The Election? It's ALL Fabulous!

[mallorys_camera]

The full nausea of the coming election finally hit yesterday. I spent the day staving off the kinds of acute panic attacks I last remember having back in 2008 when I watched my business die, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Suck. SUCK. SUCK. Hear that sound? That’s the sound of everything you hold dear going down the drain!

You’ve stepped into a time machine, ladies and germs! It’s 1933, and we’re in the fabulous Weimar Republic! See those wheelbarrows filled with faded Reichmarks? Here, pull up a chair at the fabulous Chestnut Tree Café, grab a glass of warm gin. On a 100-foot LED monitor, the fabulous forces of the Coalition are crushing the ee-vil armies of ISIS! Or are those the ee-vil armies of Eastasia? Which is the one we’ve always been at war with again? I get so-o-o confused! But I know it’s all fabulous!

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(On a completely unrelated note, I was somewhat shocked yesterday to discover that Nineteen Eighty-Four had been written a full 17 years after Brave New World. Nineteen Eighty-Four is the scarier of the two dystopian novels, but I think Brave New World may have been the more accurate. In fact, Brave New World may not even be a dystopian novel. Where’s my soma?)

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Fivethirtyeight is now predicting that Trump has a one in three chance of branding the White House. The Senate races are a dead heat.

My thoughts at this point? HRC will win the Presidency. The Senate and the House will remain in Republican hands.

I’m under no delusion that Democrats = Good and Republicans = Bad. I will say that Democratic platform points are generally more in line with what I’ll implement when the world finally comes to its senses and anoints me Supreme Planetary Leader. But the process in both parties is corrupt, and I’ve never agreed with Machiavelli that ends justify means.

Anyway, I spent yesterday in a complete panicky dither, unable to concentrate on anything. I imagine today will be more of same.

Comments

[cah1470.livejournal.com]

My son went to vote Saturday because he has school and work tomorrow. The line was 5 hours long. He had a bit of moral outrage when he was handed what appeared to be a sales slick with his sample ballot. It had all the candidates with their photos (which in the fine print the evangelical group admitted they did not get permission to use) and their voting record on pro-life, traditional marriage legislation, and HB2. Got to love North Cacalacky!!! I will be so happy when this thing is over.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Are you fuckin' kidding me? Marketing info with a sample ballot? Isn't that against the law?

I'm showing up to vote tomorrow promptly at 6am. I expect there to be long lines; I hope they let me read a book.

After that, I'm taking off so I can spend Election Night with my XHusband in Ithaca, which is kind of like a utopian La-La-Land where they don't even use the verb "trump;" it's been expurgated from the English language.

I cannot stand this tension.

[cah1470.livejournal.com]

It is illegal even in these parts. He complained but when it appeared they weren't going to do anything we kept it and took it to the election board this morning. In the last presidential election the Sunday before election day everyone in my neighborhood received a flyer in their mailbox with something like "due to the record number of new registered voters your normal poling place is no longer suitable so you should go to the election board office for your district" of course once there you were told the truth. It was just a minor inconvenience for most but surely there were some who were disenfranchised. When they talk about NC being rigged in 2008 I always wonder if stunts like that are the reason why Obama didn't win in 2012.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

It is illegal even in these parts. He complained but when it appeared they weren't going to do anything we kept it and took it to the election board this morning.

You might also think about contacting your local ACLU. In fact, I'd love to unleash my law student son on this case.

[dinahprincedaly.livejournal.com]

http://youtu.be/-qkf0fLU2Ao

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Ha, ha, ha! :-)

[therobertpaul.livejournal.com]

I was just watching a documentary about cinema in the Weimar Republic. They’d show all these young people going to the beach in Siodmak and Ulmer’s People on Sunday and the voiceover guy would say, “They think they’re in the post-war era, not realizing it’s also the pre-war era.” How true of all of us.

I’m pretty much convinced Republican = evil. It wasn’t always that way. I’d consider the Republican Party the better of the two major parties before 1964. Unfortunately, the party has moved itself into a position where it needs to placate bigots in order to win and, in my world view, no good can come from that.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Insofar as the two parties can be separated from their candidates -- and I will concede that this is all but impossible to do -- I'm actually more closely aligned with the Republicans than with the Democrats. Because I don't believe that a strong federal government in a country this size is necessarily a good thing. Too many interests get overlooked.

The federal government, of course, must be in charge of international relations. And it must intercede in the Big Issues that individual states get wrong -- slavery, sufferage, the right to marry whom you choose, energy policies -- but beyond that? I don't think so.

(I think it's ridiculous that there's a federal Department of Education, for example. But I also think it's ridiculous that the federal government doesn't get to determine fracking policies for all states.)

Anyway, reducing the role of Big Government is kinda the classic Republican cant. It's difficult for me to feel much allegiance to the party of Mike Pence, of course. But I did kinda like Mitt Romney -- although I voted for Gary Johnson in the 2012 election.

[therobertpaul.livejournal.com]

All of this reads to me as dated. The cold war is stuck on ya'll Boomers the way cynicism is stuck on us Xers.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

You're free to see it as dated as you wish.

And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Cold War. My preference for small government has to do with the fact that I don't think politicians are successful advocates unless they take a stand on the issues relevant to their constituents -- and that's simply impossible to do if they have so many constituents that the issues are all over the place

[badrobot68.livejournal.com]

Write in your own name, why not? :)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Ha, ha. :-) Political power doesn't interest me at all.

[sulphuroxide.livejournal.com]

brave new world and 1984 are the same world, just viewed in different ways. only logos and shopping rituals are the tools of dictators, to insist on citizenship instead of consumership would mean absolute punishment.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

brave new world and 1984 are the same world

Oh, I totally disagree. They're very separate.

Although you'd be right to say the real world has come to include elements of both.