Damned If You Do

A little less than a week to go before the U.S presidential election and I feel nothing but dread and anxiety when I think about the possible results. This is the first time in my political life that I have been worried about either potential outcome. I can't escape the feeling that dark days ahead no matter who wins the horse race.

Or I guess I should say "wins" the horse race, since between the electoral college, shenanigans associated with the mail-in voting process, and the flotillas of lawyers preparing to descend on battleground states and litigate the everloving fuck out of every contest with a hint of disputedness we may not know who the president-elect is until weeks after the last vote has been cast.

Confusion and delay.

Reasonable people are wondering to themselves if they need to buy a gun to prepare for civil unrest (however you define that). Tribalist entrenchments are underway and we are so fearful of each other and angry about everything that we have lost that I can't help but wonder if this might really be the end of the American experiment; the inflection point that future history channel specials will play in stark black and white and describe as the day the old idea of what America could be buckled. The structure was rotten from within, constructed by optimistic lunatics and held together with faith and duct tape. But plague, economic uncertainty, systemic injustice, racism, paranoia, and other ills of the 21st century accelerated its decay.

I hate elections. They'll break your goddamn heart, they somehow last three years, and they are exhausting. I suppose I feel some relief at the notion that this will all be over soon but it's the kind of relief that comes spiked with anxiety about what happens next.