I’m Going To Have To Stop You Right There
This election year, stop doing all of these things right now. You’ll thank me later.
Living in America during an election year is a uniquely painful experience. Yes, I prefer it to the alternative (Venezuela, Cuba, et al), but no, that doesn’t mean it’s fun, enjoyable, or even tolerable.
It isn’t. It’s a miserable, soul-sucking nightmare that we barely seem to survive every four years, only to finally recover from the trauma just in time to do it all over again.
For example, I was just now getting ready to say I’m almost over 2020. But then here comes 2024, about 1,000 times wackier than I could have ever imagined. Every day, I wake up, roll my eyes, cringe, and sometimes look up to the sky and shout to the heavens: “WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH THE HUMAN RACE?”
There’s very little we can do about national (or, sometimes) local politics, especially during an election year. Nonsense is in our faces all day, every day. Everybody wants you to be outraged about everything, fake news is everywhere, people are arguing about every topic, focusing on things that don’t matter, and telling you that you have to be angry about everything going on around you.
Even if you try not to participate (I still don’t own a proper “TV,” for instance, and I’ve never subscribed to Cable), the jerks on high still find a way to shove their dumb crap in your face.
For example, I go to the gym to blow off steam and relax. …and what do I see every time I try to run—my favorite stress-relieving activity—in order to clear my head, think quietly, and get focused?
AN ENORMOUS ROW OF 25 TELEVISIONS HANGING FROM THE CEILING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.
And all of them are blasting news channels, which means it’s all politics, all the time.
Ugh. Makes me want to barf right there on my treadmill.
Even if it’s not an election year, they’re still sharing crime statistics or video clips of a random controversy that happened somewhere far away from me that doesn’t affect me at all, like a police chase gone wrong somewhere in Alabama or two women fighting and pulling each others’ hair out in a Walmart parking lot in Texas.
STOP THE MADNESS!
Most of us normal people are just trying to live our lives and mind our own business, who are forced to see this wild, idiotic garbage everywhere we turn, no matter how hard we try to ignore it. …but there are a few things that even relatively normal people do that have just got to stop.
Please, I beg you: if you’re guilty of any of these things, read this, then change your ways. I’m doing you a favor.
I will give you amnesty if you stop this nonsense right away. I won’t even name you and shame you. But this is a limited-time offer. You have been warned.
Here are five things that you MUST STOP DOING right now.
#1: Stop looking at polls.
Say it with me: “Starting today, I hereby resolve to ignore every single worthless poll from every single worthless polling company until the end of my natural life.” Congratulations! I’ve just saved you a lifetime of anxiety.
All election polls—every single one of them without exception—are completely, utterly bunk, and they don’t mean anything. Throw them all away, no matter who runs them or if they’re associated with a university or research company or what. They’re all totally useless. (Did you learn anything from 2016?)
What’s more, they’re actively harming you. Looking at the results of polls will either give you false hope or unnecessary despair. There’s nothing you can do to change them, whether you do or don’t like the outcomes.
Also, they’re completely disconnected from reality. There's only one poll in politics that matters; it’s called “Election Day.” When the votes are (finally) counted, and the actual will of the people is recorded, we get to see the results of the only poll that ever means anything.
Stop looking at polls. Right now.
#2: Stop looking at “crowd sizes.”
The dumbest thing people in politics do, by a huge margin, is to share pictures or videos of political events online and say: “Wow! Look at the GINORMOUSLY huge crowd size at my candidate’s event! My candidate is totally going to win!”
Alternately, they’ll say: “Wow! Look at the PITIFULLY small crowd size at the other candidates’ event! Their candidate is totally going to lose!”
Just like with polls, crowd size means nothing. The only thing that matters is election results. Seriously, did you pay attention at all in 2020?
Joe Biden hid in his basement, doing absolutely zilch, wearing a mask and avoiding all human contact like a leper, and he still somehow won. Donald Trump filled outdoor arenas with bazillions of wild, screaming fans so fanatical they tattoed his name on their butts, yet he still lost.
Crowd size means nothing. For Pete’s sake, move on.
#3: Stop living in a bubble.
Surrounding yourself exclusively with people, news sources, and ideas that you agree with is unhealthy and is a sign of a weak intellect. I’m sorry if that’s offensive; it’s just true.
We all know this, but some people (actually a lot) still do it anyway.
Here’s the best example I know of. When I lived and worked in Boulder, Colorado, many people I knew said they were shocked by the 2016 election results. Now, I was shocked too (as was every single pollster, as I’ve mentioned above), but not for the same reason.
I heard many people say some version of: “How could Donald Trump win? Everybody I know voted for Hillary.”
This is the perfect encapsulation of bubble life.
Now, Boulder is an exceptional case: it’s an über-leftist enclave of wealthy elitists so insulated from normal people living normal lives that they literally never meet anybody who disagrees with them.
It’s the kind of place that helped invent the concept of “safe spaces,” with the belief that you should never have to experience anyone disagreeing with anything you say, and you should never be forced to encounter an idea that makes you feel uncomfortable.
(Need proof? I kid you not: when my wife was a student at CU Boulder, professors asked students to “list their pronouns” before introducing themselves. One female student claimed to self-identify as a Siberian Tiger. No, that’s not a joke, and people took her seriously.)
