Selected

The build up to the US Election, as viewed by a hardened British pisstaker

“I wanna be Selected”

Yelled Alice Cooper back in ’73.

Sorry, ‘Elected’.

What was I thinking? Duh!

A track, incidentally, from the album ‘Billion Dollar Babies’. (yeah…..I’m a music geek, nice title track duet with Donovan btw).

Funny dat, mentioning billions, because, to be SELECTED (whatevs, you say toMAYto), you’ve either got to be a billionaire or liked by em, haven’t you?

And it’s uplifting the way a billionaire like Musk has stepped up to share his obscene wealth by entering ordinary citizens into a prize draw for the simple act of voting!

What does Elon actually get out of it?

Well, y’know, apart from a massive data haul, his financial interests protected and a fuzzy glow in his…..erm…..chest cavity. Awww…..the guy who wants to chip our brains is pure altruism!

In the UK, that sort of thing wouldn’t happen, just isn’t cricket. We’d NEVER coerce the public with financial reward unless health was at stake and we needed them to take an experimental vaccine that could kill them. We have principles, damn it!

In Britain, when it comes to elections, we tend to go for stick rather than carrot. We usually have some washed up pop star threatening to leave our shores if ‘they’ get in. By contrast, in the US, The Dems have Stevie Wonder, no less! And I thought it was clever what they did there - the idea of the blind visionaries leading the blind!

I really should’ve watched more of the campaign.

I don’t feel I know much about Ms Harris other than she’s trying to distance herself from Biden like a dog’s fart at a house party.

I’ve still no clue if I should be rhyming ‘Kamala’ with ‘Pamela’ or ‘Shambala’- you know, that ‘diverse’, ‘green’ festival where folks bang their drums about peace n love…..

Hm…….

Winning is all about turning negatives into positives, though. And it’s admirable how both candidates turned their dislike of life into a selling point. Be it the unborn or immigrants. Way to go!

(*Note to self*, abortion is ‘Healthcare’)

But regardless of policy, Americans always give the election season a bit more razzle dazzle than us Brits, don’t they?

Reminds me of when we used to have wrestling on Saturdays, back in the day.

Red corner, blue corner! Raaaah!

“Easy! Easy! Easy!”

We had Big Daddy V Giant Haystacks, but it always looked more glam across the pond, didn’t it? Hulk Hogan n that. I mean Haystacks resembled a fat tramp so it wasn’t hard to top, but a feather boa and good teeth went a long way in the 80s - as many a working men’s club will testify.

The 80s, is where my own journey with American politics began, with Reagan.

“He’s an actor” said my Grandma.

I’d like to say she was ahead of her time, an enlightened soul, but sadly, I think she meant his films.

But I enjoyed the Reagan era. When they used to say on the news he had a ‘special relationship’ with Thatcher, I thought it sounded so cosy, popping round each other’s gaff, Nancy hanging with the Grange Hill kids……

How was I supposed to know ‘special relationship’ was politician-speak for;

“We like to harass and kill the same brown people”

Still, once we got into Blair/Bush times, at least that was clarified!

Yeah, once Thatcher left office, all felt a bit less equal, grubby S&M ‘special’, like the UK were ‘subs’.  Is it subs? Is that the right term? Or is ‘subs’ what people pay to keep a tired old club going?

Ah no! That’s taxes!

Pays to know your ‘being fucked over’ from your being…….oh, never mind, that doesn’t work…..

Although I’m a hardened cynic now, like ‘The Monkees’, I confess, was once a believer.

I mean, take the indiscretion with Clinton and Lewinsky. Happens to us all, right? Workplaces, eh? One minute you’re talking shop and the next, Janice from accounts is pulling cigars out of her gash!

No seriously, when Obama got in, I actually wept. Thought of what it would mean to all the young black kids out there that they finally had a black president. Would help them think maybe they too could dream big.

What changed though?

Really? Nothing as I saw it. Just the same cycle of finger pointing blame.

I hoped the Q folk would be right about Trump too, that he truly was the Aslan sent to drain the swamplands of our human Narnia. That he really had been bright enough to encode all those famous quotes like “grab em by the pussy” into meaningful gematria only a chosen few would understand.

Sadly not. He was pushing the vax just like the rest of em. How soon people forget!

Gotta give it to him though, upped his game this campaign. Orange Man took a bullet for y’all……

Not since ‘Who shot JR’ has so much effort gone into a production. Personally, I’m hopeful we’ll have the dream sequence episode soon, where we all can wake up and be grateful it was one big nightmare.

Alas, no. Cause that only happens in soap operas, doesn’t it? And this isn’t one.

Really.

Nor is it a shouty, worn out record that belongs in another century.

Really.

Nor a couple of paid folk in a ring having a pretend ding dong surrounded by a hyped up crowd, the outcome already secured.

Really.

It isn’t.

Honestly.

Gawd bless America!

Thanks for reading. I now have more than 300 pieces on substack! I write different sorts of things depending on mood but if you enjoyed this piece, you can find more opinion pieces under the heading ‘opinion piece’ on my home page.