I think I’m probably done with national electoral politics. I mean, I’m still going to vote, and give Democrats a few bucks when I can spare it. But as far as closely following national politics as a kind of hobby, as I have done for so many years? Yeah, no.
I was thinking about the brilliant riff I posted from the author Jeremy Zilber the other day, in which he likened the recounting of this election to trying to explain a bizarre dream to someone (“Donald Trump was running for president, but he was WAY worse than the real Donald Trump, but the media took him seriously like he was a real candidate, and the polls showed it might actually be a close election because Clinton did something weird with her email or something, and then there was something about Trump being a predator but nobody seemed to care very much, and he kept saying he’d lock her up if he won or maybe start a revolution if he lost, and also he loved Putin for some reason…”). In a related vein, I feel like American politics now reminds me of nothing so much as a once beloved TV show that has jumped the shark, where the writers are just throwing crazy and wildly implausible shit at the wall, having lost any semblance of realism, consistency, or coherent narrative.
*LOST *was guilty of this, as was Battlestar Galactica and House of Cards. Now it’s “House of Trump”, and I think I’m out (after kind of absorbing what has happened and reading and commenting on a few postmortems over the next couple days). I’m going to stick to TV shows that make a little sense and have some respect for the intelligence of the viewer. Anyone else feel me on this? Or are you even more interested in seeing how Bizarro World politics plays out in the coming years? It will be a shit show, that’s for sure! I just don’t think I have the stomach for it.