It is 11:45 p.m. as I write this. I have been feeling so much anxiety these last few weeks as we arrived at election day tomorrow. It feels familiar but also, I think, a little different. Last time, back in 2016, I was so fed up with Trump, with his malevolence, his loutishness, his threats and his attacks, and I was so hoping that Clinton would win. She did win the popular vote by a margin of almost three million votes, but this electoral collage business is making a mockery of democracy in this country and giving power to a small segment of the population that lives in agricultural states (or the Midwest) and is not representative of the rest of the country. It is a failed system that has, in my lifetime, elected two Republican presidents, George W in 2000 and Trump in 2016, who have been calamitous.
Now, we wait for the election coverage for tomorrow with a sense of crisis. We all are fearing the worst, because Trump has stoked confrontation, and it might be terrible tomorrow. I have a feeling things will be better this time, so what I fear is the reaction. I will not be going anywhere tomorrow, I will still be teaching my Zoom classes at home, and will stay at home for the rest of the weeks with no outings planned. I need to be here to try to reassure my family, but I will not be watching any news coverage. I will be engaged in a complete news blackout for tomorrow, I do not want to hear the voting results until Wednesday.
The good thing about living in California is that we are not a swing state. We are overwhelmingly in the Democratic fold, so the two parties pretty much leave us alone. There is fundraising here, yes, but no ads, no wall-to-wall constant barrages of publicity for one or the other candidate. It used to be different in the 90s when races where competitive, and I hated it back then, but now, we don't see them campaigning here, which is good. It is also bad because we are taken for granted, and we are the straw man of the Republicans who always like to hold up California as the example of what the other states may become if they don't vote for them.
Yes, it is expensive here, way too expensive, and we can't buy a house. I can barely afford my life here, and I am not buying a house, I am sharing expenses with family members. The traffic is terrible, we are prone to heat and wind and fires, such as the Blue Ridge Fire which was set by they furious Santa Ana Winds last week. We also have earthquakes from time to time. So what. We are cosmopolitan, we are urban, we are diverse, we have so many cultural institutions, and we have amazing natural landmarks. And we have history and nearness to Mexico, and proximity to Asia as well (relatively speaking). And we have very robust industries which pay much more than Texas can pay, although New York probably pays just as well, and much more so in Wall Street.
I will not badmouth California. I've been to states (and lived in them) that had also amazing natural resources, vistas and a more affordable cost of living, but they don't have the diversity, they don't have the personal history that this state has for me. I don't know where I will live when I retire, I might actually end up in Costa Rica, or Canada, well, not Canada, I can't stand the winter, but maybe in a warm country, but California will, I think, always be a base for me.
We are all worrying about what will happen tomorrow. I am holding out hope. Things have to change, they have to get better. We cannot continue the way we have, with this malevolent thug of a president. We have to bet better, have to live up to our ideals, although I recognize, of course, that the USA has done many things of which we cannot possibly be proud, and has a history of attacking the most vulnerable. But we can change that history, we can get back on track, we have to tomorrow.
My niece, who is 17 years old, has been going through a depression. She cannot sleep at night, from what I am told, and wakes up and sits in bed, crying. I don't know if it is provoked by the uncertainty we are all living, or a personal crisis. My heart goes out to her. We have to get better, we have never felt lonelier than we have now. We've had a big crisis and lost loved ones (my father), but we have to survive. Photography has helped me to survive. I have to try to help others, especially my family.
It is 12 midnight now. Time to move forward.
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