Thoreau wrote, "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." That's always stayed with me and for a part-time misanthrope, it has actually made me feel more empathetic to my fellow citizens, imagining that underneath their superficial exteriors, which can sometimes be grating, especially when all these idiosyncrasies  are massed together, they are struggling too. But what I'm really having a hard time with is not the quiet desperation it's the voluble idiocy. When I made the decision to move to this country I had no illusions about large segments of its culture or population. America contains multitudes and the intellectual spectrum, like many other of its spectrums, spans wider than many places. But, my God, are these times trying my soul. I gain solace from smart compassionate people who are as American as anything - like Jon Stewart or Barack and Michelle Obama, but some days I marvel at the tidal wave of stupidity that threatens to engulf us all. The consolation that it's mostly a media phenomenon evaporates when I see examples of American infantilism in the wild. I love traveling in upstate New York. It's one of my favourite places but increasingly the rolling bucolic mountain landscape is marred by political signs and expressions of aggressive exclusionism. (nothing ruins a great view like a confederate flag). But what really gets me is the incoherence.  What's being argued for and the means they are advocating to achieve it is intellectually illiterate. In many ways it's the chickens coming home to roost. We are no longer inoculated against the brand of populism that has threatened the Republic since the beginning. Americans are not unique in having ignorant citizens. But what is striking to an outsider is how confident ignorant people are in their harebrained ideas. The American public education system is shockingly spotty, but the broader education Americans receive -  that patriotic civic indoctrination - is remarkably effective. It even manages to bleed beyond its borders. People of my dad's generation believed in some inherent unpretentious American goodness. embodied by Gary Cooper or Humphrey Bogart. This is remarkably durable among some who are either deluded or engage in a kind of pragmatic moral relativism ("yes but..."). But what I'm talking about now is something else that has replaced both those things. It's a kind of scorched-earth nihilism that I don't think many people knew was so near the surface of the culture. 

I saw a man with his wife and child having lunch in Kingston, NY in a cafe overlooking the Hudson on a beautiful sunny Fall afternoon when his t-shirt caught my attention. It was a cartoon version of his preferred presidential candidate raising two middle fingers..."One for Biden one for Harris" it said underneath. I was looking at it when his wife and I made eye contact and we smiled at each other.  She seemed nice. The man doted on his 18-month old and apart from his childish tantrum of a shirt, all seemed normal. Later we saw a commotion at a traffic island near Poughkeepsie. A man camped out there was surrounded by a multitude of outrageous signs about Gods Guns and ____ with an older bearded guy who looked like a sort of Libertarian Father Time. Cars whizzing past honked their approval. Signs have appeared in my neighborhood for the Republican nominee. I made eye contact with a sad-eyed woman coming out of one house. Another had a blown up photo of the assassination attempt affixed to the fence. An older man emerged from that place. He looked like someone you wouldn't want to get into an argument with. 

I spend way too many hours watching videos and reading interviews with voters spouting crazy conspiracy theories and numbskull political views with dark unending fascination and horror searching for an answer I'll never find. I'm like Charlie Brown running up to kick the football that Lucy will snatch out of the way at the last second hoping every time for a different result. It's an unseasonably warm election day. At least once or twice a week the words "record high' appear in the bottom right corner of my office computer.  I can worry about what this means for the world or I can enjoy the day like all the people walking down Second Avenue smiling, putting my concerns for the future in a little box and stuff it in the back of the closet. Que sera, sera.