The Daily: 3 November 2024

November snuck up on me. I get the feeling that many are feeling the same. Suddenly, it’s winter, it’s dark, it’s past Hallowe’en. That time-change thing happens again today. Two in the morning. Hate it… I don’t care which way it goes, much like my body doesn’t care which time zone it’s been transported to when I have to fly. It’s exhausting following artificial time, and this clock-change thing only highlights how completely artificial and therefore unnecessary clock time is. At least time zones make sense. Daylight saving time is nonsense. It saves nothing. Just rearranges the clock. And either way you are plunged into darkness, either at the beginning of the day in early spring or at the end of the day in early winter. I dread driving home in complete darkness for the rest of the winter.

But there is another looming thing with this November. This Tuesday is an election of some import. I have already voted. I did so because my town decided to preempt things like long lines at the polling stations and the general forgetful indecisiveness of old folks and mailed out ballots almost a month ago. I thought they were just mailing out the bond issues because they want us to vote on that stuff and wanted special attention paid to it. (We still have no school budget…) But no, it was the whole shebang. So I dutifully filled in all the ovals, signed my name multiple times (which feels wrong…), double sealed it in two envelopes, and mailed it back. I am done. I have done my civic duty.

However, I don’t feel too confident that it will matter in the least. I can’t help but think that the last time this country was forced to choose between Donald Trump and a woman, despite all prognostication and to the complete shock of most of the country, he was granted the presidency by the electoral college. Which was designed precisely to do just what it did… (Don’t believe me? Read the damn constitution…)

I still can’t understand why this is even a choice. How this came to pass. What the hell we were thinking. Why would anyone vote for Donald Trump? And in my darker moments… like for the last many weeks of political buffoonery… I think it’s because he allows them to daylight their internalized bigotry, their grabby privilege, and their, well, sheer drooling stupidity. When psychologically healthy people are leading the country, that stuff at least has to be glossed over in polite company. And there is quite a lot more politeness. So if this is a choice at all, then I think the world I would vote for does not exist. It does not matter how I vote… No vote in this culture will create the world I want to inhabit.

Still, life under Trump was hell for many people the first time around. Now, he has the Supreme Court, Project 25, and a private army of assholes with guns. It will be orders of MAG-nitude worse. Canada’s going to be building a wall…

So, here is my advice… Feel free to pass it along to the fence-sitters, or those who don’t want to vote within this culture at all, which, I get… Yes, vote your conscience. But let that conscience actually speak, please. If you don’t think that you, personally, will be negatively affected — and, let’s be clear, if you are not 100%, sycophantically, flag-waving, MAGA-hat-wearing, with Trump, then you already have a target on your back no matter your race, gender or birth country — then let that conscience imagine what your life would be like in a Trump country as a person who looks, talks, and thinks differently. (Meaning, thinks at all…) If you have trouble imagining life as someone else, that is, if you can’t empathize any more — because that is certainly not a rewarded trait in this culture and it has atrophied alarmingly — then go read It Can’t Happen Here… (again…) It’s a short book. You can get it in before the polls close.

And then note that all those characters are white, middle class, New Englanders. That being the point…

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©Elizabeth Anker 2024