I blame this on November 2016 and the PTSD, although I’ve rarely admitted I was going through it for the past four years.
For years and years I’ve watched election reporting with a mix of eagerness and information, relishing — no matter what the outcome — the prime revolutionary act of a democracy of such disparity, nobody outside the U.S. understands us.
Not last night and not even today.
The roiling in the gut comes from the smack of people voting for Trump.
I realize now I started to watch the returns requiring not simply a blow-out. I required the assurance that virtually nobody would vote for Trump.
It seems impossible to me that the past catastrophic four years meant nothing to so many people — people who are still repeating their nonsensical mantras like, “He did everything he promised.” Or “socialism!”
Once again, 60 million people have again earned my bewilderment, my pity, my contempt.
So, all of that above messed up the nighttime waters. Caused me to forget what I’ve learned from years of watching this stuff. First, the early votes are almost always Republican, so absurdly huge leads show up on my TV screen, leads I know will be withering away. Next, those massive blocks of red contain more cows than voters, while the dense blues are packed with Democrats, and those dense blue votes come in late, because there are so many of them, they can’t be counted instantly.
Last — and this time for selfish, irrational reasons — we must get rid of the Electoral College because counting the EC votes, rather than the people’s votes, drives me absolutely bonkers.
No idea if anything I just wrote sounds rational. I am typing on the same limited sleep that most of us are suffering with.
One good note. I didn’t expect any of the threatened violence and apparently we didn’t get any. It’s the big deal with bullies: they yell, they scream, they wave their weapons around…but they do nothing.
Exhausting.