Voting as Venting

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Monday, November 02, 2020

 

Remember George H. W. Bush’s “thousand points of light”? Or Bill Clinton’s “bridge to the 21st century”? Me neither. But, as judgment day approaches, I’m nostalgic for whatever they might have meant.

 

My one hope for Election Day is that everyone gets it out of their system. Vent away, people.

 

Biden haters, I urge you to let it all out. Not just at the doddering man himself, the one who can’t lead himself out of a basement but wants to lead the free world: Hate on them all. Governor Gretchen Whitmer trying to prevent you from buying perennials at Home Depot, when planting your garden in the spring was just about the most healthy, wholesome, and pious thing you could do. Hate on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s weird Mountain of Doom presentations about his greatness, even as New York undergoes an agony. His stupefying TV brother who preaches mask wearing and entombment in your basement when sick on TV, but who gets spotted in Long Island, maskless and presumably contagious. Hate on Governor Gavin Newsom burning fossil fuels in a private jet to take a photo op with Kamala Harris in front of a picturesque burned residence, whose owner isn’t even allowed to visit the ruins of his life. Hate on Hillary Clinton telling Joe Biden not to concede. Hate on the idiot health officials — the ones in New York telling you to celebrate Chinese New Year one week to show that you aren’t afraid, then shuttering the churches and synagogues the next, then relaxing enforcement in favor of left-wing protests. Hate on the weird Pennsylvanian health commissioner Dr. Rachel Levine, who withdrew her mother from a care home, even as she assured the state such facilities were safe.

 

Hate on the pro-lockdown fanatics, who live in the Zoom economy. The people who have destroyed the livelihoods of your family members, because they can cocoon away, with the help of Jeff Bezos and ten different food-delivery apps. Hate on the Democratic mayors in Minneapolis, Portland, Kenosha, Philadelphia. Hate on Mayor Bill de Blasio, you don’t even need a specific reason. Hate on the teachers’ unions, whose members don’t consider themselves essential workers, and who have made the United States one of the only countries in the world with schools that can’t function in the pandemic.

 

Hate on the conspiracy theorists. Like Nancy Pelosi telling you “all roads lead to Putin,” and who sent you the fake stories about Russian meetings, Russian email servers, and “pee tapes.” The people who sent your heroic memes of Robert Mueller. The ones who said that Trump would give you a fake vaccine.

 

If you hate Trump — put all your hate into that voting booth. After all, you’re voting against a man who grinned and gave a thumbs-up in a photo op with a baby, recently orphaned by a right-wing mass shooter in El Paso. Hate on Fox News for filling your father’s retirement years with anxiety over the “Demoncrats” and the fact that you’re going to get a My Pillow this Christmas. Hate on the boner-pill-pushing media companies who traffic in the real paranoia, the ones who slowly deranged your cousin, who is currently preparing a presentation on “the plandemic and the Great Reset” over your family Thanksgiving Zoom. Hate on the anti-science lunkheads, who go to Trump rallies, and coughed on Herman Cain until he died.

 

Hate on the whole Republican Party, on the senators who are too afraid to say even what they think of Dear Leader Trump. Hate on the apparatchiks who took jobs as diplomats and insulted our allies. Hate on Governor Greg Abbott, who opened his state too early, saw a giant spike, and had to shut down again. Hate on the gall of people to call themselves “conservative” when they support a man who has no knowledge of or respect for this nation’s Constitution. Hate on the fake Evangelical “leaders” like Jerry Falwell Jr. who go out and support a man who admits he never asks God for forgiveness. Hate on the Fox News hosts who think Jared Kushner is a moron and just never say so in public. Hate on this whole dumb, deadly charade.

 

Just let it all out. Maybe there is a normal life at the end of it. Maybe not. And at the end of the day, we’ll compare the piles of hatred. Lawyers might get involved. If they delay too long, rioters too. Democracy is glorious.