The Life in My Years

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
We’re so glad you could attend,
come inside, come inside
There behind a glass stands a real blade of grass
Be careful as you pass, move along, move along*

*Karn Evil 9.
Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Peter Sinfield.

---

A forecast of sunny and bright weather belies my mood this morning. I’ve been dreading this day for longer than I can remember.

Wait, that’s wrong, I have a vague recollection.

Yeah, that’s right, darkness began to fall two years ago, in November of 2022, when Donald J. Trump decided to make another run at the presidency.

As if the previous seven years that included his initial disgusting 2015 candidacy, his tumultuous presidency, his run for a second term, his election denialism, an insurrection and two years of whining weren’t enough, Trump decided to put the nation and the world through another spin cycle of incompetence, despair and chaos.

These past two years (years 8 and 9 if you’ve lost count) have only magnified Trump’s unfitness for office. Trump has not only gone unapologetically all in on fascism, he also seems to be a few bricks shy of a load (or to put it in rougher terms, he’s off his fucking rocker).

In the final weekend of his campaign, at a rally in Milwaukee, Trump decided that it would be a good idea to simulate giving a microphone holder a blow job. Now here’s where I’m going to descend into outraged geezerdom. I am 100 percent certain that most people’s parents or grandparents, regardless of political stripe, upon seeing a grown ass man, much less a grown ass man wanting to be the leader and face of the nation, simulate a blow job in public, would denounce that grown ass man as a classless lout who never outgrew prepubescence and should never hold a position of responsibility and maybe, just maybe, should be institutionalized. But, for some perverse reason (and I use the word “reason” with copious looseness), Trump world is okay with that. They’ll figure out a way to excuse it.

---

Come inside, the show’s about to start
Guaranteed to blow your head apart
Rest assured you’ll get your money’s worth
The greatest show in Heaven, Hell or Earth
You’ve got to see the show, it’s a dynamo
You’ve got to see the show, its rock and roll, oh

---

Not to be outdone in the election cycle’s overall carnival of the bizarre, the Democrats decided to add to all the turbulence by first trying to anoint old Joe to a second term only to unload him after watching in horror, his June debate performance.

---

It was the preemptive coronation of Biden (the second out of three election cycles after Hilary crashed and burned in 2016) that compelled me to leave the Democratic Party and register as an Independent.

---

These days I wonder if we’ll ever return to the old normal times. I have a vague recollection of those times, when Trump was still just a two bit reality show host, when election day came and went with a winner and a loser, and the loser would concede and say ‘We’ll do better next time and I promise to support the incoming president,’ and the winner would graciously accept the concession and the lame duck would carry on until inauguration day and then the new guy would step in.

In the normal times if your candidate won you might be giddy with hope and if he lost you figured the country could gut out four years of the other guy. Oh maybe you were a little panicky but, really, how bad could it get?

How bad? This time the potential knows no bounds.

Oh God, the nostalgia of it all.

The normal days are a fleeting memory and I’m not certain that they’ll return anytime soon. Trump tossed the banquet table and we’ll be mopping up the chow mein and the Jello salad for a long time to come.

---

Right before your eyes see the laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries, then he dies, then he dies

---

Today? Election Day? Today it won’t end well. Doesn’t matter who wins – it won’t end well. In actual fact, it likely won’t end at all today – the tabulation, that is.

If 2020 is an indicator, the tabulation could go on for days; which won’t deter Trump from declaring victory sometime tonight. And the fact that they might still be counting ballots two days from now will only fuel Trump’s howl that the election is being rigged against him. And the cult will join the chorus.

To needlessly fuel the drama, some states, like Pennsylvania, have warehoused their mail-in and early ballots somewhere, not to be opened, processed or counted until the morning of election day. Did Aaron Sorkin write that election procedure?

---

I can’t remember an election cycle that has been so mentally and emotionally taxing. It’s been a demolition derby, and the wreckage has included confidence in the electoral process, the health of our national psyche, our own personal relationships and emotional well being.

I’m not alone in my exhaustion. The burnout is widespread. And it hasn’t been just the candidates who’ve been torturing the nation.

Look to the pundits, the podcasters, the op-ed writers, the various talking heads on both sides of the fence, and the steaming pile that’s social media. They’ve all raised the tension to heights that, to quote Trump, “have never been seen before,” and it’s left us all spent.

RachelMaddowAriMelberMaryTrumpMorningJoeJenPsakiJakeTapperLawrenceO’DonnellAlexWagner. They’ve all calcified into a single wearying voice that over the months has been death by a thousand cuts. Demoralizing cuts to the spirit.

