If you had to choose, if you had to choose

Disclaimer: These are all my personal thoughts on voting and politics and the upcoming election. You may have different thoughts. If you do, no offense, but I’m not interested in hearing them. I welcome you to publish them on your own blog. Thanks in advance! 

I’ve always been a big nerd about voting. I love it. I even loved when we were kids and they’d set up fake voting for us so we could pretend we were participating (and, of course, get stickers). Once, my fifth grade class went to hear George Bush speak when he was running for reelection and visited my hometown. Our class was featured on the news and I lied about how I’d vote for Ross Perot if I could vote so I could be on TV. (Good morals, little Jennie.) 

Despite my first election being the 2000 presidential mess, I still get excited about voting every time. I’m old enough to remember voting with the little pokey thing that led to the hanging chad issues that plagued that election. At only 18, I’m not sure I immediately understood all the repercussions of who won, but I certainly did after 9/11 and an unnecessary war. 

In 2004, I was veerrrrry excited about voting against GWB, even if I wasn’t excited about voting for John Kerry...I mean...who was, am I right? I remember being so disappointed and confused when GWB still won. It was one of the first times I remember feeling completely at odds with a large portion of the country (and my family), which I guess was good practice for 2016. 

2008 was the first time I was actually EXCITED to vote for someone. We invited people over on election night to watch the results come in, and it felt somehow appropriate that we got the news from Jon Stewart, who had stewarded us through the past eight years of chaos. I remember going to bed and having trouble sleeping, and waking up in the morning wondering if it was really real (again, similar to 2016 but the feelings were SO MUCH BETTER.) 

Like many of you, 2016 was...something. I again wasn’t incredibly excited to vote for the Democratic candidate, but I was absolutely flabbergasted (FLABBERGASTED) that anyone could possibly be falling for Trump’s whole deal. It bothered me that people I knew and loved and respected were taken in by his rhetoric. I mean, he is a ridiculous character. He has been...forever? And he doesn’t say anything of substance. Seriously. Look at a transcript of anything he says and it looks like absolute nonsense. (I mean, it sounds like nonsense when he says it out loud, too.) 

After he won, I remember going into work the next day and the office was quieter than I’d ever heard it. If you looked at most of my coworkers, you could tell we’d all spent a significant amount of time crying. We were confused.

I take voting personally. I know not everyone does. But I think we should. As a middle-class white woman, my life doesn’t significantly change depending on who is in power. But other people’s lives are greatly affected, as we’ve seen over the past four years.

This is the first time in my life where I do feel like my life has been greatly affected by who is in power, because I’m fighting cancer during a pandemic that has been woefully mishandled by the Trump administration. Trump himself has been integral in downplaying the seriousness of the situation, working up his followers to disbelieve scientists, to not wear masks, to just being a general fucking idiot. Because of this, I’ve never seen any of my doctor’s or nurse’s faces. I have to be screened constantly. I’ve had four COVID tests. My parents couldn’t visit me during my surgery and, in fact, had to cancel their trip out here because someone at my dad’s office came to work positive for COVID and they both came down with symptoms. 

And still, I know I have friends and family who voted or are planning on voting for Trump AGAIN, not all necessarily because they like him, but because they’ve always voted Republican or they’ve been brainwashed by FOX News to believe that Biden is going to usher in the socialist apocalypse or some bullshit. And to be honest, it hurts my feelings and it makes me feel deeply ashamed that people I love could vote for this man. It hurt last time, but it hurts more this time. This is a man who doesn’t believe in anything. Who will say LITERALLY ANYTHING, whether it’s true or not. He’s racist and delights in his racist followers and stokes that racism for violent ends. He brings out the absolute worst in people. He’s declared war on the media and he once openly mocked a disabled reporter, on camera. He’s cruel. HE’S AN ASSHOLE. 

You don’t have to take my word for it, though. If you somehow are still undecided and haven’t voted yet, here’s an article outlining the buttload of fucked up shit Trump has done.

I still have hope, but it’s a cautious hope. It’s a hope based in all the people I see voting early, in all those who are calling and texting and writing letters to remind people to vote, in those who have been paying attention to what’s been happening the past four years, who saw this coming in 2016 and are desperate to change things. I don’t have faith in the voting process anymore, given how much voter suppression has been going on just IN THE PAST WEEK, but I hope. I hope all goes well. I hope we all wake up next Wednesday feeling like we can breathe a bit easier, even just for a moment.