Humble Pie

 

     This fall has been a humbling one for me (Yes, of course it would be named "fall".). I'd taken the road test at the AZDOT in Glendale twice and by Halloween, I'd failed it twice. I finally took and passed it the day after election day last Wednesday. I learned that when the road examiner is on a first name basis with you, you're a fuckup.

     Just before my third and final road test, she turned to me and said, "I'm going to do you a favor- We're going on a simpler route. I'm not supposed to do this for you so please don't tell anyone I'm doing this." So we went on that simpler route throughout Glendale that involved going through just one school zone (where the speed has to be reduced to 15 mph), driving down the endless straightaway of 59th Avenue and parking backwards alongside a curb.

     About 15 minutes later, she said I'd finally passed but still warned me about driving over speed bumps too quickly (I wasn't exactly doing layouts over them but still). So, essentially, while she could see I'm a safe, experienced driver, she saw fit to give me sort of a remedial road test. I should've been happier to get the news but the election results the night before and lack of sleep put me in a funk. Plus, I was given a simpler road test because maybe she felt sorry for me because of my age.

     It could be said that I failed the first two road tests because I'm not used to Glendale but the plain fact is I failed because I didn't see certain road signs, didn't signal when I should've, etc. The rules of the road are still the rules of the road and the signs are universal.

     Still, you take what you can get at my age and getting my Arizona driver's license was a big monkey off my back. But that was just part of the humbling experience I've had this fall. The other was the election.

     I've been wrong before when making predictions. In fact if you were to look at the ones I've made over the years and matched them against historical actuality, you'll see I'm a shitty oracle. Maybe I misread the tea leaves or maybe I simply underestimated the power of stupid people in large numbers or the duplicitous industry of the scumbags in the Republican Party.

     And the only thing keeping me from jumping into the abyss of irretrievable insanity is denial. I know Trump was declared the winner despite the fact that the numbers don't add up. There's some numb, cold hope in the back of my mind that things won't be as bad as all that, that there will be some guardrails that will protect us somewhat from Trump's worst, most evil impulses. And, make no mistake about it, he is an evil, evil man.

     But denial is a shitty coping mechanism. It's just a way of sticking your head in the sand and praying that whatever catastrophe engulfs the landscape will somehow wash over you and leave you and your own relatively unscathed.

     However, we have four years of history as our guide. It will not be like that. Trump is angrier and more demented than he was four years ago and he's going to march back into Washington like some conquering hero armed with a shit list longer than your arm. America will be the last thing he'll want to make great again. If 2017-2021 isn't prologue enough then nothing will be.

     Now, I still intend on blogging about national politics. That won't change. Since blogging has been literally the only constant in my life since January 2005, someone will probably find me slumped over my laptop in the middle of a post no one would've read, my head on the keyboard while random letters are endlessly generated across the monitor.

     But, for one reason or another, it's obvious through my recent failures, for one reason or another, I've lost a step or two. So in the future I'll refrain from making any more predictions. I will never live down my prediction that Harris would get over 80,000,000 votes and at least 310 electoral votes. Maybe in reality she did and the GOP just made fools out of all of us Harris supporters.

     Yet in their own ways, the pollsters, the pundits, the media were all wrong, as well. We were told it was a neck and neck race from the moment Harris entered the race and it was anything but, if we're to trust the results (and we shouldn't).

     For years, decades, we've been told that polls are the closest thing we have a crystal ball but in reality, they're no more accurate than Magic 8 Balls and probably even less accurate. These so-called experts are wrong year after year yet they still get to keep their jobs. Ann Selzer fucked up. Even Allan Lichtman was wrong. They were all wrong.

     So who the hell am I to make predictions? But at least I own up to my shortcomings. The way I now see it, I'm here to analyze and comment, not to make prognostications. That I can still do.

     So I will but no more.