff. It was considered rude not to take what they offered, even if you weren’t voting for them. The booths were the old school ones with the lever closing the heavy green curtain. Things must have weighed 1000 pounds. No idea whose job it was to move them, but it could not have been fun. There was always a guy standing there really to assist if you didn’t know which way to pull. There was a sense of pride to the whole affair…….some camaraderie. Once I became old enough to vote I had to do so because my Mom could clearly see if our names were signed in the book. That or the lady at the desk would simply rat us out. “No Mrs. Flannery, I haven’t seen the twins yet”. You’d wake up the next morning to the results printed in the paper. Things were a lot less complicated in those days.

*****

Today, it’s become illegal to bring water to somebody standing in line, and husbands are insisting they be allowed to view their wife’s ballot to ensure bro-compliance. Fox News host Jesse Watters said last week that if his wife did not vote the way he wanted her to, it would violate “the sanctity of our marriage.” Newt Gingrich, a man who served his cancer-bedridden wife with divorce papers, chimed in on the issue of women voting independently with “What kind of a totally amoral, corrupt, sick system have the Democrats developed?”

Our species has not evolved nearly as much as we think it has.

So what happens next?

I think Harris wins by a significant margin in the electoral college and takes the popular vote by over 10 million, mostly because woman are not as fucking stupid as men. Despite reality, I also think Trump will declare victory tonight in prime time, thus kicking off another shitshow of frivolous lawsuits and leaking hair dye. But this time officials will be better prepared to handle the onslaught of goobers that will surely start banging on the swing-state doors where votes are being counted, and eventually Trump will piss off back to Florida to golf and rage-tweet, this time without the spectacle of a Capitol invasion to buoy his fragile spirits. The poor bastard. Fascism is HARD, bro.

The republic will stand. It will still be filled with morons, but it will stand. The United States will have its first woman President, and hopefully all those gay flags with Trump dressed as Rambo will finally be taken down.

It’s often the little things.

In a bit…

—tf