Okay, so I'm pretty frikkin played out after last night and today. I was really hoping to see that electoral map fill out with just a sea of blue, so that no question would remain that the country had come to its senses and thoroughly repudiated this nonsense once and for all. When that was definitely NOT happening, I couldn't really hang, and ended up going to bed on the early side.
Then, this morning, miracle of miracles, things had shifted in Wisconsin and Michigan a little, and both have since been called by most major news outlets as blue. As today went on, of course, things kept looking better and better. The AP and other outlets are still not calling it, but Politico ran sophisticated simulations and found 15 ways for Biden to win and only 1 scenario for Chumpo. I'm encouraged but of course still nervous. These are strange times, and strange and unlikely things definitely happen in strange times.
It's only 4:45 and I feel like eating and going to bed already. My time in bed last night was like a series of half awake nightmares. Just how much I had been traumatized by 2016 was coming back to me. I started trying to figure out how I could deal with another four years. And now, even though a Biden win is looking likely, I am feeling more like the urgent necessity to do the work of social justice is really the same, no matter what. Especially with the Senate results, etc.
Basically, it feels like a reprieve from a life sentence, but not a pardon from prison altogether. When I have some more spoons I'll have to check out the overall results and get a sense of what might be next. Time will tell. I fully expect a wide range of weird elections challenges and lawsuits from the Right, also. In America, the process has become the constant reality.
However, I am so hobbled by trauma, culturally, that the fact that things got better for Biden (who I do not even really dig all that much) throughout the day today feels like a minor miracle. America blew its chance to send a resounding and unmistakable message, but I'll take a plain old 270 win, thank you very much.
Roller coaster and general madness
I hear and relate to so much of this. All of my conversations yesterday were about how I was unsurprised and still shocked by how many people seem to have completely different values. I hope that more of the white people I know who are social justice minded will step up to take on this white people problem. Pretty much everyone I spoke to yesterday is also involved in social justice work in some way, and we all agreed that nothing will really change about that work. I’m pretty sure that people are still going to need reminding that their bodies are their home. Anyway, I guess I’ll be glad that so much of our collective attention won’t be focused on the latest outrage that the president has put on Twitter. I’m looking forward to a White House that cares about culture again, to people who seem to delight in human experiences (have you seen Kamala laugh? It’s lovely). I don’t think I’d noticed just how much of that was missing in the last 4 years. I’d rather have my desire for justice be fueled by joy than outrage. Doubtless there will be plenty to rage about, too.
I am now getting a little irritated by all the people I’m seeing who want the election called, as if that makes a difference. haha. It’s a Biden win, clearly. Chumpo is going to drag out the nonsense as long as he can, probably. It doesn’t matter.