The Never-ending Election, or It Ain’t Over Till the Fat Cheeto Leaves
270 days. Nine months. Children conceived at the start of lockdown are now being born as we head into what is likely to be the darkest winter humans have seen in a century or so.
Still, despite the darkness, or perhaps more visible because of it, there are bright stars of hope. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the election for the U.S. Presidency, a fact that even Fox News does not question. Pharmaceutical companies are announcing progress on vaccines that may wind up being distributed next year. And, if nothing else, we will have entertainment during our winter lockdown: Microsoft, Sony, and Apple among others are launching a slew of products promising to satisfy our hunger for electronic amusement, and there is once again a new episode of The Mandalorian for us to devour every Friday.
But let’s go back to the darkness for a second, since it is the undeniable backdrop of the state of our Union. Every day we break the previous day’s record of new Covid cases, without any relief in sight. States and the hospitals in them, initially panicky about Covid and the lack of equipment/capacity to handle it, then later relieved that the curve was beginning to flatten, are now once again making plans to cancel elective surgeries and make room for the incoming, crashing wave of new Covid patients requiring hospitalization. Halloween parties a couple of weeks ago are being blamed for this escalation, but in my opinion even one night of debauchery without masks (or without the right kind of masks) doesn’t fully explain why our Covid numbers are spiraling out of control without any end in sight.
This country is incompetent at a number of things, but we excel at denying the truth. We have created millions of climate deniers, millions of Covid deniers, and now millions of election deniers (with a very strong overlap amongst the three groups). Our fat, Cheeto-like Commander-In-Chief-For-Ten-More-Weeks has utterly failed the nation once again…he telegraphed that he would not accept the election’s results if not favorable to him, and he followed through with that move. The only problem is the Trump Administration has zero evidence of any “voter fraud” to offer to back up the dozens of lawsuits it has filed. Faced with no evidence, only baseless allegations, courts are largely forced to dismiss the suits. This somehow doesn’t seem to dampen the spirits of MAGAts at all: rally after rally of painted, flag-waving maniacs screaming either “Stop The Count!” or “Count The Vote!” (depending on who is currently leading in that state, of course) can be witnessed across the land.
Did anyone expect that the 2020 election would serve to heal and unite the nation, rather than deepening the divide(s)? I certainly didn’t. Still, it’s hard to watch all of this unfold and not be disappointed.
Back to the bright stars again. Progress is being made on a number of different emergency situations that looked quite hopeless just a couple of months ago. And while we won’t be “out of the woods” in a number of ways for a long time, and may never fully be, we are learning to live in the woods and be OK with it.
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