Election 2024: The Hilarity, and Why I’m Voting For…
As much as I’d like to, there’s no avoiding it. Everyone else is addicted to the presidential election taking place this week, so I might as well blog on it–and hopefully, getting some thoughts into one consolidated place will prevent me from polluting everyone’s newsfeed to any needless extent.
In Retrospect:
As an American, and one living in a battleground state at that, the last six months or so have been a shit show. I’d go as far as to say that it has been the most comical election of my lifetime. Of course, a leading presidential candidate getting shot is no laughing matter, and we all still need to learn to lighten the mood. We need to learn to laugh a little more, to disagree civilly, to find common ground where it exists, and to accept things when there’s nothing to gain. I feel obligated to preface any mention of comedy with that, as two assassination attempts on a former (and quite possibly future) president is a tragic testament to the state of society.
That said, I laughed my way through most of this election cycle. I could go back to the mugshot that really kicked things off–a mugshot which confirmed his victory in the primary, actually. Ron DeSantis was likely to be a contender until then. I’ll fastforward from there and go to the first presidential debate. We learned here that there was no sense in denying the radio silence of the incumbent president. We also learned that Joe Biden “beat Medicare.”
From there, we had the very serious assassination attempt, but shortly after was the Republican National Convention. And if you need a perfect example of something that European mind will never be able to comprehend, go ahead and watch the Hulk Hogan address where he starts his address with “LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHIN’ BROTHER!” and then rips his shirt off later in his speech. This, of course, was in advance of Kid Rock’s performance, which would be another example of the European disconnect with the United States.
We had Joe Biden dropping out of the race shortly after the Republican National Convention, and he then expedited the process of forcing through a nominee for the party which pledged to save democracy without ever even allowing an actual vote. That nominee was none other than Kamala Harris, as we know. She quickly selected Tim Walz as her running mate; from my understanding, he was the originator of the “Vance is weird” movement. The guy with the most flamboyant non-verbals I’ve ever seen out of a politician, the guy who greatly sensationalized his own military service, who implemented having tampons in boys’ bathrooms at schools, and the guy who falsely stated that he was at Tiananmen Square alleged that J.D. Vance was weird. Vance. You know, the guy who came from nothing, led his mother through drug addiction and successfully out the other side of it, who joined the military and used his G.I. Bill to become highly educated, and then married his beautiful wife and is currently raising three children. The weird one. Anyway…
Not much longer after that, we got “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs.” Now look, you could say that is a more complicated story than what the media portrayed it to be, but the delivery by itself was simply outstanding.
We had the multiple blunders from Kamala during mid-to-long form interviews. Well, they were supposed to be long form in many cases, but forty minute interviews were doctored by the media and cut in half in order to curate an image. Simultaneously, Joe Biden decided to sport a “MAGA” hat. We had future Hall of Fame receiver Antonio Brown (Hall of Fame on the merits, in my opinion) get involved in the Trump campaign and begin a social media operation of legendary proportions.
As the momentum shifted in Donald Trump’s favor, roast comedian Tony Hinchcliffe decided to call Puerto Rico a patch of garbage floating in the ocean. I must say that the origin of the joke involves a Puerto Rican landfill which is over capacity, and it is my understanding that Hinchcliffe cares deeply about waste in our waters. I do too, so I feel the need to bring this up. That said, the joke occurred at a Trump rally. Not a good idea. I thought it might hurt him until Joe Biden came out the next day and said that Trump’s supporters are all garbage. In other words, half the country is garbage. The timing was so epic that it almost seemed as if he were deliberately running cover for the Trump campaign. Biden proceeded several days later to the bite the feet of babies at a Halloween celebration, and then said that “Republicans are the type of guys you want to just slap in the ass” a day later. Needless to say, I don’t imagine he’ll be completely leaving the spotlight once he’s out of office.
My Thoughts on This Week:
In full disclosure, I come at this from a slight Republican perspective. I’m very much a centrist in my thinking, but I nonetheless find that my views average out somewhere more consistent with Republicans than Democrats. I’m happy to get into where I am one day issue by issue, as I’m all over the map, but that’s not the purpose of this section.
