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Phew!
Like much of the world, the election has caused a lot of anxiety and stress, particularly over the past week. First of all, my ballot never arrived so my vote won’t be counted. My thoughts about this are that the post office didn’t process the mail properly the second time due to there already being a postmark on it. I could be wrong about it and perhaps my ballot is still somewhere in the postal pathways. Or maybe it’s also gone into the ether. LOL
My heart sank when I saw that Biden didn’t get a landslide win. This causes me more despair than before because the president still isn’t seen for what he is: an ugly person who has used the office to sow discord and hate amongst the public and to line his pockets. Among many things. Most of my family still voted for him and still overwhelmingly support him. After all, the MSM is all fake news and all…sigh.
But early Sunday morning, before I went to bed, I heard that it was official that Biden won. I was elated and days later I am still feeling elated. I still have that anxiety about the rest but at the least the current president is going to be out. I just hope any investigations/lawsuits don’t go all that far.
I will never say Biden would have been my first choice for President. But overall he’s a decent man and I trust him to consider all the people not just those that bow down to him.
I am now thinking about what I will use for my profile image on Facebook on inauguration day. It’s been nearly four years using a black background and I want to come back with a bit of a splash. These next couple of months are going to be slow for me.
Already I have heard Biden speak and it is so refreshing to have someone who isn’t all about himself. He spoke of handling the covid-19 crisis and implored people to take safe measures because it’s the right thing to do as an American, no matter who a person has voted for. I only caught the end of his speech so I’m not sure what came before. But he’s taking action in a way that hasn’t happened at the executive level as yet.
I haven’t heard Harris’ speech(es) yet but from all I’ve heard, she’s going to prove an active and useful VP. It’s so cool to have someone with such a diverse background in such a high level position.
And how about Stacy Abrahms in Georgia? I can see she is going to go places and her work right now is so important.
I am still worried about the state of the country but now I am encouraged and a bit hopeful.
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Absentee
It’s that time of year to request an absentee ballot for the upcoming election. I know I should have requested this earlier but I seem to have mostly thought about it when I wasn’t in the right place to handle it. I tried doing it on my phone but had a couple of issues. Anyway, I got it done today and it still tells me I need to send the paper copy. We ended up getting window envelopes last time we bought any and we rarely send mail so we have heaps left and they don’t seal properly. Plus we didn’t mean to have window ones. So I spent an hour trying to tape a printed address over it due my general incompetence with tape, I guess. LOL I did get it sorted out and then it cost me $3.20 AUD to post it. And it was such a pretty stamp I thought it was such a waste to send it where it wouldn’t be appreciated. Tonight I saw I got an email back from the copy I sent online and was told I actually didn’t have to send a paper copy. Sigh.
Looking forward to getting my ballot. I’m seriously considering making an appointment to drop it off at the consulate to speed things along. As much of a hassle as going to the consulate is.
Another American I know here already has a ballot but is delaying the opening of the mail due to covid-19. She’s in an area where cases have been spiking so I guess that’s understandable. Not sure whether I will be too worried for mine when it gets here unless community transmission returns. (We had two people who flew to Western Australia without an exemption and then they broke quarantine in the hotel to visit someone in the area. I can only hope they weren’t contagious. All it takes is one person after all. I think they came from South Australia so it’s probably okay but it’s really bad when people do this sort of thing. )
In related news, my blocking of a family members posts on Facebook has left me blissfully unaware of what is being posted. Less stress for me. Yay!
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Still stewing
It’s now eleven days post-election and I am still stewing about the result. I remember when Al Gore was robbed of the election in 2000 and I don’t remember feeling anywhere near this mad. My stomach is churning quite as much but it is still churning. Part of me is so glad I am not there but I think if I were there I might feel more equipped to take an active part in things.
Fortunately there’s not nearly as much garbage being posted as there was. But there are still jabs at Obama, which aren’t in the least bit warranted. I don’t get the hatred. I like Obama and always have. He has been somewhat disappointing in some areas but as presidents go he’s been decent and he’s a class act.
An interesting point is that I didn’t really care for Hilary Clinton all that much in the early days of campaigning. I leant towards Bernie Sanders back then although I wasn’t sure he was capable of winning against anyone from the Republican party. It’s hard to know how he really would have done but I honestly doubt he’d have beaten Trump either. After all, he’s a socialist and many of those same people voting for Trump hate socialism at all levels. Later on in the campaign I started considering Clinton more seriously. I think she had the experience and power to get things done in ways that Sanders possibly wouldn’t have. Towards the end of the election season, my feelings towards her were more positive than ever. I think what got to me was the way she held herself against all that on-going antagonism. It reminded me of when Julia Gillard was prime minister and receiving similar treatment although not on anywhere the same scale as has been levelled at Clinton. Hillary stood head and shoulders above the opponent right to the end. My respect for her has grown considerably.
