Wake me up after Inauguration Day
Wake me when the election is over.
Actually, don’t only wait until the election is over, wake me up when the campaign-related complaining, conspiracy theories, insults, protests, riots, bad jokes, lawsuits and death threats are over. Just to make sure, wait until after the votes are certified and the inauguration has safely concluded.
I voted early, for many reasons but mostly so I don’t have to think about the coming election again until the results start filtering in, when I’ll be smoking my way through a pack of unfiltered cigarettes, nourishing my ulcer and biting my nails to the quick.
I’m just kidding. About the cigarettes, anyway.
As exhausting as the presidential campaign has been, I need a good, long nap.
Recently, a comedian hired by the Trump campaign to perform at a rally delivered remarks so obnoxious that all of Puerto Rico and its former inhabitants were aroused to a state of furor.
After stand-up comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico (which is in the United States, by the way) a “floating island of garbage” in a set that was vetted by the Trump team and uploaded to the rally teleprompters, the jokester was immediately denounced by Trump’s mouthpieces and all manner of other politicians who don’t want to get steamrolled by Puerto Ricans on their way to vote against them.
I did some research on Hinchcliffe, who gave a thoroughly depressing interview to Variety earlier this year in which he said his comic instincts were honed as a young child trying to play jester for his absentee father so that he’d come around more often.
As I read, I realized that he, like so many other aggrieved individuals, draws water from a spring of anger deep in his childhood. Now when I think of him, I just get sad and sleepy.
But that was just one in a series of tiring events.
There’s also the Trump campaign ad that called Kamala Harris a “c-word” (the “joke” being that C stands for “communist”). Funny, right?
And then 200,000 people canceled their subscriptions to The Washington Post after it came out that owner Jeff Bezos killed a planned editorial board endorsement of Harris for president.
Then Trump suggested that “war hawk” Liz Cheney get lined up in front of a firing squad just to see what it felt like to face actual weapons. He, of course, was not suggesting that someone shoot at her! No, of course not. He would never, and also Jan. 6 was a “day of love.”
If Trump wins, he’s been threatening mass deportations and reprisals for his political enemies. That’s to say nothing of what’s going to happen should Trump lose, with a MAGA fan base that has been primed with fairy tales of election interference and ballot tampering. It won’t even matter if there’s any real evidence of wrongdoing. It sure didn’t matter the last time. Trump has thoroughly rehabilitated Jan. 6 in the GOP alternate reality as being all about freedom/justice/awesomeness (plus it was Nancy Pelosi’s fault anyway) and has a vice president who knows what happens to vice presidents who don’t do what Daddy Trump wants, a repeat of the day’s events doesn’t seem all that farfetched.
I think I need to sit down.
But then I realize that even if I sleep through Election Day, and the counting of the ballots, and the certification of the votes, and Inauguration Day, the next election is only four years away. What if — dare I say it — what if he runs again?
Come to think of it, I’m reconsidering the nap.
Anyone have a spaceship to Mars handy?