Remember, Thou Art Barnacle

The following was originally posted to my blog, here. Please vote for Kamala Harris today.

A serenity prayer for Election Day 2024.?

The Ann Selzer Iowa poll, regarded as the gold standard in all of political polling, shows Harris is up +3 in a state that Trump won by +8 in 2016 and by +9 in 2020.?

And you are a barnacle.?

The election better markets have Trump up by +19 (as of noon EST, 11/5/24), and bettors don’t care if people are ashamed to admit who they’re voting for—they’re in it for the money and only the money.

And you are a barnacle.?

Mainstream pollsters have admitted to weighting their polls heavily in favor of Trump, to ensure they don’t end up with egg on their face like they did in 2016 and 2020 again. International whales are taking out huge bets in favor of Trump, swinging the markets, and right wing think tanks are flooding the zone with bullshit polls to artificially inflate Trump’s odds in the aggregate. And even if the popular vote is overwhelmingly for Harris, Trump’s team is already laying the narrative groundwork to support a Stop the Steal campaign that, by the time you read this, will likely already have started.?

All of that is true.?

And you are still a barnacle.?

You are not piloting the ship. You are not the captain of the ship. You are not laying out the potential courses the ship could take, you are not deciding which course the ship will take, you are not scouting ahead.?

You aren’t even a paying, ticket-holding passenger on the ship. You are a barnacle on the hull, deep underwater, and unfortunately, there isn’t really anything you can individually do to affect where this ship goes. Sorry!?

This isn’t an invitation to check out, or become apathetic, or (heaven forbid) embrace doomerism. Quite the opposite: this is a reminder of who you actually are in this entire scenario, of the power you do not have, and of the power you definitely do.?

After the 2016 election, some small part of myself was convinced I could change the outcome if I just posted hard enough. If I fought enough of my friends on Facebook, texted angrily, and tweeted from enough protests and rallies, somehow Trump would no longer be President-elect.?

All it did was, literally, give me a rash. I got so angry for so long that my skin started to break out in hives. A doctor friend more-than-half seriously prescribed that I “get the fuck off Facebook” until my skin returned to normal. Trump was still President-elect, the next 8 years happened the way they did, and here we are today.?

You’re going to hear a lot today: polls are tightening! Votes still aren’t in from this critical precinct! If these trends hold, then we can expect to know something by such-and-such a time! The race is as tight as can be! White supremacists are threatening violence to avenge a dead squirrel!?

(The squirrel thing is 100% real, and my god, I really wish I was joking.)?

Remember, through all of it, that you are not the captain of the ship. You are a barnacle on its hull, and there is very little you can personally do to change it at this point. You’ve already done all you can do—or maybe you haven’t, but even then, you’ve already done all you’re going to do.?

And as you stress, and consider how inebriated you’re going to get, and decide on which web pages you’ll be refreshing every thirty seconds, and stress out some more, remember too that Donald Trump hasn’t ever won the popular vote in his entire miserable life. He only won the electoral college, a racist system explicitly designed to empower slaveholders in southern states, one time, and ever since then, he has lost every election he’s declared for.?

More people did vote for the woman candidate the last time one ran for President, and more people have voted for the candidate of color than their opponent every single time a person of color has run for President on a major party ticket.?

And women have already made up a larger share of early voting than men in this, the first general election post-Dobbs, than ever before in American history. (53% women to 44% men.)?

So as you stress and consider your inebriates and say to yourself, “How can it possibly be this close?!” for the umpteenth time today, remember too that Donald Trump is a fascistic, deeply unpopular person (let alone President) backed by an even more deeply weird party, and that almost the entirety of your experience of this election is being filtered through the lens of a national, for-profit media that doesn’t care who wins, so long as you keep watching.?

Remember, you are not the captain of the ship, you are not the helmsman, you are not the map-maker.?

You are a barnacle.?

Vote for Harris, vote Democrat in your local and state races, and trust your other barnacles.

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