The countdown continues. As I write this there are twenty-four days until the election. From my point of view, I am desperate for this thing to be over. After November Fifth I hope never to see Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow or any other poisonous talking head for the rest of my natural life. My intent is to occupy my time with things that can have a positive impact on me and my local world.
Now it may be that from time to time I may have some reason to consider what the two national parties are doing as it impacts me. That’s only reasonable. But all of my efforts will be directed toward avoiding the policies of the federal and state governments that negatively impact my life. I don’t delude myself that I can completely negate these deleterious influences. But I intend to use whatever resources and logical analysis I can bring to bear to improve the way I and my friends and family live inside this place.
I look at this as a shift from a passive strategy to an active approach. Instead of stressing over an election that I have absolutely no control over and which may be completely rigged from the get go, I can concentrate on my own actions and how they will impact the things I identify as in some sense controllable. And that shift from passive to active I find very exciting. For way too many years I have been fixated on reliving the experience of Ronald Reagan capturing the imagination of the majority of Americans and trying to change the course America was on. Probably the closest we ever came to that was when George W. Bush was given a mandate in 2004 by the American people. And he squandered it. Well, time is growing short. I can’t wait for the country to return to a consensus. That may take decades or maybe never happen at all. For me direct action is the solution.
Of course, my actions will be small, limited in scope and based on my interests and talents. I intend to spend my time writing. I think I might be able to produce some entertaining stories. I want them to reach a sizable audience so I have a lot to learn about marketing and other aspects of book selling. Some of the things I’ve heard about how you have to write ten novels ahead of time so that you can release them, one a month, in order to trigger the Amazon algorithm that notices such things. That seems insane. You have to write a million words before finding out if your story will be seen by anyone. There’s got to be a better way than that. But anyway, that’s one of the things I have to find out about.
So, come on November Sixth. Get here already. Put an end to polls, debates, pundits, special reports, psychopathic snipers, CNN, MSNBC, 60 Minutes, Joe Biden’s presidency and every other scrap of this long stupid ordeal that has eaten up years of my life but hasn’t improved it one iota. Let me move on with my life.
Update:
War Pig commented:
I voted yesterday. Early voting in person at the board of elections. A strange process this time. After validating my identity via military ID card, I signed in and watched as a ballot was printed off for me. I don’t like that. I voted and left. Now I can see how easily electronic-counted ballots can be faked. It goes into a reader machine and I have no way of knowing if it is read correctly. I use ink to fill in the bubble beside the candidate. But when read does the machine record my actual vote or is it set up to record the wrong candidate one out of, say, fifty times?
Hmmmm. Since the Clintons are related by marriage to Soros and a relative of Soros owns the company that makes and supplies software for the majority of voting machines, it gives me furiously to wonder.
Photog responds:
Since the debacle of 2020 I plugged into the local electoral process where I lived. And what has changed surprised me. Even in New England there has been an upswell of monitoring of such things as voter registration lists and fraud. Will it make a difference? Hard to say but there has been some scrutiny.