Second street pre-election diary,* part 2

One day more..

One day more! Another day, another destiny…

I could do an entire page of lyric runs that would speak to the maddening nature of this day. Why is it thus? Because its minutes are trickling away and so are the moments where one could nurse and sustain hope without facing tomorrow’s reality of actual numbers.

For instance, I can be buoyed at the reported early returns in Iowa and Florida (they appear to be significantly favoring Kerry) without worrying a great deal about whether this is at all an important development, or whether it is one of those insignificant blimps, in the same way that the polling of diners at a vegetarian restaurant on the popularity of steak is a tiny bit unreliable.

I can ignore the outlier CNN poll that makes Wisconsin look like in the last days it sold its soul to the red claws and I don’t mean the la-dee-da lobster claws. But I can take great joy in hearing on NBC that for those under 30, 54% favor Kerry and 37% favor George (those numbers were nowhere near so Democrat-driven in 2000). Isn’t this fun??

Here’s a prediction that I can agree with: there will be fewer babies in July, 2005. Today, not surprisingly perhaps, I noticed myself taking time out to read with great care the article in the New York Magazine on election-related anxiety disorders (here). Sure enough, many of us are on the edge right now and will remain there for…. indefinitely. There is no relief in sight! Consider this excerpt, for example:

Nor will the post-election world (whenever it begins) necessarily bring Klonopin-like relief. “I’ll be elated if Kerry wins,” says Joe, another patient. “But I fear that the damage caused by Bush may be insurmountable. I believe we’ll be attacked again. I travel to Europe and Asia for business, and I’ve never felt such a groundswell of hatred for Americans. And if this country reelects him, the rest of the world will think we’re just like him.”

Aaaaaargh! Even if, even if there is a favorable outcome, we may have passed the point of damage reversibility. We are DOOMED! According to the article, some have become so paralyzed by the news of the wild maneuvers of GWB, that they have even grow to fear sushi! Read this:

Joe [seeking therapy in NY] has also become obsessed with his son’s sushi habit. “My son loves sushi. Every Tuesday is sushi night. But I just finished Robert Kennedy’s book about what the Bush administration has done to the environment. It’s unsafe for my kid to eat fish. He has to get his mercury levels checked. ”
Joe has been discussing all this with his psychiatrist, Alan Manevitz, who believes that the nation’s polariza- tion is fraying already-fragile psyches.

Oh God, not death to sushi! And other seafood? I am eating shrimp at the moment. Forget it. Throw it out, throw it out, it’s probably CONTAMINATED! Not even Whole Foods is safe anymore, there are RED DEVILS everywhere!
[Hey, wait a minute, am I writing on the night before an election, or am I commenting on the Red Scare of the 1950s? Indeed, am I reliving now the slogan ‘better dead than red’ where I am now on the other side of both the ocean and the issue?? Goodbye communist threat, hello GOP fear!]

As for the babies? Again, I am reading the New York Magazine article (no personal stories here and for Pete’s sake, I hardly want to place myself in the baby-making demographic!) and I see this (emphases are my own):

Dr. Elliot Wineburg, an assistant clinical professor at Mount Sinai [says] “Some people are so concerned, their sexual activity is not proceeding the way it should,” he says, though he declines to quantify the size of this burgeoning group, noting only that it is “significant.”
“Their libido is going down. During the blackout in the late seventies, we saw the birth rate go up nine months later. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the opposite happens this time.”

(*see “forty-second street pre-election diary” post, September 22, for explanation of post title)