Election 2020: Waiting To Exhale
For nearly four years now, a single quote by Voltaire has made its way to the fore of my consciousness on a regular basis.
“We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.”
The expectation of living.
If anything can sum up what we have been enduring, surviving, striving to escape from, it is that. Merely existing, waiting, watching the clock run out towards an end to this nightmare in which our country slid on November 8, 2016.
We have not been fully living. We have been breathing, sure. We go about our tasks, our jobs, seeing to our responsibilities. But fully living? No. This reign of terror has not permitted solid sleep, peace of mind, ease of dreams. Instead, as we have watched what feels like a never ending car crash, we have endured depression, anxiety, endless outrage, insomnia, doom scrolling in the wee hours of the night. We have watched in horror as our country has been laid waste to by a corrupt, egocentric megalomaniac. A horror of a human being who delights in the pain of others, whose every move is to the greater glory of himself, whose every breath is laden with hubris and bullshit.
Every hideous trait that can be found in a person — traits that should find the bearer on the outer edges of society for all eternity — sloth, envy, grift, hate, pride, self indulgence, willful, no, prideful ignorance, adultery, lies that fall from his earthworm gob as frequently as KFC crust, rudeness, bullying, and a craven addiction to power — all embodied in a single, oozing Hefty bag of a human: Donald J. Trump.
That decent society has come together as we have, resisting, marching, finally opening our eyes to the wrongs perpetuated on our fellow citizens for so long, finally shocked into a full awakening because of him, is a good thing. But that roughly 40% of the population have coalesced into a true cult around him is horrific. He stands for nothing. He says nothing. Yet in his rambling, his never finished sentences, his name calling, his venality, his utter and complete bullshit — Cult45 is as primed to die for him as the inhabitants of Jonestown were for Jim Jones.
This is rally roulette. Check out this video from @mattyhoyeCNN at Trump rally in GA. We had to make our own path through a massive crowd of Trump supporters. It was wall to wall people. Zero social distancing. Just a few folks here and there wearing masks. pic.twitter.com/pgBPm8FBOd
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 2, 2020
Because of him, because of them, we have all been holding our breath. And with the relentlessness of hits that 2020 has continued to deliver, we are all looking towards tomorrow, election day 2020, as the possibility to finally exhale. To have something to believe in, look forward to. To feel hope again. To find that the good people truly do outnumber the bad — because outnumbering is all we have left at our command. Our numbers must be so big as to wipe away any doubt, any vote changing fuckery, any attempts at legal maneuvers to steal this election.
To finally allow us to escape from the expectation of living into the full, bright, lung filling, face-to-the-sun experience of living.
This year alone has felt like an emotional Bataan Death March. Every day a new abuse, a new outrage, a new weight added to our shoulders, a newer, outlandisher display of MAGAt buffoonery, bravado, and yes, danger. They want us to be afraid, to feel frightened by their antics.
We have endured a year of Kanye WASTE batshittery. Boat armadas that sank under the weight of their own horseshit. We have seen the postal service openly hamstrung in an attempt to thwart voting by mail. We found out that hundrednaire Trump owes nearly $1 billion, nearly $400 million of which is personally guaranteed and coming due within a year. We learned he has paid between $0 and $750 in income tax, for years.
We have watched as he and his cadre of dimwits use and abuse the White House for campaign events — violating the proven-to-be-moot emoluments clause. He rejoiced in stealing yet another Supreme Court seat, installing a literal Handmaid from the Holy Church of Women Are Doormats. We just found that 545 stolen children have little to no chance at being reunited with their parents because the administration of Moe, Curly, and Larry never kept records. They were too busy masturbating with all the tears they caused.
We have endured his bullshit about windmill cancer, low flow toilets and showers, tiny windows, Biden cancelling God, Mexico still paying for that mythic wall, a new healthcare plan that is terminally two weeks away. We have ripped our hair out as far too many in the world of journalism have failed to call this garbage out, far too few have openly questioned him, even been able to type with word LIE — skewing towards the more genteel half truths, falsehoods, untruths, and distortions. A media still more enthralled with the ratings his batshittery brings than with the mission with which they should be charged.
That last part contributed greatly, BIGLY, to how he amassed his coalition of dullards in red hats. Endless free hours of exposure. Anchors vying for the chance to showcase his circus on their programs. And networks who threw all journalistic integrity to the wind as they fapped themselves into delirium over ad dollars.
