The Election is Now
To be clear: there are only a couple of days left. The election is now; it ends Tuesday.
I’m trying to remember not to hold my breath about what’s coming, but the anxiety that accompanies presidential elections in the US is not to be trifled with. So I often have to remember to breathe, as ridiculous as that sounds.*
Every time time I see the news about another Trump rally things get worse. Like him fellating a microphone in Milwaukee? What?
Now can we talk candidly about his increasingly uninhibited behavior? How ’bout now?
Can we agree that his rhetorical weaving is concerning? Sure, it’d be funny to me… if I weren’t terrified he’d sell the US to Putin for a tank with his name painted on it, some cryptocurrency, and a half a cheeseburger.
This is one of the problems for me personally and perhaps the nation politically: Donald Trump is so morally repugnant that he has made himself visually repulsive. In addition to turning the orange face and weird hairdo into a caricature of evil, now I’m revolted by the news because I have to look at his ugly face and hear his ugly voice constantly.
Eleven thousand seven hundred and EIGHTY.
Every time I say “eighty”—and that’s the year I was born, so, side note: there are a ton of triggers in a doctor’s office—I hear that phone call from 2020’s biggest, sorest loser in my head. There are things you can’t unsee, and things you can’t unhear.
I would be lying if I said I don’t wonder how much easier It would be to deal with my GAD if Trump and JD Vance were exiled.
I’m also still reeling from reading that piece in The Daily Beast where Jeffrey Epstein is reported to have said that Trump has no moral compass. I mean holy shit. If Epstein is saying that about you?
Cuckolding has (re)entered the political chat, by the way. I had to look up the definition because I couldn’t believe my ears, what with the brain tumor and being gaslit a few too many times.
But there’s the pettiness of the garbage truck thing and the McDonald’s thing too. Like, my dude, I don’t think you want to be drawing attention to the word garbage right now or showing the world you think fries are stuffed in the container by someone’s bare hands.
Trump’s claim that he’ll protect women raises more red flags for me—being promised this by a marriage counselor who did no such thing—too.
I am confident Trump will lose again, I’m less confident that he’ll acknowledge it. And that’s what makes me anxious.
* It’s not strange once you understand the fight flight and freeze response.