Archive: Opinions

 
Well, that was a letdown.  All the hype about Election Day and we don't know who won.  In these days of instant everything, we're wired for instant gratification.  Knowing that, President Trump has taken the initiative and claimed he has won. “As far as I’m concerned, we already have won it,” Trump said.  Except that Wednesday morning Biden had 238 electoral votes and 50% of the popular vote to Trump's 213 and 48%.  Biden said, "Be patient. It ain’t over until every vote is counted—every ballot is counted."

Still can you imagine the TV Talking Heads' feelings about last night?  It's bad enough they have to talk incessantly to fill the 24/7 news shows, and worse that they had to stay up all night, but in past elections at least they got the payoff of being able to call the elections.  What a rush it must have been to proclaim "Trump is the winner!" or "Obama is our new president!" or "Bush wins!"-- oh wait a minute... that one had to go to the Supreme Court before we really knew who won.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that in-person Election Day voting would favor Trump and mail-ins would favor Biden.  So not for the first time, what Trump said is the opposite of what is actually happening.  But even if he eventually turns out to have won, why say something so blatantly not true?  You don't even need fact checkers for this one.

At the moment Trump (and Biden, too, if you think about it) is Schrödinger's President -- he is our next president while simultaneously not being our next president.  We won't really know until the ballot box is open and we see whether the cat is alive or dead, so to speak.

In these days of instant communication, finding out anything you want to know on the Internet whether it is true or not, Amazon Prime, and so on, it is probably good for us as a society to have to wait, especially after all the emotional energy that has been heaped on this presidential election.  It will likely be weeks before we actually know who gets the next four years in the white mansion. 

While we're waiting, no need to listen to the pundits.  They're just filling time like the rest of us.  Well not like the rest of us.  They're trying to sound knowledgeable, using TV-speak to try to mask the fact that they don't really know either and would rather be home watching reruns of Friends that coming up with the spew they earn their living mouthing off with.

All we can do is try to be patient and concentrate on other things until the last vote is counted.  Wouldn't it be great if instead of every other post on social media being political, we saw more cute cat videos?  Surely Schrödinger would approve of that!

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