As I write this the res\u00adults of this year\u2019s U.S. elec\u00adtion are not yet known. There are reports of long lines to vote, of people vot\u00ading who haven\u2019t voted before, this all adds up to a sense that this year is his\u00adtor\u00adic. Part of it is prob\u00adably that blogs and the appar\u00adat\u00adus around them (searches, aggreg\u00adat\u00adors, microb\u00adlogs) are so much more pre\u00adval\u00adent now that the voices of many dif\u00adfer\u00adent people are com\u00ading through in a way far more access\u00adible to those of us who don\u2019t live in the U.S. than they were four years ago.<\/p>\n
And so many of those people sound as if they\u2019re con\u00advinced that if their side does\u00adn\u2019t win, the U.S. will fall off a cliff and nev\u00ader be able to recov\u00ader, a view some\u00adwhat at odds with the view that the U.S. is a great and robust coun\u00adtry. Maybe it\u2019s just elec\u00adtion\u00adeer\u00ading, as some Amer\u00adic\u00adans have said to me when I raised the issue, maybe not. In Canada the res\u00adults of elec\u00adtions make the coun\u00adtry veer one way or anoth\u00ader, but not change dir\u00adec\u00adtion rad\u00adic\u00adally; there isn\u2019t the fight over who gets to appoint the supreme court judges, for example, that there is in the U.S. <\/p>\n
The bit I have found most dis\u00adcon\u00adcert\u00ading in the whole pro\u00adcess, which has been going on for months now, is the demon\u00adisa\u00adtion of each side\u2019s sup\u00adport\u00aders, the assump\u00adtion they\u2019re not intelligent\/patriotic\/\u2026 enough. The level of vit\u00adri\u00adol hurled around is astound\u00ading, not only at the can\u00addid\u00adates them\u00adselves, but at their sup\u00adport\u00aders, and I\u2019ve found myself won\u00adder\u00ading how the U.S. will cope after this elec\u00adtion, when (or wheth\u00ader) the tribes will talk to each oth\u00ader again, how soon they\u2019ll start up again with the pre\u00adpar\u00ada\u00adtions for the next con\u00adtest. One of the few writ\u00adings I\u2019ve seen that have explained it to me is from Chris Lott<\/a>; read the com\u00adments as well. I guess I tend to live in coun\u00adtries where the polit\u00adics mostly fall with\u00adin the realm of what I find reas\u00adon\u00adable; were I to live in anoth\u00ader coun\u00adtry, my reac\u00adtions to the machinery of polit\u00adics might be dif\u00adfer\u00adent. This elec\u00adtion is show\u00adcas\u00ading the jost\u00adling of the fed\u00ader\u00adal and the state, the clash\u00ading of the world views, and the con\u00adfront\u00ada\u00adtion of the tribes with the oth\u00ader tribes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I write this the res\u00adults of this year\u2019s U.S. elec\u00adtion are not yet known. There are reports of long lines to vote, of people vot\u00ading who haven\u2019t voted before, this all adds up to a sense that this year is his\u00adtor\u00adic. Part of it is prob\u00adably that blogs and the appar\u00adat\u00adus around them (searches, \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cElec\u00adtion Ponderings\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":405,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}