I voted on Friday.
I had received my ballot book in the mail, but the ballot never arrived.
It was expected since Trump’s stooge Louie DeJoy took over the postal system.
I regularly get mail from other addresses, sometimes from the same block, and sometimes from blocks or even miles away. Just a couple of days ago I got a big box of cosmetics misdelivered to me. I expect some of my mail similarly get misdelivered.
So I went down to the Department of Elections to get a ballot after a day of teaching fourth graders.
At the counter, I told the clerk that I never got my ballot. Then an elderly woman next to me said, “What a coincidence, I didn’t get my ballot either.”
I mentioned that I believed the reason my ballot eloped was due to “Trump stooge DeJoy gutting the postal system”. She had no idea what I was talking about. I explained briefly that DeJoy was a Trump appointee who is still in office and is gutting the USPS by cutting budgets, and staff, and destroying postal sorting equipment. “DeJoy’s the reason I often don’t get my mail until 9 p.m. when I used to get it by 3 pm, and I keep getting mail incorrectly from other addresses.” I told her to Google “DeJoy Post Office” and read what pops up. She said “I don’t use computers” and “It’s not Trump’s fault” and started a rant that her lost mail was being stolen, not misdelivered. She had a bit of defensiveness to this and at this point, I realized she was MAGA, so I just said “ok”, took my ballot, and went to a chair to fill it out.
As it’s hard for me to stand for long periods, I sat at a chair and desk in the lobby of the election office. It was only I and the woman in the lobby.
As I sat filling out my ballot, she came over to me and asked me when I first started having problems with my mail delivery. I think she was expecting me to say something to timestamp mail delivery to the Biden administration. Instead, I told her truthfully that my mail issues began soon after Trump appointed DeJoy.
Then she asked me, “Honestly, who do you think would be a better president?” At this point, she had indirectly shown where her allegiance was. I replied that Biden would be by far the better president if it was a choice between Biden and Trump.
Then she asked, in a self-important and condescending tone, “Have YOU ever been to a Communist country? I HAVE.” She had an expression of superiority on her face like she had just posed an unanswerable point and she had won something.
I was, at first, surprised at this. Then after a moment, I responded, “This has NOTHING to do with Communism. Trump does not care about anyone but himself. He spouts whatever nonsense words he thinks he needs to say to whomever he is speaking to at the moment to con people into thinking he is on their side. He is not as smart or as rich as he pretends to be. All you have to do is look at what he says.”
She looked shocked. I suspect her world is limited only to people who either believe exactly as she does or just let her rant. She said something short and walked away.
I finished my ballot and left the lobby.
Afterward, I thought about things I could have said. I could have pointed out that Biden is not communist and in many ways not even very progressive. I could have pointed out Trump’s many provable lies, his increasingly deranged statements, and his inability to form coherent sentences, or even use the correct names and words. In a choice between the two, there is no choice but Biden to anyone who is not a MAGA cultist.
I doubt anything I could have said would have changed her mind in the slightest. I’m sure she now tells the story about how she owned the crazy communist she confronted in the election office.
#jtg