View From The Sidelines
In these days leading up the election, I’m seeing more glimpses of people’s political leanings in their stories and posts, and what I’m seeing is … weird.
Weird is the buzzword du jour bandied by liberals to describe conservatives, and now it has been co-opted by conservatives as not weird. As in, we’re not weird. You’re weird.
I think it’s weird all around. Weird that people are describing other people as weird, and weird that people have to go around saying they’re not weird.
I think it’s weird that people are posting stories saying how being stuck in infamous I-405 traffic in Los Angeles was worth it so they could go to Trump rally.
I think it’s weird that people are selling jams and jellies using Harris’s name.
I think it’s weird people are driving around with huge flags in the back of their pick up trucks emblazoned with Trump’s head on Rocky Balboa’s body.
I think it’s weird that dueling signs are popping up on people’s lawns, sometimes next door neighbors battling each other in silence with opposing candidates names literally next to each other.
Election cycles themselves are weird because people somehow forget who they are and place their brain power in a figurehead.
As in, “Thank God (fill in the blank political candidate’s name) is there doing the work, so I don’t have to.”
Because that’s all political candidates are: proxies for our laziness to actually participate in democracy. It’s why people go bonkers with shirts and hats and paraphernalia of a party or candidate. They want to be on the team, but they don’t want to actually play.
As our politics devolve into bloodsport, all I want to do is stay on the sidelines. I want to make my decision, vote, and be done. I don’t want to know about your time at a rally. I don’t want to buy a t-shirt. I don’t want to see your vitriol on your stories.
I’d love if our system wasn’t built on fear and loathing, but we’re far beyond that because, frankly, it’s the only thing that sells. You notice there’s a countdown clock to the Presidential Debates? Why? What is this: New Year’s Eve???
Actually, what it is, is weird, and so instead of continuing to complain, I’m going to live and let live. I’m going to the realm of pop psychology. Let them. They want to do it, they’re going to do it, and so sit back and let them. If it makes them feel good to depict Trump as duck or wave flag of a dog pooping on the last name Harris, let them.
If it’s weird they want, great.
I’ll just be over being…normal?
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Photo by Dan Parlante on Unsplash
