Phantom Limbs

The craziest thing about this crazy-ass year is the fact that reality has become stupider, not stranger, than fiction. If 2020 were a film or TV show, critics would lambaste the writing for being simultaneously unrealistic in the Lynchian surreality of its depiction of an empire on the verge of collapse and prone to believable but mind-numbingly quotidian flights of drudgery.

But this is our life now. We are all trapped at home, except when we're not because we farcically decided that the pandemic was over mostly because we were just tired of the lockdown and wanted to sit in a goddamn restaurant again.

Presidential candidates, rather than engage with each other to demonstrate to the electorate how their styles, goals, and personalities contrast, hold dualling televised townhalls at the same time so they can speak to the people who already support them. I can't complain because the previous debate was such a shitshow, but this development would have been laughed out of the writer's room as being just a little on the nose as a symbolic depiction of the disconnect and parallel echo chambers of the American people.

The election lurches forward as we show all the signs of falling for the same stupid tricks that have been played on us in the past. Culturally, we shamble forward with the momentum of the horse race because at least it gives us something novel to focus on. Both sides paint a portrait of the other that allows the American people to project their fear onto; creating an evil that must be stopped and the candidate of your party of choice is the only one who can do it.

Sadly, both sides are right. although I would certainly argue that one is more right than the other. Then again, so would everyone else. That's how they get you.

So: ahead an election, potential open revolt depending on the results of that election but a certain amount of instability guaranteed either way. Behind: a litany of dangers that sound like rejected verses from We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. The specter of war with Iran, impeachment, fires, hurricanes, plague, murder hornets, lockdowns, masks, distancing, riots, police shootings, arson, vans full of mythical antifa super soldiers, proud boys getting google bombed so bad that you can't search the name of their organization without seeing images of two dudes kissing, conspiracy theories, cults, empty stadiums, and it goes on and on and on.