I guess there was an election this week. I mean, I’m using the word “guess” insincerely to indicate the garden variety malaise with which I view the current state of American politics. I know there was an election because I did go vote, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t because I don’t care anymore. Habits die hard.
Just muttering “This is futile and pointless” didn’t stop me, in the dark evening—for the clock change on Saturday night means that 4:30 in the afternoon is pitch black—from driving to my usual polling place, discovering that the district lines have been redrawn and that I’m to vote somewhere else, driving there also, parking in the wrong place, walking all the way round the building looking for the correct door, finally having my name, address, and signature verified, standing there waiting for the ballet to be printed, puzzling over the back and the front, and then, when the machine had swallowed my paper and I was turning to walk away, being told to wait just a moment to be sure. I returned in solitude to my car, knifed through by the bitter, winter wind because I stupidly left my coat in the trunk instead of wearing it like a normal person. This must be what it’s like to say “I believe in God” but then never finding a moment to go to church. I don’t believe in elections, and yet, there I was, wrecking my whole evening.
What people believe, I guess it’s fair to say, may generally be observed in how they behave. They might say one thing, but then if they go and do a different thing, it is reasonable to quietly assume that either they aren’t hearing themselves, or they are lying. I think most of us aren’t really lying when there turns out to be a vast chasm between our observable actions and our stated beliefs. Most people, me included on occasion, are not self-aware enough to notice that we’re saying one thing but doing another.
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