I’ll briefly look back at the primary. I was all in on Ron DeSantis. The way he led his state through COVID was a feat I appreciated. I also appreciated his relative decency. Most importantly, he was a competent statesman. That’s obvious still today, as his response to incidents and natural disasters is a model for the rest of the country to follow. I have a background in incident management myself and am always inspired when watching him and his staff work through these challenges. I was able to overlook that he is to the right of me on the ideological spectrum because of all the aforementioned items.
That didn’t work out. I lamented that. I failed to consider that show business is a bigger part of national politics than anyone wants to admit. That’s unfortunate, in my opinion, but it is the reality. Some of the things which were said about Ron DeSantis and his family were things I’ll never forget, and I’ll always consider some of what the Trump camp pushed in the primary to be filthy. That is to put it mildly. I struggled for a long time to get on board with Trump in this election. I was never considering a vote for Biden, and certainly not Harris. In fact, Harris was the reason I was really pulling for Biden to at least make it through this term.
When Robert F. Kennedy jumped on board and pushed a few issues which were important to me–health reform to address chronic illness, food and pharma reform, environmental consciousness–I became more open to the idea of Trump. When Tulsi Gabbard became more involved, it helped the case for me. As I learned more and more about J.D. Vance, I realized what a superstar he is. He really is a veritable phenomenon, in my eyes. If it were possible to take Trump’s closer to center views, DeSantis’ competence and leadership, and Vance’s perseverance and rhetoric, you’d have the perfect republican. Since that is impossible, I’ll have to look at this campaign as a coalition.
Trump by himself is likely not someone I could have voted for this time. The coalition of Trump, J.D. Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy–that is a collective that I can easily support.
My three biggest issues are immigration, foreign policy, and addressing health/chronic illness. The weighted average of those issues gives me comfort in supporting Trump. I hope he empowers his circle should he win. We have serious challenges on the border, the world has destabilized drastically in the last few years, and the vast majority of our military-aged demographic is not healthy enough to even serve.
As for the election, I could be wrong in this. Most the pollsters I follow seem to have Trump with a slight lead. Legacy sources have it completely unclear. Social media is nothing but propaganda out the ass at the moment. That goes for both sides I also have no idea how anyone is supposed to poll in this cycle. I’ve received several spam calls and texts from supposed pollsters throughout this cycle (obvious spam), so I tended to ignore all of them. Maybe one of them was real, maybe not. Point being, most rational people probably behaved similarly. So how anyone obtained reasonable data is beyond me.
I think it could swing substantially one way or the other in comparison to how the polls are reporting it. What I will say, for what it’s worth, is that internal polling on both sides is reported to be showing a Trump advantage. I think he’ll win the handful of swing states in question, save for potentially Michigan. Michigan is extremely difficult (though not impossible) for Republicans to win statewide. I can’t believe I’m saying this, either, but I think Trump ran a pretty good campaign this time. The electorate became a little more immune to the fact he says ridiculous shit. Some actually accepted that often times he is just funny. I sometimes wish he would have just become a standup comedian because he is a natural at it–love him or hate him, I’ll stand by that thought.
So I expect a Trump win. Will I be shocked if I’m wrong? Not at all. I think it could be close; I also think it could be a landslide. Vamos a ver.
Most Importantly:
I’m looking forward to getting beyond this election. Despite the comedy I started this blog with, presidential elections tear people apart. People disown people over it. There are fights, confrontations, everything. What makes us human are the things which unite us–literature, music, art, sports, fitness challenges, food…generally things which have little to do with political leanings. I look forward to such civility again.
I also look forward to being able to dive more deeply into philosophical topics and political issues more granularly without the tribalism that infects campaign season. Nobody fits perfectly into one ideology if they’re being objective, which is why it’s pointless to attach oneself to any one politician or pundit.
As I write this…it’ll all be over soon enough. The commercials, texts, phone calls, emails, all of it–we’re almost there. -P.K.