It would have been really cool for there to be a female president. That doesn’t mean I was ever going to vote for her just to have a woman in office though. In the end there just was no competition to beat her.
Meanwhile, I look at my Facebook feed and I see the hatred is alive and well towards Obama. I had to look beyond my filters to see that but it was there. My cousin (who isn’t gullible like so many in my family) posted a story about Trump claiming Ford jobs stayed in the US because of him. Or something along those lines. The comments on that article proved to me that people are happy to believe anything that agrees with their view, regardless of facts. Also that two people can read a news story and come away with totally different information. I don’t get how that can be so different.
Although I don’t want to continue having the churning stomach I don’t want that anger to go away because I want to have that motivation to fight back in any way I can. Even though I live in Australia, the United States is my home and I am worried that it will turn into a place I can’t return.
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Despondency
It was another night with not much sleep. I stayed up until I was so tired I was sure I would fall asleep. And I did sleep for a couple hours but woke up and had to force myself back to sleep. It still wasn’t enough but I think it will get me through the day.
While I am incredibly angry that Trump was elected, that’s not really the source of my despondency. When I made the decision to cut off all conversation about politics with much of my family was when it became obvious that the problem for us is a fundamental difference in our views. There’s just no way I can bring someone else around to my thinking because I see the world so differently and I always have. I’ve been made to feel a traitor to family and country because I don’t agree with what most of them think. I have never been all that great at persuasion so it’s not even like I made any real attempt to change minds within this group. My main goal had always been to call out lies and misinformation but it didn’t make any difference and just increased the gulf between them and me. The funny thing is I ran across two articles in the past couple of weeks with more reasonable arguments against Hilary as president. Sadly I never saw anything like this from those trying to sway my opinion.
The worst part of all, though, is the meanness that comes along with these differences. It was bad enough to see all the name-calling of anyone with any association with liberals or liberal views. Some of these posts on social media were directed at me specifically and at me within a tiny group of family members who didn’t see things the same. But the worst thing I saw was after the result was announced and there was much mockery of those supporting Hilary. It was uncalled for. If Hilary had won and the conservatives had done this I would have been equally upset. It just made me feel that we are at a low point in humanity when there is so little regard for other humans, especially those different from us. I say this from a point of considerable privilege as a white person living in a western country.
On top of this I was also very dismayed to see reports of non-peaceful protests occurring. If these reports are true then I am truly disappointed. At the same time I do imagine that had Hilary won, there would have been not just protests but widespread riots throughout the country. This was a big source of anxiety for me even if she had won. Sigh…
Meanwhile, it’s a matter of moving on in some way at this point. I can’t change what’s happened so it’s important to brace myself to deal with the fallout. For the time being I plan to keep some distance from most of my family. That said, this was made a bit difficult because one of those people just happened to have a birthday yesterday. I really wanted to stay silent at this time but I wasn’t going to be ignore a birthday just because I was feeling angry…it’s not like it’s this person fault to have a birthday…of course, this person was really happy so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Sigh!
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There were kangaroos
It’s been a long and anxiety-filled nightmare of a day. I know I’m among many around the world feeling the same and I guess there is some comfort in not being the only one. But it really was difficult. I think for the first time all the networks here had rolling coverage throughout the morning and into the afternoon. I don’t normally watch television much during the day but it was hard to break away from. The Scientist sent me off to refill a prescription in late morning and it was a case of taking up way too little time. When I returned I made the decision to get out of the house and away from media as much as possible. My destination was our local Whiteman Park to do a long bit of walking while listening to music on my phone.
This should have been simple enough but I realised just about the time I reached the entrance to the park that I’d left my earphones at home. I often can zone out while walking so the only course of action was to return home and retrieve the earphones. It’s not that it’s far away but it’s tedious to take the time to do that trip again. Just before noon I arrived at the park and found decent parking without having to weave through the many parking lots around the village centre. Once there I applied sunscreen and then set off. I realise it would have been more effective to do the sunscreen at home but better late than not at all.
My walk was on the longest trail, which as a short and long version. I’d done the short version, albeit in a long way (after taking a wrong turn) on Saturday but today I wanted to do a lot of walking. For the most part the walk wasn’t eventful. took along my camera and took lots of photos and listened to music. I tried to listen to a Crowded House album that I find pretty soothing to hear. Sadly I just wasn’t able to zone out even though the music was pleasing when I wasn’t distracted by angry thoughts. Once that finished I moved to an Augie March album that I’ve been listening too regularly on walks. It’s got some amazingly beautiful music but the subject matter can be rather unsettling. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. Strangely I found this music worked a lot better for me and the album runs over an hour so it kept me going for longer.