The worst part of this administration endured by all Americans has been the pandemic. March 2020 seems years ago. Back when he was bragging how there were only 15 cases and that it would soon be zero. Then he told us that the warmer temperatures would wipe it out. Well, summer came and the only thing being wiped out was the population. With fall, he and his cronies still openly mocked mask wearing, distancing, holding rallies, events, and a superspreader in the Rose Garden. Coronavirus had its way with that crowd, saying, “I moved on them like a bitch. I didn’t even ask. When you’re famous they just let you do it.”
When he supposedly contracted COVID-19, while I may not have openly wished him finality in his outcome, I certainly wished him a rough ride at the end of a ventilator, a catheter, and a colostomy bag. I also wished him to come to his fucking senses, be scared straight, at least open his goddamned eyes. Instead, cosseted in Walter Reed, taken on bye-bye rides through the parking lot, and given a kitchen sink’s worth of drugs we mere mortals cannot obtain, he came away a man filled with hubris and steroids.
And a new approach to the pandemic. He and his cronies would simply say Fuck It. No strategy for testing, prevention, no leadership for the citizenry. Just “Ehhh, fuck it.” It is what it is. Let’s hold rally after rally, pack ’em in like unmasked sardines, leave them freezing in the cold or heatstroking in the Florida sun. Last night marked the third rally in which his followers froze, forgotten on the roadside as no buses had been arranged for them to get back to their cars. “Ehhh, fuck it.” I don’t really care, do you, Melania? Because of him acting like Guns n COVID Roses on tour in the 80s, a Stanford study has now attributed over 300,000 new cases and 700 deaths to his superspreader concerts.
And now we stand on the precipice. Cases breaching 90,000 per day and surging everywhere, hospitals at capacity, and in El Paso? They just set up their fourth mobile morgue at the coroner’s office. When did they set up the third one? YESTERDAY.
Over 236,000 people are dead and we are averaging 1,000 per day still. With his manure spreader rallies, expect the numbers of cases and deaths to begin exploding in the coming weeks. Those ignorant MAGAts are going to be taking up hospital space, spreading COVID to innocent bystanders, and dying. “Ehhh, fuck it” is going to come home to roost.
Tomorrow we find out if right will best might. If decency will be restored. If our country moves forward to better days or dies in the darkness that looms. Never in my life have I seen the electorate engaged to this degree. Never have I seen the entire world watching, waiting, holding their breath just as we hold ours. It is not just our collective destiny that hangs in the balance — the world has also been damaged by this reality show host who never should have been anywhere near the Oval except on a tour.
I only hope we have done enough. The numbers of early voters, new voters is encouraging to me. We have railed against this onslaught, we have marched, we have campaigned, we have donated our precious dollars, we have phone banked, text banked, rallied our friends and neighbors and families. We have VOTED. And what we have come together for is good, right, necessary. For immigrants, for the LGBTQIA, for DREAMers, for Black people, for brown people, for every color and culture, for religious freedom, for no religion, for governance of the people, by the people, for the people, for all the people. Our cause is the liberty his followers don’t even begin to understand. Our cause is for everyone, even them.
But we all also suffer from the PTSD of election night four years ago. The night we sat gobsmacked in front of our TVs. The night we cried. The night we went to bed terrified, sickened because we knew then, we knew what was to come. What has transpired has been expected, but there has also been so much that has completely blown past our worst expectations. The guardrails we hoped against hope would hold him in place, temper his worst impulses? They turned out to be toadies, lackeys, power whores, grifters, sons, a daughter, a son-in-law with a lust for more no matter what. Congresspeople and Senators who sold their souls (or have been blackmailed this whole time) to stay in proximity to power, in favor with the mad king.
So as tomorrow looms, our trepidation is understandable. Our fear ratcheted up in the wake of a weekend in which his uber-stupid base tried to run a Biden bus off the road in Texas, in which they blocked roads and bridges in states near and far. As report after report of their threats of violence fill the airwaves and social media, as buildings are boarded up and another fence is erected around the White House.
I will not be writing tomorrow. I will be hoping. I will be watching. I will be waiting. And I will be desperately wanting to finally exhale. I know you will all be doing the same. We are one day away from leaving behind the mere expectation of living.
It was Mark Twain who said:
No, Mark, it is not why we are here. Stay strong, everyone. Everything we want is on the other side of this breath, this fear.
I’ll see you on the other side of the war. ~ Hamilton.
