Today Is Election Day In The United States Of America (2024 Edition)

And what an absolute crock of shit it is. On one hand, we have a candidate who is supposedly left-leaning but would be seen as being to the right side of the center-right position in most European countries, not to mention some of the human-rights violation stuff like supporting Israel’s genocide efforts and somehow supporting whatever the hell is going on at the US border. On the other hand, we had a literal fascist felon who supposedly has a secret plan to become president even if he doesn’t win the election, running on a far-right platform that is more and more exactly the nazi platform. It’s fucking wild, let me tell you, to be a person in this country who has to help pick between these two miserable human beings. I mean, the choice is clear and super easy to make, but it sure feels bad that this is where my country is at. This asshole (Trump, to be specific) should have been laughed out of the area a decade ago. He should have been in prison even longer ago, given all the fraud. Only by the virtue of being a “rich” celebrity has he managed to get this far in life without any time in prison. The man’s a wannabe mobster and is so blatant about it that the entirety of US culture has shifted in order to not lose their minds over how much blatantly wrong and illegal stuff this man and his campaign for presidency have done over the last ten-ish years. I really wish I could say that I don’t and can’t understand how anyone could think of Trump as a viable president or as anything beyond someone who deserves life in prison, but I do and can because I’ve seen it happen. I watched it happen.

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A 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.

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