But despite the improvement the effect of music on my nerves, I was still quite agitated and often found myself in various states of mind that unpleasant. My stomach had been churning all this time and I’d been unable to eat anything all day. Still I didn’t feel hungry and I wasn’t even tired from walking after several kilometres.
A brief relief came when I came across some kangaroos near the Kangaroo Flats station on the park’s railway line. At first I only saw a couple but there were actually at least half a dozen within my sights. I even managed to take several photos and my trouble thought escaped for that minute or two that I was there. It was a rather blessed relief in a sense to feel the weight lifted.
The rest of the walk was fairly uneventful. I finished one trail and then went down another pathway to another part of the park. In the end I walked over nine kilometres and still didn’t feel very weary at the end of it aside from a bit of discomfort on the ball of my foot which was already irritated by too much friction on another walk.
I did eventually get a sort of appetite after forcing myself to eat a few nuts I keep in the car for emergency purpose (hunger sickness). And now it’s late at night again and I don’t even feel all that sleepy even though I got very little sleep last night. Hopefully I will be tired enough to sleep anyway tonight.
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Absentee voting
I told a bit of a white lie last week when I told certain family members that I have already voted. It actually didn’t get sent off until yesterday. This time I was sent an email with pages to print out for the ballot and the signed form that has to be included with it. It wasn’t too hard to do although I ended up doing a bit of cutting and pasting of address and envelope labels. Actually the worst part was trying use packing tape to stick the labels onto the envelopes since it was hard to find the end it took some time to get the tape without it splitting. It cost me almost $3 to send it from here, which seems a lot more expensive than the last time I did this. The previous time they sent me pre-printed information by mail and had a smaller envelope that wasn’t covered with tape. :)
I was hoping that Game Fanatic would vote too, but it’s pretty much impossible for him because he doesn’t have a last place resided in the US. In some states children can use the parent’s voting address but that’s not the case for Texas. I now regret changing my address to Texas because North Carolina does allow it.
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Politics and family
I admit to more or less blowing my top a couple days ago after seeing the umpteenth post on my Facebook feed about the current US election. Personally I wouldn’t have a problem with the posts if there was anything valid in them. But they almost always tend to be stuff spouted from some right-wing news group and almost always full of inaccuracies. What tipped me over the edge were the ones about the woman from the beauty pageant saying how much of a gentleman Trump was at the time. And the one where it listed several good things Trump has done, Apparently this makes Trump a good guy. Sigh. It’s interesting that I don’t see those from the opposite view posting such vitriolic material.
I went into a mad fury, replying to the ones that most incensed me. In hindsight, it was truly a waste of time. The ones posting are almost always family members. It’s been said to me that I just don’t understand what’s really happening back home because I am not there. Because, you know, we live in a backwater here in Australia. I’ve been told that I don’t have respect for the military and veterans in the past just because I don’t believe that they should be elevated above everyone else just because they are veterans. I don’t get this deifying veterans business that seems to happen so much back home. I don’t disrespect them but they aren’t the only ones who do good things for the country. It’s baffling.
The reality after much back and forth on a number of posts is that it seems the message I come away with on reading or viewing something is obviously totally different than what certain others in my family see. The most telling example is I can read a Snopes article debunking something and see all the sources attributed and another person will just see that one source mentioned that isn’t going to prove anything and claim that Snopes isn’t to be trusted even though this particular information may be presented more as background than the fact check.  In any case, it seems that most people already have a very firm opinion and it isn’t likely to be changed by anyone sharing yet another “proof”.
For years, I avoided engaging in discussion about politics with many family members because it was obvious no good would come of it. But then I was criticised for avoiding this and so sometimes did engage. Sadly, the time has come to return to that rule because it’s been proved again and again that no good comes from this sort of discussion. We are all just too entrenched in our views and it feels as though nothing I can attempt to convey will ever get through and nothing presented to me is valid enough to ever change my view.
On a related note, I happened to see an NPR article that went through various issues in this election and the views of four candidates (including the Libertarian and Greens candidate). To me the only real choices are the major parties since there’s no way of voting for a minor party without having no say on the final outcomes. This is where I find the Australia preference system works far better because a minor candidate can be chosen by listing which candidates to choose if the first doesn’t win. Anyway, it’s funny because I haven’t seen too much posted about most of these issues in recent months so I kind of forgot about them. Not surprisingly, my views were fairly close to those of Clinton, so I think I can feel fairly assured that I am choosing correctly for myself when I vote.