The New Yorker:

The 2024 election, like the one in 2016, had the same nutty and vapid Donald Trump, the same retrograde gender politics, and the same result.

By Lorrie Moore

voted at a Quaker meetinghouse in a swing state on Tuesday, Election Day. A poster in the window read “war is not healthy for children and other living things,” but I would have had to reject the ballot’s main items and write in Bernie Sanders or vote for Cornel West if I wanted to support the candidate who was the best embodiment of this sentiment. The poster was not considered politicking, I guess. Someone had also put in the window a lawn sign from twenty years ago that read “war is not the answer.” That particular lawn sign was from the early two-thousands and was widely put out to protest the Bush-Cheney Administration’s incursion into Iraq. Quakers have a keen sense of recycling. As does the American voter.

I was disappointed that there were no cupcakes for sale, as there had been in years past. I felt my blood sugar drop. I was alarmed by the number of white men who had shown up to vote. The night before, strangely dressed young people had gathered in the street on my block, creating much noise and some litter, until, around midnight, someone called the police, and the interlopers got in their cars and drove away. Would voting be safe? I wanted things to be sweet and easy, but I had a hunch that even the foregone-conclusion states might be close. It was mid-morning: shouldn’t there be a few exit polls by now? These were my thoughts and they gave me a headache.

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