I Wanna Be Sedated

It's 24 hours till time to vote, and frankly I'm a little nervous. I can't shake the feeling that we're due for another terrorist attack, either in the next 24 hours to try and tip the election or later this week just to shake us up some more. I work four blocks from the White House. I'm hoping this is close enough so that I get vaporized immediately in the event of a nuclear attack. A suitcase bomb carrying some sort of bioweapon could really cripple us--I can't stop imagining a team of suicide anthrax bombers walking through DC's daily traffic snarl and just hosing down people trapped in their cars with megadoses of white powdery death.

If America does the only right, sensible thing and reelects John Kerry, I feel like America has a fighting chance to restore its dignity in the eyes of the world. Maybe it'll buy us a breather from more domestic terrorism while the new guy reassesses foreign policy. Chances are good that if you're reading this you feel me here.

Unless you're like certain friends of mine who plan to indirectly vote for Bush by pissing their chance away on the Libertarians. You know who you are, and I love you, man. But get in the game. Nader voters, eyes are on you too. Ralph Nader has proven himself to be totally insane. If Kerry loses by Nader's votes I am personally going to rent an SUV to round up Nader and his supporters cowboy-style from a gas-guzzling behemoth iron steed, strangling them and their chosen leader to death with a lasso made from seatbelts.

This is where we stand right now, according to recent polls. If you need to know where to vote, go here.

During Kerry's presidency, we can expect a pop-cultural explosion roughly on par with the eruption that brought Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Jane's Addiction into the mass consciousness. Digital music distribution has been growing and growing, and people are mad enough at the current presidency, joblessness and generally disaffected that there's going to be another boom.

The silver lining to four more years of Bush is that we can expect another freaking 60's. I always felt a bit jealous of Boomers that were there at Woodstock, mad that I didn't get a chance to be a part of the real mother of all counterculture movements. It's gonna happen if Bush gets the White House again. We'll be in another stupid war with no point, the nation will be more sharply divided than ever before and people are going to go nuts. Real nuts.

We can expect riots, protests, major mutations in fashion, art and music-total creative anarchy. I just hope I'm not too old or bound to my desk to blow the country apart and help make something beautiful from the debris.

On all other fronts, we're so screwed if Bush comes back. We can expect more terrorism , more lies, more fear. The American era is on its way out, and this will be the least dignified death we can die. We'll lose allies, lose more credibility, dying a lonely the lonely death in a forgotten nursing home usually reserved for miserly, abusive relatives.

The second-greatest embarrassment to the American way will be if this election ends up in the courts. No matter who you vote for, you've got to agree that if we can't decisively pick a leader our system is failing.

If Kerry wins, my half of the country will be stoked, but the Bush half will spend the next four years angry and alienated. No matter what, we're looking down the barrel of four more years of angry, divisive politics, of two Americas squabbling over every decision. We're losing our empire, and maybe it's time. I just want to be apart of a dignified decline, a gentle settling into a lower (and more realistic) standard of living rather than watch our leader gnaw us off at the knees.

No matter which side you're voting for, you've got to agree to this: in the first half of the first week of November, 2004, 100 percent of America is terrified that the wrong guy is going to make it into office and help the terrorists destroy us some more. America is tense and jittery--friends and family are telling each other that "if you're not with us, you're against us," and that's no way to live.

posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 10:23 AM