Election Day for the last few cycles has been an event in my life: Staying up late In Switzerland for Obama in 2008, the tears of anger and protests of 2016 and the tears of joy in 2020. This year was no exception. With the kids at BMX for most of the night, I had planned to grab takeout on my way home from work, watch the coverage that night alone and head to bed with the results still to be determined based on how close the polls were.
Even before I got home, I knew it wasn’t going to end how I wanted. And so, unlike every other year, I put off checking my phone or results. Instead I ate dinner alone at the table, I briefly looked at the exit polling data online, and then I put on the Eras Tour movie.
Did I cry, yup. Was it due to the needle moving closer and closer to red? The weeks and months of stress leading up to the moment? Or just Taylor’s musical genius with lyrics that cut through even the most hardened of hearts? I might never know. But I definitely cried. And then unlike 2016, I went numb.
Wednesday morning I had to explain to the kids (who were both super excited and hopeful just the day before) that my candidate lost, but that it was okay because that is what democracy is… sometimes people have different opinions and different ideas and we all get a vote on which represents us best as a nation. While the words came out well rehearsed it still sucked and everyone was in a bad mood.
Since then, it has been a mixture of disassociating and wildly guessing what the future holds. Are we moving back to Germany? Do we need to buy gold bars? Should we buy a German barn instead? Is this our Roman Empire and we should expect a similar decline that followed their election of Julius Cesar, their own authoritarian, cult of personality (seriously I would love a historian’s take in this one)? How long will the stock markets rally before the national debt, deregulation, and the gutting of the government destroys our currency and livelihood (aka how activist investors or Elon Musk gut and destroy everything that makes an organization amazing all for some short term gains)? Have we really fallen to the lure of rosy retrospection thinking things were better in the past and forgetting all of the shit? Am I crazy and this will actually be a good thing for our kids’ futures?
My brain has short-circuited on all of the unknowns and what ifs that could come our way.
So with nothing else to do, I will make some popcorn, stockpile my canned goods and hope for the best while expecting the worst.
