What am I saying, this whole election is a letdown. It's an extremely important letdown, but most of us feel like we're not going to get what we want, I think, including the candidates. I can't imagine that anyone is going to come out of this experience feeling better about themselves. It's like eating at Taco Bell, you went because you were hungry, lazy and poor, and because some little voice in your head said, "don't worry, this time it will be better."
The past few months have proven that our nation has a fragile ego, is easily distracted and seduced and can't seem to keep our eye on the actual problems at hand. I know, the election isn't over yet. It really doesn't matter, even if the Trumpocalypse is averted, we're still going to get four more years of status quo politics, while the Democrats behave exactly like Republicans used to, and the Republicans try to convince themselves that Trump really isn't who they are.
I have a bit of the indigestion already.
The thing is, smarter people than me have noticed that the discontent that fuels Trump is not terribly different than the discontent that fuels me and the others who were feeling the Bern. We all have this sense that the system is rigged to benefit people like Hillary and Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. The clever trick that the Donald has pulled is convincing the proletarians that he was one of them. He's not, and he has pulled down whatever integrity and gravitas the working class might have had with his orange-ish crassness and unhinged rhetoric.
If you haven't watched this already, I'm just going to leave this here:
The way that Tom Hanks quite artfully illustrates the fact that the driving force behind many Trump supporters resonates with the sort of distrust of government, angst at the system, and general disenchantment with how things work is actually oddly touching. I have been trying to develop some sort of empathy for people who are willing to support such a racist and sexist embarrassment. I am hoping and trying to believe that not all the people with Trump signs in their yard are "deplorable," but bedfellows like the KKK and Alt-right definitely cast doubt on that hope.
The "indigestion" of this election is going to be the difficult process of learning to trust one another again. It very well might be a severe case of botulism though. I'm not sure that we are going to be able to reverse the trend of polarized thinking that has become the hallmark of this election.
Best case scenario: November 9 is like waking up from some sort of fever dream and we all get to put it behind us. We move forward with Hillary, and she manages to be a bit more upright than Bill and bit more effective than Barack. We forget all this nastiness and tom-foolery and work at becoming a more perfect union.
Worst case scenario: The next President of these United States: Donald J. Trump.
Somewhere in between: First woman President gets pretty much the same obstructionist environment that our first black President was given. Four more years of barely avoiding budget catastrophes and not fixing the problems we all face together. Four years (at least) of Clinton-ism, where politics (some would argue dirty politics) is the par we're shooting with very few moves in a truly positive direction.
I'm hoping for the best, bracing for the worst, and probably going to get some variety of the middle, just like Taco Bell, maybe the cramps won't be that bad this time.
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