PERSONAL RESPONSE 2: SPORTS EVENT
If it were a sports event it would have been what is considered a very good game. Sports are no fun to watch if the score is lopsided and one side is beating the other badly all the way through. Excitement comes when the teams are evenly matched and the outcome is uncertain right to the end and then one team finally inches ahead at the very end. It is this tension that makes the game so good. And of course that is what happened in this electoral game. It was back and forth. One team even lost their hero half way through the game and was revived by a heroine. The other team almost lost their candidate through a shooting half way through. The polls insisted that it was neck and neck and it was.
And of course the game had gone on for months and months which increased the tension. As a game it had almost unbearable tension, building and building, with each side calling the other awful names.
I just read a comment on a neighborhood web site in which a person, I assume it was a woman, exclaimed what joy she was feeling over winning and wanted to share it with everyone. I didn’t feel any joy, but would have if my team had won.
Another thing that happened during this game was there was a lot of aggression on both sides, with even my so called liberal side saying every nasty thing they could think of the other candidate claiming that the opposite candidate was senile and was threatening American democracy. Both sides claimed that the other was destroying America. The greater the demonization of the other side, the greater the tension in the game. In a way it didn’t matter what the policies of either side were, it was a slugfest, punching each other in the mouth, a boxing match, and all that mattered was winning.
Finally the game was over and I was crushed. But I recovered so quickly and wondered why. Within a day it was clear that my team had lost. The game was over. The tension that had been building for months and months was released. I could forget about the game which was in the past and think of other things.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 