I FEEL LIKE THE OLD MAN in the movie Moonstruck. You know, at the end when everything is happening crazily around him and he puts his head in his hands on the kitchen table and moans, “I’m confused.” This struck home for me when I found an article published earlier today in The Washington Post.
It was oddly titled “Hillary Clinton lost. Bernie Sanders could have won.” My first thought was, “No! That’s not possible. I’m confused!” Then I realized the truth, even though it sounds like something out of a Sheldon Cooper fantasy: I have slipped into an alternative reality—a parallel universe!
In my alternative reality, Clinton won the election by 3,000,000 votes. But in everybody else’s universe, Trump won! See why I’m confused?
Got that? I am in a phildickian reality and you’re not! Well, you’re probably not. My alternative reality seems to differ in only one respect, but it differs with so many people—in conversation with friends, family, and neighbors.
And websites and blogs.
And Facebook and news organizations—and they’re supposed to know, right?—and every other form of mass communication we have.
See, in this lonely parallel universe of mine, Hillary Clinton won the election on November 8, 2016!
But it gets weirder: here we have this antiquated system called the Electoral College that our forefathers set up to ensure that undereducated farmers weren’t duped into electing some city-slicker of a demagogue.
This system, which gives inordinate power to sparsely populated states, is due to elect Mr Trump on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December in a separate, second election where you need to know a secret handshake to vote.
I told you it was weird.
(My stand on the Electoral College is that it’s a good idea but it’s never really been used effectively. The Elector’s votes are almost always redundant and it gives most of us citizens the belief that our votes don’t really count. Plus the potential exists that it could be used by some “elites” to cheat the real winner out of a victory justly won by the popular vote. Ask any Trump supporter where he or she stood on the Electoral College last week and you’ll find that they agreed with me 100%, even in your reality.)
In my alternative universe, I can use my crazy computer to contact Google and it tells me that as of 1:00 PM on Thursday on November 10, 2016, the vote tallies from the election stand as such:
Clinton: 60,122,876
Trump: 59,821,874
Like I said, in my parallel universe, Clinton won the election by 300,000 votes (and growing).
So, of course, Trump lost.
But, apparently, in everybody else’s reality, Trump won and Clinton lost.
See why I’m confused?
In my alternative reality, Clinton won the election by 300,000 votes. See why I’m confused? Click To Tweet
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
Well, that didn’t happen... Now, it’s Saturday!