Dear Diary: It’s 4:07 a.m., Election Day. It feels kind of like Christmas, except that I‘m scared to look in my stocking, and fear I’ve missed my last chance to sit on Mitt Romney’s lap at the mall.
With the recent disorienting switch to Daylight Saving Time, I couldn’t sleep this morning, so figured I’d leap out of bed and write a few profound and reassuring last-minute words to the long-term care electorate. But it turns out I don’t have much to say.
Maybe that’s because I just realized it won’t be now when you read this. Well, it will be for you, but not for me anymore. My now will be irrelevantly then, and by the time this blog is actually posted, the election will all be over. Maybe. Either that or law enforcement officials will be wrapping voting machines in crime scene tape and pallets of emergency lawyers will have already been airdropped into the swing states. It could go either way.
In the big picture, I can’t help but feel proud to be part of this remarkable country. From sea to shining sea today, from Dixville Notch, NH, to Walla Walla, WA, millions of free people who know in their hearts that they are not from Ohio are still doing their civic duty and voting like it matters. As Fozzie said in The Muppet Movie, “Patriotism swells in the heart of the American bear.”
The danger, of course, in times like these is cynicism, and I feel extra-fortunate that I haven’t yet fallen into that dark abyss. Perhaps it is the words of noted political pundit Woody Allen that keeps me optimistic: “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
Which brings me back to Daylight Saving Time — and this particular moment in time. When the votes are finally counted, what will have happened? Is this goodbye to Medicare as we know it? Will Obomneycare live or die? Will the anger, polarization and poor spelling that rears its head sometimes in comments after McKnight’s articles get better or worse? Will we turn out to be a nation that makes “hard choices” at the expense of the aging and vulnerable? Or will we just ring up another four years of well-intended compassion on the credit card?
Will we wake up tomorrow to a transformation as portentous as the calendar switch from B.C. to A.D., or will it turn out we just got an extra hour of sleep? Was it Time for Change, or just a time change? We don’t know yet. But we will. And at that point, what happens next is pretty much up to us.
Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, who cobbles these pieces together from his secret lair somewhere near the scenic, wine-soaked hamlet of Walla Walla, WA. Since his debut with SNALF.com at the end of a previous century, he has continued to amuse, inform and sometimes befuddle long-term care readers worldwide.
