By: JANA GREENE
I am trying to be in my ‘soft’ era, ya’ll. Soft blankets. Soft words. Soft environment.
Instead, I feel like I am perpetually living out reality as a high school pep rally. Because that’s what this political season feels like. In my schools, you got extra credit for attending the pep rallies.
But I cannot believe these are the people who made it through all the tryouts.
Like a pep rally for a high school football team getting ready to play its biggest game of the season against the rival school. If that high school were run by preschoolers who haven’t learned civility yet – they don’t yet know how not to interrupt each other, they brag about what’s in their lunchbox (my lunchbox is the best lunchbox, it has Lunchables in it. Lunchables with the M & Ms, the BEST Lunchables in the best lunchbox, everybody says it. Nobody else can compare. NANNY NANNY BOO BOO. )
Also, the tantrums are *chef’s kiss* immaculate. I’ve never seen a toddler have a better tantrum, and I raised two very spirited daughters who overachieved in tantruming.
So, we have all the elements:
“FIGHTIN’ WORDS!
LOUD RALLIES!
YARD SIGNS!
DRUMBEATS OF WAR!
POM POMS IN YOUR FACE (whether you want them or not, patooey.)
GOOOOOOooooooo TEAM!!
On second thought, perhaps a middle school pep rally is a more fitting comparison, on account of everyone throws shade 24/7, makes up rumors, and no one has done their homework.
It gives me SUCH the ick. One team being ickier than the other, but American politics are really just candidates hoping to be offered an “athletic scholarship” so they can skate by at our expense, do no real work, and hook up with the head cheerleader. (Or the porn star.)
Now, for most of my adult life, I have been extremely patriotic and political. I swung the way of my ancestors as if there were no other way available to me. The past several years I have switched sides, but not with glee and positive expectation, because the whole system is broken. There is no pep in this rally.
Having several chronic illnesses – one that might eventually end my life – I have had the ridiculously extravagant luxury of having health insurance. But millions of sick people like me are going without care and treatment. And that, too, bothers me enough to pick a team.
KAMALA HARRIS IS HER NAME, UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE IS HER GAME?
*pom poms still flailing, even as the cheerleading squad’s pyramid collapses*
So, while I am trying to have a NICE SOFT ERA over here, we have a Presidential election on less than a month. There is no softness about that. It’s a hard, cold, rabid process from nomination to election. I’ve chosen my team, because she supports a few key issues that are important to me, and also because she is not Trump. I think that’s a determining factor for many of us, whether we admit it or not.
I like Harris just fine, but not passionately. If she gets elected, we shall see is passion ensues. I’m skipping the pep rally, even though my classmates will accuse me of having no “school spirit.”
As we draw near to the actual game, what a quandary – the world’s biggest pep rally, and nobody is winning the game.
Especially not us.
Words by Jana Greene 
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