We’re occasionally still getting the kind of diary where someone lays out how he’s thought it through and even though he hopes and prays that he’s wrong, he’s come to grips with that Trump is going to win and we’re going to have to deal with that. Sorry ladies, I’m excluding you in this statement because it seems like it’s predominantly a manly thing to be getting the vapors right now (cough cough Michael Moore).
First of all, there’s a term for this. It’s called Loss Aversion Behavior. The thought of losing pains you so much that you rationalize lower expectations so if disaster strikes, it doesn’t hurt as much. When you expect to lose, it stings less if it happens, but you’re over the moon if you win because the gap between you and your expections is all that much greater*.
Second of all, if this is you, you need to shut the fuck up and have a spine. My personal theory on why it’s mostly men doing this is because we like to be right. You combine that with buckling knees over the closeness of this election and you have men writing their insurance policies by predicting doom so that if it happens, they at least get to temper the pain of losing by being right, but if they’re wrong, nobody’s going to care anyway because we won!
Look dudes, we’re tired of finding you passed out on the fainting couches. Get your shit together. Expect to win and expect to sacrifice to get there. We’re in the lead position of a tight race right now, but if this election is going to end up breaking wide open, it’s going to break wide open in our direction.
This is when the pressure mounts. This is when preparation and planning truly shows. This is when every little error gets magnified and snowballs into more and more errors. This is when the people who bluffed and bragged their way aboard get exposed as people who don’t have the stamina to tough out the heat in the boiler room of politics.
It would certainly be nice if all the men who are hoping and praying that they’re wrong about a Trump win were as tough as Hillary Clinton**.
So get it together fellas. Volunteer or donate if you can. If you can’t do either, at the very least take it upon yourself to have a spine and keep morale up. Take it upon yourself to talk people off the ledge. Only one side was built for this moment. Only one side has a leader whose entire biography led to this day. Only one side inherited the blueprints for the most effective ground game in history.
We are on the right side of history and we are on the right side of the fundamentals. Please help in whatever modest manner possible, but if you’re just too overwhelmed with grief at the very thought of Hair Hitler, do us all a favor and keep your doom to yourself.
*-This is the same reason why you tend to root for the underdog in sports if you don’t have a rooting interest in either team. If they lost, it’s no big deal because underdogs are expected to lose. If they win, you’re pleased that the universe is a beautiful place where sometimes the little guy beats the odds.
**-I don’t know if they still do this, but Esquire Magazine used to have a list of favorite tough guys they would publish every year. One year, Hillary Clinton was on the list. Everyone thought they did it as a mean joke. It wasn’t a joke. They made it clear that she belonged on that list. I happen to like tough scrappy women. That was the day I started to change from being a Hillary Clinton hater to an admirer.