Doom, Gloom, and Peevishness
Sep. 2nd, 2020 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_camera
The worthy nonprofit that serves local veterans never showed up to take the car yesterday, which added to my general sense of peevishness and persecution.
It’s a sense of peevishness and persecution that’s completely unjustified, of course, because compared to 97% of the planet, I have it pretty damn good.
But that knowledge doesn’t mitigate the peevishness. All day long, I wandered around on the brink of tears. Nobody loves me—not even the worthy nonprofit that serves local veterans. Etcetera.
Plus I have a shitload of small practical matters that must be attended to, and the small practical matters involve devising algorithmic lists so that all the t’s in the details are crossed, and all the i's are dotted.
UGH.
Just ugh.
###
In the afternoon, I went for a tromp. My first tromp since the National Counting Project commenced. Temps have declined to autumnal levels, and a few of the exotic trees have started their autumnal show though there isn’t any orange in the maples and oaks that make up most of the Vanderbilt Park’s arboretum:
I have this sense of absolute doom and gloom about the coming winter. Interestingly, though, that doom and gloom doesn’t extend into the political realm.
Unlike many in my extended friendship circle who’ve started talking like Trump is one of those monsters who keeps lurching toward you despite the fact that you’ve emptied several AK47 rounds into him, and he no longer has what you could describe as a face, I don’t believe Trump is gonna win the coming election.
Why?
Because I’ve observed that the majority of deadbeats I’ve been dispatched to enumerate in the course of my National Counting Project (mis)adventures are Trump supporters; and my sense is that if they cannot be counted upon to fill out a brief survey and drop it in a mailbox, they cannot be counted upon to vote.
There may well be a few days of uncertainty while the smoke clears, though. Democrats on the whole seem to take covid more seriously than Republicans do, so they are more likely to vote by mail. It will take time to count the mailed-in ballots.
I intend to vote in person. Even if I have to suit up in Hazmat gear.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-02 01:22 pm (UTC)For instance, I don't think Georgia has changed much in spite of everything Stacey Abrams has been trying to do.
Trying to vote in Texas is a vicious thing.
And reports about lines at the polls in Arizona are disheartening.
And I think a lot of people get distracted by trying to get individuals to change their minds, when it's really these structural issues that are determining the outcomes of elections in this country.
Maybe I'm jaded because my first-ever presidential election was in the year 2000, when it really didn't matter how I voted during the era of a thousand hanging chads. (although I tell people it DID matter because the only reason Maria Cantwell made it into office was due to around 100 absentee ballots from my county and my absentee ballot was one of those).
no subject
Date: 2020-09-02 01:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, you're probably right. I've traveled extensively throughout the country, including many of the "heartland" states—which, for the most part, I liked 😀 —but the only two states I've voted in are New York and California, liberal bastions both.
I don't see how Trump keeps the Christian evangelical vote, though, in the wake of the Jerry Jr. fallout.
I get that the ongoing protests are an equivocal thing if they involve enough civic destruction to be repurposed as "riots" by the partisan press, and I also get that younger people whose issue Black Lives Matter is are less likely to vote than old farts like me.
(Los Angeles is about to start! Cops shot a black man there yesterday for—you'll LUV this—violations of the bicycle code.)
But I think the mini-stroke stuff will bring him down. Especially if there are enough photographers and videographers to get the lurching on record.