For months, they’ve been weighing us down with theories about which particular group is going to decide the election; a long and ever changing list. Women, suburban women, Black women, suburban Black women, young Black men, old Black men, Latinos, Rogan/Musk bros, pissed off Arab-Americans, pissed off Puerto Ricans, pissed off Haitians, pissed off friends of pissed off people, union workers, evangelicals, and Jill Stein voters (Jill Stein – another grifter). At least the pressure’s off me. I’m just an old white guy.

And how many times have we heard from RachelMaddowAriMelberMaryTrumpMorningJoeJenPsakiJakeTapperLawrenceO’DonnellAlexWagner that “the stakes couldn’t be higher?” No pressure – right? On this they do have a point. Every time I go to the store, pick up a T-bone and look at the price tag, I say, “Damn, the steaks couldn’t be higher.” And that’s been a problem – though not one caused by the administration. But perception is reality.

RachelMaddowAriMelberMaryTrumpMorningJoeJenPsakiJakeTapperLawrenceO’DonnellAlexWagner have ridden us hard and put us away wet.

---

I have to admit that I’ve been guilty of feeding my own exhaustion. Every morning while walking the dog I would listen to podcasts; Pod Save America, The Bulwark, Hacks on Tap, Fast Politics. I spent the past winter, spring and summer binging on that shit; a tsunami of political dopamine. I would hang on to every word hoping for a morsel of good news for hapless old Joe and then later Harris, and bad news for Trump.

By September I finally went cold turkey, dropping the political heroin in favor of sports talk or the quiet serenity of an early morning walk.

And the polls. Polls, polls, polls. For months, Steve Kornaki, the MSNBC numbers guy has been “breaking down the numbers.” To try to follow the polls is to try to follow a rocket fueled pinball. The more the polls change the more they stay the same. On Monday the New York Times has Harris ahead by two points in Wisconsin. But wait. On Tuesday CNN has Trump up by three in Michigan. And it’s all within the margin of error. So what’s the point? The point? Ratings baby, ratings. The accountants at the media outlets aren’t stupid. They know that politics addicts seek out the next poll like a junkie seeks the next balloon of black tar.

---

Come inside, the show’s about to start
Guaranteed to blow your head apart
You’ve got to see the show, it’s a dynamo
You’ve got to see the show, its rock and roll, oh

---

I dropped my ballot in the drop box near the library yesterday afternoon. No feeling of accomplishment or sense of patriotic duty fulfilled. It was four in the afternoon, literally 8 hours before the break of election day, when I got another text message asking for a donation to the Harris campaign, promising a 600 fold match. Still? How much money do you need?

---

I’m not just exhausted. I’m disgusted and wondering why I bother. I’m disgusted because when good old Steve on MSNBC “breaks down the numbers,” he focuses on a handful of states (basically three right now; Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) and tells the whole nation, “This is where the race is going to be won.”

Well if three states are going to decide it then why in the fuck am I even voting? I have an idea that will alleviate the angst, the controversy and the bickering in most of the country. Just hold the presidential election in the Rust Belt, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona and leave the rest of us alone. Maybe MSNBC can hold parallel broadcasts. Good old Steve can break down the numbers for the battleground states and the rest of us can get reruns of The West Wing.

---

Soon the Gypsy Queen in a glaze of Vaseline
Will perform on guillotine, what a scene, what a scene
Next upon the stand will you please extend a hand?
To Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Dixieland, Dixieland

---

Just yesterday Yahoo News posted an article that boiled the election down to eight “critical”counties. Eight! Well, that certainly simplifies the process. Let’s let those eight counties choose the president. That should speed up the final tabulation.

Or, and I know this is a novel idea, we could maybe get really radical and abolish the Electoral College. But we won’t do that. Why? Because a genuine popular vote can open the window just a crack for third party candidates, and those in power, meaning both major parties, are perfectly happy with their electoral monopoly, as anti-democratic and maddening as it is. And that should disgust everyone.

If Trump wins the Electoral College vote and loses the popular vote will that mean the beginning of the end of the EC?

Well that was a stupid question. Please go back two paragraphs.

---

Today, more than at any time since I cast my first vote for George McGovern, I realize just how meaningless my vote is. And what further feeds my disgust is that right after good old Steve breaks down the three states that will settle the election, and then drills down to a handful of counties (8?), Symone Sanders-Townsend, busily clutching her pearls, will warn us that “our democracy is at stake.”