Most Americans don’t live in a pie-in-the-sky socialist utopia like Boulder, but there are many variations of it across the country. These bubbles exist everywhere, often on a smaller scale. It’s easy to end up living in one, and the people who are usually don’t even realize it.
You know what I did in 2016 that exposed just how much of a bubble I lived in? Right before the election, I took my family on a road trip from Colorado to Florida and back. We saw 15 states in 15 days. It was incredibly enlightening.
You know what genuinely surprised me? I was astonished at the number of Trump yard signs and Trump flags I saw all over the South.
Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
I couldn’t even begin to count them all.
And how many yard signs did I see for Clinton? I could be wrong—I’m sure there were a few of them, but I can’t recall seeing a single one.
Not a single one.
So, I can imagine that a lot of people (at least those who live next to the roads I drove on) in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, etc., weren’t shocked when Trump won.
Why? Because if I had asked, they would have said: “How could Donald Trump NOT win? Everybody I know voted for Trump.”
If you live in a community where every single person you know acts like you, thinks like you, and believes the exact same things you do about everything… you don’t live in a community. You live in a cult. Yes, the people in Boulder live in a cult. Some folks down south (and I love you, Southern folks) actually live in a cult.
If you’re so partisan that you don’t even KNOW a single person who voted differently than you did, get a life. You need help. Get outside your bubble and go find people who aren’t like you.
Meet with them. Talk to them. Listen to them.
At a bare minimum, learn that they actually exist. And admit that they can also be Americans, even if they have the opposite political views you do.
#4: Stop letting the people you disagree with turn you into a monster.
Do you know what happens when you get so outraged by your adversary that you lose your cool and start shouting like a maniac and spewing profanity?
You look like an idiot. Not your opponent. You do.
In that sense, you have lost the battle. If someone you’re opposed to can make you so angry you lose control of yourself, they have beat you.
Donald Trump is the “final boss” in this game: better than anyone else I’ve ever seen, he doesn’t even have to argue with people to get them to lose. He just says things that are so crazy and stupid and acts in such a way that is so outrageous it makes his enemies explode into a rage, spewing molten hot lava like Vesuvius.
Nobody looks at an active volcano and says: “I want to live right next to that.” The same thing goes for people too: nobody looks at screaming wackos like Stephen King and Whoopi Goldberg and concludes: “What wonderful people. I am convinced in the rightness of their cause. I’d love to have them over for dinner.”
Don't let your opponent turn you into a deranged psychopath like the very, very many people on the internet who were formerly interesting and intelligent but who can now barely string together a coherent sentence because they’re so completely outraged by someone else that they’ve lost all sense of self.
#5: Stop using hyperbole like “the best/worst in history.”
I first saw this happen back around 2008. It was weird then, and it’s even worse now. During that presidential election, I heard people on the radio (yes, I still listened to the radio back then) say things like, “We’re more divided as a country than we’ve ever been.”
WHAT? HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO SAY THAT?
Look, we’re pretty divided along partisan, ideological lines, I get it. But the 2008 election (or 2012, or 2016, or 2020, or 2024)? Come on! America was torn in two during an actual civil war in the 1800s.
The most deadly war in the history of our country—still to this day—was when Americans took up arms (literally) against fellow Americans: their friends, brothers, neighbors, and cousins in a bloody battle for the soul of the nation.
That is not happening now. Mean Tweets are not civil war.
Seriously: if you use hyperbole like this, remember the sage words of Michael Jordan.
Stop using hyperbole for everything. Stop saying everything is the worst in history or the greatest in history. There’s so much demented Neanderthal-level nonsense on the internet that it’s hard to even react to it all:
“This was the most secure election in history.” (No, it wasn’t).
“This is the most important election in history.” (No, it isn’t).
“He’s the worst president in history.” (No, he isn’t.)
“He’s the best president in history.” (No, he isn’t.)
Please, if you’re such a rube that you look at 6,000+ years of recorded human progress and say things like “the best in history” or “the worst in history,” that’s just pathetic.
First of all, listen to Kip Dynamite: “Napoleon, like anyone can even know that.”
Second of all, “history” means “all time.” You don’t know anything about what happened over the millennia of recorded (and unrecorded) history. You just don’t.
Third of all, the USA has been around for just over two and a half centuries. That’s a decent run, but comparing our short experience here to “history” is nonsense.
Saying “the best Caesar in history” would make a lot more sense since, in that case, A) you’re talking about an Empire that lasted around 2,000 years and B) it’s over, so we know the whole history from start to finish.
Or maybe you wouldn’t sound so dumb if you lived in Ethiopia, Japan, San Marino, Greece or some other civilization that has lasted over a thousand years and is still around (in some form) today.
Hearing people use this wild level of hyperbole about politics reminds me of articles online written by Zoomers called things like: “The Top 50 Albums Of All Time.”
I almost always click on these with amusement… usually, they’re only recordings that have come out in the past 20-30 years, which is ridiculously petty and self-centered. If by “all time,” they really mean “Only in my short lifespan and/or since MTV came out,” maybe they’d have a case.
But all time? You’re showing your ignorance, and it’s embarrassing to everybody. We’re embarrassed for you. That’s true regardless of your political party and whether you’re on the right or left.
Leave the hyperbole behind. Be smarter. You’re better than this, and you know it.
Make your kids proud. Stop doing (and saying) these things. You’ll thank me later.