What's Getting Me Through
Or, How I'm Surviving the Next Seven Days
I went a little nuts in the days after Nov. 8, 2016. The timeline had split, and I was in the wrong one. Each day after, for years, brought new horrors. My mind writhed and twisted in reaction, tearing and fusing in weird places. How could this be? How could any of this be?
A week before the General Election on Nov. 5, 2024, I’m right back there. I’m having trouble concentrating. I can’t write. The urge to nap four or five times a day is nearly overpowering. I crave whoopie pies and beer.
I have no optimism, just gibbering panic pushed to the edges with comfort fodder.
Here’s what that fodder is:
A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs -- I adore this podcast, in which a mild-mannered British dude does a deep dive into the various streams of music that flowed together to create rock n’ roll. Well-researched and culturally aware, each half-hour episode creates a little oasis I can live and do chores in.
Starfield -- Released by Bethesda Games Studios (BGS) in September 2023, Starfield is not a great game. The writing is kind of lackluster. It uses the ‘Space Muslims’ trope. There’s a lot of religion in it. In essence, there’s not as much there there as BGS would like you to believe. It’s not a great game, but it is a grand game, and I can lose myself for a while in my various spaceships, coming up with characters and telling myself stories as I explore the galaxy.
Raking Leaves -- A half hour of raking leaves burns between 125 and 178 calories (depending on the weight of the raker). Bagging them nearly doubles that. Leaves are pretty and crunchy and light. Couple this activity with a good podcast (see above), and I can deny reality for at least an hour.
The Inktober Challenge -- I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. The goal is to draw something, in ink, every day and post it where people can see it. Apparently, I’ve become someone who needs to create. When The Writing is not going well, I need a different outlet. This month, drawing has been it.
Moving My Harris-Walz Signs Inside at Night -- My Harris-Walz signs have been stolen three times. The last time it was a four-by-four sign, ziptied to two steel posts driven into my spouse’s side garden. MAGAteers came right onto the property and took it. Now I have two (really three, I live on a corner and the scofflaws haven’t noticed the side-street sign yet) more-modest signs, and I bring them inside when it gets dark. Thus, I can pretend there aren’t sign-stealing TrumpKins in my neighborhood. It helps me sleep.
As you can see by that last entry, none of this works perfectly. The dread remains. So, I non-partisanly preach to my college students about the importance of voting. I show them how easy it is to register and find out where their polling station is. I limit (for me) my news consumption. I have my own detailed plan to make it to the polls (walk out the door, head down the street, turn right, walk a little more, turn left, stop when I see the gauntlet of campaigners).
I remind myself that I’m a cis, het-ish white guy, and I’ll be fine whatever happens. Strangely this last bit gives me no comfort at all. If Donald Trump gets elected (again!) a lot of people will get hurt, and I’m not OK with that. And in the end, it will affect all of us, and I do mean all, negatively. Maybe you can sit back and watch a lot of other people get fucked first, but it will come 'round to you (and me) soon enough.
So take your comforts. Stay sane. But on Nov. 5, put down that rake, take your spaceship back into the tainted atmosphere, drop the sketchbook, (you can probably take the podcast into the booth with you), and get your ass to the polls.
We kicked our right wing dingbats out this summer in the UK. There was a palpable sense of relief, but also an equal sense of a lot things will not change with the new Government.
The upcoming Autumn Statement (Budget) will be a big marker for the next few years as to what we can expect. There is some hope, but much concern still.
We had riots not long after the election right wingers egged on by social media and MSM misinformation about a knife attack and its culprit, Musk weighing in on X, Vance likening London to Pakistan. Our countries and the politics are not so different, it is the scale that is.
With ballot drop boxes being set alight, voters de registered, legislatures already stacking to challenge counts, the fear reaches across the Atlantic and our concern for what will happen is equal to what we felt this summer for our situation.
Be safe.
I saw a piece the other day about someone who put an Apple tracker on their Harris/Walz sign, and when it was stolen, tracked it to the thieves - some 20-something dudebro and his mom - along with like 60 other H/W signs. People be weird.