Essays in Idleness

The election in NSM (Natted States Merica) is by now so loud that, like the jackhammers playing daily around the High Doganate, it is hard to ignore. “The whole world is watching,” as they used to say in Chicago. Not everyone has a preference (sexual or otherwise), but I have noticed that cats, dogs, and babies, are often dressed to disclose one. Sometimes it is subtle, like not wearing a bat-muzzle while eating, or going about in the state of nature, like Amy Barrett’s dog. (A fluffy chinchilla, apparently. She gave it a whistle during her Senate hearing, when asked her position on little warm puppies.)

My own circle of friends tend to be, at least nominally, Christian, and lean to the right of the political spectrum. Even my Chief Texas Correspondent was rather “NeverTrump” going into the last election. But like many others I have heard from, he did vote Trump, “reluctantly.” Most (all?) of these people now report that they would “crawl over broken glass to re-elect him.” A Trump car parade in Arizona was measured at ninety-six miles long. In Canadian terms, that would be even more kilometres. (There was a large pro-Trump rally on the streets of Montreal, which went entirely unreported in the Canadian meejah.)

Yet I know a few people on the other side, who have not yet disowned me. So far as I can detect, they hate Trump as much as others love him. That the vote comes down to Trump versus Antitrump has been observed on both sides: perhaps the last remaining thing they have in common. For I have heard even Democrats dismiss their “official” candidate (someone named “Biden”) as a corrupt, senile, incompetent mediocrity. So that revelations giving proof that he is all of these things will hardly effect their vote; hatred being such a powerful motivator. On the other side, stomping on little warm puppies wouldn’t cost Trump many votes, either.

Both sides identify with “the insulted and abused” (I mistranslate Dostoyevsky). As I was explaining to a meejah readership, before I was cancelled eight years ago, Obama was doing too many things to “stick it” to the Red State types, and this would breed a reaction. I thought the next president would be an “alternative” — something like Trump. And now Trump may have created the conditions for the real commies, under a brazenly cynical president, such as Kamala Harris.

The interesting thing, to me, looking on from my angle, is how much those Red State types will take before they have had enough. Radical Dems revolt violently, when they decide that they have been insulted, but then, they are revolting people. But Republicans seldom riot at all. The psychology is as different between the two sides, as the politics. The Right are inclined to behave, as you might assume from enthusiasts for law and order, in a way that is lawful and orderly. They have taken quite a bit of insulting, during the campaign (being often described as “racists” and “Nazis”), but I expect them to take a bit more: even Dems winning the election on what look like “harvested” ballots. (Though I think the Repubs are onto this, now. I read somewhere that they were out-harvesting the Dems, in sunny California.) We will see how it goes, for even what the meejah are eager to not report, surfaces in unsinkable gossip.

This is my prediction: we will be surprised by the result. It is a safe prediction, for we are generally surprised, even by what we expected.

Note: I am not saying this will end well.