Give me a fucking break Symone. I wonder if good old Steve, and Symone and the producers at MSNBC ever stop to reflect on the fact that boiling the election down to a small fraction of the country is itself an anti democratic act and might actually be discouraging voters in other states, causing the already discouragingly low turnout to be even lower.

---

Roll up, roll up, roll up
See the show

---

On this election day morning, I’m weary. Weary of podcasters and pundits clucking about our democracy being at stake when they all know full well that America has NEVER been a democracy.

If it were a democracy we would have meaningful gun legislation because that’s what the majority wants. If it were a democracy, reproductive rights wouldn’t be an issue because the majority is in favor of reproductive rights. If we were a democracy, the Supreme Court wouldn’t be the judicial arm of CPAC. If we were a democracy, campaign finance laws would be meaningful. In their zeal to avoid a tyranny of the majority, the founders, who maybe we should stop deifying, built a highway to something worse – a tyranny of the minority.

Democracy at stake? Stop already.

But sure, I get it. Donald Trump is a fascist.

---

Performing on a stool we’ve a sight to make you drool
Seven virgins and a mule keep it cool, keep it cool
We would like it to be known the exhibits that were shown
Were exclusively our own, all our own, all our own

---

I’m exhausted because for nine years it’s been all Trump, all the time.

I’m exhausted because three weeks ago, while I was sitting in Jazzbar Vogler in Munich, waiting for the music to start, my cousin in Wyoming, who has been taking the Trump snake oil intravenously, texted me a video titled, What Trump Will Do For Farmers. Why did she send it? Fuck if I know. I hadn’t heard from her in nearly a year. She’s seen my Facebook posts of places I’ve been, stories about grandchildren and photos I’ve taken and haven’t heard boo. And then she decides to troll me? Doesn’t matter. I long ago sawed off that branch of the family tree. Support a racist and you just might be a racist. Broken families. One of Trump’s legacies.

I’ve found myself at odds with fellow liberals who are voting for Jill Stein because of Gaza. It dashed one friendship when I came to the conclusion that the divide between the two of us had made things too toxic for me, too unhealthy.

---

My gut tells me that Donald Trump is going to prevail. And strangely enough, in this very moment, I’m too damned tired and too damned disgusted with the whole process to care. Make no mistake, I”ll care at some point. Just not now.

---

Scared.

It doesn’t matter who gets elected because the ensuing days and weeks (months and years?) will be chaotic. A Trump win and we likely descend into fascism.

And a Harris win? Last night a state senator from predicted a Harris win and a final end of Trump. What have you been smoking lady?

Trump isn’t going quietly. My fear is over what mad, mad MAGA will do. My hope is that in their own weariness they’ll throw down the torches and pitchforks and just go home and finally leave Trump as a whining cry in the wilderness. I would love nothing better than to see Trump trying to whip up another frenzy and then bow his head and call out fruitlessly to a crowd that’s removed its MAGA hats and burned its Trump flags.

---

Discouraged.

Yeah, I voted. I voted for Harris, but I wasn’t excited about it (hell, I once voted for Michael Dukakis who had less verve and appeal than a moldy loaf of Wonder Bread). I voted for Harris, not because I think she’s going to be a good president. I think she’ll be serviceable, another mediocrity in a long line of mediocrities. Is she qualified? Sure. But there are a lot of qualified people in this country who could be president (which begs the question of how Trump is even on a ballot). Is it too much to ask that we can have a transformational president? I voted for Harris because she isn’t Donald Trump.

In the beginning I was all in on Harris. Day one I kicked in 20 bucks (A mistake I’ll never repeat because along with the donation, I gave up my contact information which led to months of panhandling by a host of campaigns). It didn’t take long for the reality to set in that Harris is just another in a decades long line of generic candidates foisted on the electorate by the parties.

---

About tonight. Election night. I used to watch the returns. I remember watching in 2016 as the results came in and it became clear that Donald Trump would be victorious. I wanted to dive into a lake of bourbon.

I wanted to leave the country. And I still do, but my wife, inexplicably in my mind, is keeping the faith.

Tonight the plan is to hide In a far corner of the house while my wife watches the returns. By the time the polls have closed in California I will have taken an Ativan and passed out for the night.

I’ll deal with tomorrow when it gets here.

Hell, who am I kidding? I’ll be glued to the damn TV all night long.

Come and see the show, come and see the show
Come and see the show
See the show