Well, the day my last post about living in unprecedented times went up, all I could do was sigh miserably as I felt today’s post come bubbling out of the stress from, once again, a weekend of wild shit. Mostly one wild event since everything kind of pales in comparison, but some of “smaller” stuff bears mentioning anyway. Sure, as time passes and more of what was going on behind the scenes emerges into the light of day, it looks like President Biden’s decision to step aside from the US Presidential Race was a calculated move that could have some positive effects [which seems to become more and more clear with each passing day], but I really don’t know that there’s any world in which changing horses mid-race will do anything but ultimately hinder the jockey’s attempts to win. Maybe in a few weeks or months, I’ll be walking all this back and crowing about the easy victory of (presumably ) President Harris, but that seems like too good of a future to be true. Sure, Vice President Harris might win against Trump (I doubt there has been a more detestable presidential nominee from a major party in US History than Trump in 2024), but I bet the next three and a half months are going to be exhausting. I mean, it has been only a little over twenty-four hours since the announcement and I’ve already gotten more campaign solicitation text messages, emails, and phone calls than I’ve gotten in the calendar year up to this point (I’ve unsubscribing and blocking zealously for the past three years). I would really love it if things could calm down for a bit, you know? I’d love one of those “nothing” decades.

Aside from that major bit of news, pretty much everything else has to do with the Republican National Convention. We’ve got two black men shot to death by police for being too near the RNC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which are only the grimmest pictures to come out of the event because they involve two dead men. Everything else is still grim, of course, but in a different direction than yet more racist cops committing murder without punishment or recrimination. Tons of pictures of rabid bigots putting paper or gauze on their right ears as a sign of support for Trump. Tons of photos of official signs calling for mass deportations. Lots of talk about just how many human rights the republicans are going to strip from people if they gain power. It’s dark and scary stuff that went largely unremarked as the media continued to fluff Trump, doing nothing but stroking his ego and breathlessly reporting on the fervor of the mobs screaming their adulations at the US’ Biggest Bigot. It’s a lot to be hearing about it despite my best efforts to avoid it, since that means there’s probably more than happened and I just didn’t hear about it because it got blown out of the news cycle by some new awful thing before I logged onto any of my social media. It’s rough to be a person living in the world these days. It’s just so much.

I’ve had a bit more time to process everything that happened over the weekend (the 20th and 21st, specifically, which feels like it suddenly matters that I say it out loud because who knows what will have happened the weekend before this post goes up on the 29th). I’ve also had a little more emotional energy to spend on it and a therapy appointment to talk it through with my therapist. It also helps that people seem to be talking about Biden stepping aside like rational adults rather than just Posting Through It like they did with the attempted assassination of Trump. Which, in this case, means a mix of screaming, memes, thoughtful analysis, reminders to take time to freak out and then start working on whatever comes next, and discussions of VP Harris and her nomination by Biden for the position of Presidential Contender. Which means I’ve gotten the benefit of a bunch of mixed reactions whenever I’ve restlessly opened social media in search of a dopamine hit that I’m never going to get. It remains to be seen if any of this thoughtful analysis has any truth to it or if it’ll just wind up being nothing more than wild conjecture, but at least some of the memes were funny this time around [oh, if only I had known about the whole JD Vance “couch fucking” thing before I wrote this post]. I mean, I still don’t think this was the best possible choice when it comes to taking down Trumps’ candidacy, but at least it doesn’t seem as bad as it could be?

I think I’m going to be consoling myself with that last line a lot over the next year, maybe longer: “at least it doesn’t seem as bad as it could be.” What a way to live life. Not that I’ve got anything better in the tank right now. All I can do is keep up the steady pressure of calls, texts, letters, and emails to my representatives and senators in hopes that something eventually breaks through the void separating me and those like me from the actual governance of the US. Honestly, the only upside I can think of that might come from this relatively last-minute candidate swap (and SPECIFICALLY the last-minute candidate swap) is that, should VP Harris win, she’ll have proven that a multi-year election cycle isn’t necessary. I’d genuinely love it if the US election cycle could get trimmed down to as little as four months. That’d be amazing. After all, this whole “two years of unending bullshit” system we’ve got going now is enough to make me want to stop participating in federal democracy. I won’t stop participating, of course, but getting two years of political ads sure makes me want to check out and forget to check back in. But hey! Maybe this is the way we finally get a woman for president. That’d be pretty sick. After all, everyone knows to take Trump as a serious threat nowadays. I just hope more people see him as a threat against them than see him as a threat they can wield against people who are different from them.