Dear Luv Doc,
All of my friends seem really confident that Biden is going to win the election, but I remember feeling this way four years ago. I think we live in more of a bubble than we think we do. I know people are complaining about Trump saying he won’t leave office if Biden wins, but what if Trump legitimately does win? It’s happened before. What if the last election wasn’t a fluke? What if we really do live in an idiocracy?
– Sleepless in South Austin
You want to hear something crazy, Sleepless? By the time this column appears in print, you and I and presumably the rest of America will already be living in whatever idiotic fascist hellscape/enlightened socialist utopia emerges from Tuesday’s election – which is already on track to have one of the largest voter turnouts in American history. Say what you will about our insufferable president, he sure has a knack for motivating the electorate. I’d like to think that this surge of political participation is a modern-day storming of the Bastille, but it could just as likely be the last vicious lunge of the cornered rat of white American hegemony.
Either outcome promises to be ugly if not outright terrifying. Gun manufacturers, gold hoarders, and purveyors of survivalist wares are pissing themselves over murmurs of an impending apocalypse. I have seen a disturbing number of sensitive, anxious, urban intellectuals cautiously confess to worries of Hawaiian-shirted bubbas descending on our fair city to exact revenge for their insulted doughy, orange-haired hero. The fear is real, and nothing fuels the flames of fear like stupidity. If the last four years have taught us anything, it’s that Americans are stupid enough to be scared of just about anything – especially each other. It’s like the entire country is in a drunken dick-punching match.
Now, given that the election is already over, it doesn’t do any good to rehash the sins of the past. Did we allow Christian fundamentalist crazies to critically undermine public education? Yes, we did. Did we allow Wall Street to fleece the American public out of hundreds of billions of dollars with zero consequences? Of course we did. Did we get pantsed by Russian trolls on social media with the entire world watching? Yuppers. And why? Because that’s exactly the kind of stupid shit stupid people do. Then they start yelling at each other about how stupid they are until the cacophony of stupidity is so immense that they reelect the biggest buffoon of all, but here is the deal: not on my watch.
No sir, I have a plan that just might end this pandemic of stupidity once and for all. Unfortunately, it involves time travel. Now, I know heretofore we’ve been too dumb to figure out how to do it, but I am confident that sometime before Tuesday I will work that shit out and travel back in time to Queens, New York, in early October 1945 and cockblock Fred Christ Trump (complex, much?) for the entire month so that little Don Juan is never conceived. Yes, I have that kind of talent. Will there be a butterfly effect? Perhaps. You might have to do without The Apprentice, but on the upside, President Clinton is going to do great things in her second term. Oh, and if I fail, which is unlikely, let’s keep our fingers crossed that the American electorate has got my six.
This article appears in November 6 • 2020.
