I keep feeling as if I should write something about the election, especially considering that it’s easily the thing that’s dominating my thoughts for most of the day these days — it’s become a horrifying avatar of 2020 in that way, and one that I get more than a little concerned about when I consider things not necessarily working out the way I’d want them to — but, the sad truth is, I’m not sure what I’d say if I had the opportunity.
I’m exhausted by the 2020 election. I’m far from alone, I suspect; how could anyone be anything else, considering the year we’ve all been having? Even ignoring the fact that this particular election season has been quite as depressing as it has been — these particular candidates! This particular “discourse,” as the kids would have it, if those kids were cynical pundits who felt required by their career choices to pretend that everything isn’t quite the trash fire that it actually is! — this was hardly going to be a year for everyone to get excited about the prospect of engaging in the democratic process. We were too busy trying not to get sick, trying not to lose our jobs, our homes, our friends. This wasn’t the year, to put it mildly.
The electoral process waits for no man, however. (Imagine if it did! Imagine the many ways the United States could do elections better, like getting rid of the Electoral College, or either allowing everyone to vote by mail without it being portrayed as the end of the fucking world, or giving people off on election day or or or!) So, we’ve spent the last year or so with the entire apparatus at work, going through the motions of the primaries, the conventions, the debates, the entire time an entire nation just thinking that, really, we all have more important things to do and can we just have a different President already and move on.
And now we’re, what, a week away…? The anticipation, the pressure, of it all feels physically palpable at this point, ever-present. And, perpetually, exhausting.