I have not gone more than six hours without getting some kind of text, email, or mail advertisement about the upcoming presidential election. If we throw in general online advertisements, then I haven’t even gone an hour (and I know I should start spending less time online. It’s a difficult habit to break, but I’m getting there). Sure, both of these numbers exclude time I’m asleep, though even that time doesn’t change much if I include my dreams since I still get political advertisements invading those as well. Which is a wild thing to be happening considering I’ve still never once dreamed of being on the computer or using my cell phone. It’s mostly billboards in my dreams, but I also still get mail and hear people talking about the upcoming election, so I really can’t escape it except when I’m sleeping dreamlessly and you don’t really experience that passage of time so I refuse to count it. I probably wouldn’t mind as much if every single one of them didn’t assign absolutely dire and earth-shattering consequences to voting for whatever person the advertisement doesn’t want me to vote for. I already know that this election will have dire consequences and it’s abundantly clear that both results will probably have dire consequences because this is the US I’m talking about and we haven’t had an election that wasn’t choosing the shiniest of two turds (to quote an Epic Rap Battle of History that gets stuck in my head every election cycle) in longer than my living memory. I mean, I still remember when it was controversial to run attack ads at all and when people began to comment on how often attack ads showed up, but now that seems to be all there is. Endless, direly worded attack ads that are also attacking me.
Continue readingElection
Reflections On A Worthless Holiday
I’m writing this on the 4th of July. As some of you might know, either those in the US who pay attention to the workings of our government or those abroad who pay attention to at least the major events of US politics, there have been some US Supreme Court rulings that have happened in the last few days that are going to have enormous impacts on the US. While a lot of people on the internet seem to find it surprising or odd that the Supreme Court might recreate kings in the US while also hamstringing the ability of federal agencies to do their jobs in the week leading up to what is supposed to be a celebration of the US’s original declaration of independence from unjust rule, I find it pretty in-keeping with how the Supreme Court has acted in the years following the rise of the far-right in the US. I mean, it was only two years ago that they took down the right to abortion for absolutely no logical reason, also just before July 4th, and their entire history of actions and behaviors has shown not only a remarkable lack of self-reflection or knowledge of how they’re perceived by the wider public but an extreme and remarkable callous lack of regard for any of the ways our systems of governance used to work, much less actual history (as opposed to the fantastical history they make up to justify their actions). It’s discouraging to watch all this play out, especially as someone who has done what is within their limited power to work against this sort of this (calling senators and representatives, sending emails and letters, and trying to stay informed on local politics which will wind up setting the stage for national politics), so I’ve spent a lot of time this week just checked out of what’s going on in the news so I can preserve my sanity and try to get some amount of rest.
Continue readingElection Reflection as Things Stay Mostly Blue in 2022
A week later and most of the election results are in. The heavily gerrymandered places represent huge miscarriages of democracy and, for the most part, weren’t nearly as bad as I thought they’d be in my home state of Wisconsin. I will say that it sucks to see so many people disparraging my state for leaning so heavily toward the facists without considering the fact that more than fifty percent of the population voted for democratic candidates and still wound up with barely a third of the seats in the state government. Which, you know, has been the case for about the last four or more years now (I really can’t remember when the gerrymandering happened, but it feels like forever ago).
Continue readingA Normal Amount of Election Day Anxiety
I spent most of today trying to avoid spiraling. It is election day as I’m writing this, though this is going up a week later, and this election feels particularly fraught. Perhaps more telling, though, is that this level of anxiety is starting to feel normal for elections. After all, the past four major elections (two presidential elections and mid-term elections, specifically, since there’s been a lot more of the local ones than just these four) have been either a step directly toward fascism and authoritarianism or a desperate attempt to move further away from it. I know that the situation we’re currently in is the result of decades of effort so it’s not like any of this stuff came out of nowhere, but that’s not really comforting to know that given how much of it happened before I had any say in the matter. What would be comforting would be knowing that our elections are fair and safe from a bunch of far-right facist fuckers worming their way into enough positions of power that they can thumb the scales by disenfranchising voters or outright meddling in the elections. What sucks the most about that thought is it feels on the same level as all of my “what if I won the lottery” fantasies.
Continue reading