One of Jerry Seinfeld’s early bits was about the sense of detachment you feel riding in the back of a cab—as if you’re not in the car, and the risks the driver takes aren’t also risks of your well-being. We act like it’s all just happening on television. “Boy, that looked dangerous. I wouldn’t try that in my car.”
At 96 hours out, that’s about where I am with the presidential election.
It’s not that I don’t care. I care deeply. But I began surrendering to the notion of an inevitably unsatisfactory outcome most of a year ago. I’ve done all of my hand-wringing already. It’s going to end badly. We just don’t know what flavor of bad yet. There may be an entertaining chapter here and there as it goes down, and that’s what I’m watching for.
I think a full-throated defense of either of these thoroughly ridiculous people is silly, and my feed seems to be heavy with them. Do I remember that this begins abating significantly on Election Day? That would be good. Then the gnashing of teeth begins. If it is Republican dentition to be gnashed, as still seems likely, I hope there is a call for calm, louder and more influential than mine, that will be heeded.
This is all I’ll have to say on the presidential election until after it’s over.
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