It's that day

It's Tuesday morning in America. It's a very special Tuesday morning. It's Election Day. Tuesday is a really stupid day to do this, but here we are. It's what we've got to work with for now. The history of America is all of us working diligently to deal with whatever stupid decisions were made before us. It is a proud tradition that will continue when our descendants are forced to work around whatever stupid decisions we make today.

For almost two years now, we have watched a highly specialized class of people from the upper echelons of our society battle it out for the chance to grab a job that at first blush appears to be a well of immense power, but is, in actuality, a magical trap that literally sucks the vitality out of you. Nobody is happy about anything today, but still we have to decide which person we would like to sacrifice to the soul-rending task of being the President.

There's also a bunch of other stuff on the ballot that a good majority of you haven't been paying attention to, because you've been sold on the idea that the office of the President matters more than anything. (It does not, but who am I to rob you of your fantasies?) Did you know that we in Minnesota have a state constitutional amendment on the ballot? Do you know how many judges are up for re-election? Do you know what that tax proposal on your ballot actually means? Odds are pretty good that the answer to at least one of those questions is "no", because you've been dragging your feet through the mud of the presidential election for so goddamn long.

That's fine. I'm not here to tell you that you're stupid or lazy for not knowing these things. You've been worked up into a finely tuned chorus of panic for the better part of 24 months, and it's not entirely your fault. There are entire industries that exist to build up and profit off of your election anxiety, and they are damn good at their jobs. Almost half of the people in this country will wake up tomorrow morning convinced that the seventh seal has been broken and that the Day of Judgement is upon us. For god's sake, the Cubs just won the World Series; that's like seal number six right there! (Just to drive that point home, the Cubs' general manager sacrificed a goat to his achievement.)

I am supposed to be here to tell you about theater news. I could try to steer you over to American Theatre Magazine's extensive collection of election-themed theater articles. I could try to placate the theater history nerds with this article from Slate comparing the leadership and politics presented in Henry IV and Hamilton. I could even offer you theater nerds a ray of sunshine in this otherwise miasmic world by reminding you that the Hamilton mixtape is now a thing that you can buy. If I really wanted to lean into the theater/politics crossover fanfic, I would let you know that the Mike Daisey show about Trump that the Guthrie hosted here recently is now free to stream online. You'd better watch it now, because, no matter who wins, 24 hours from now it will be absolutely obsolete.

Instead of doing all that, I'm going to destroy the rest of my column space telling you (once again) to get out and vote. (Except for you smart people who decided to alleviate your anxiety ahead of time by voting early. You get to sit back, have a mai tai and celebrate. Aren't we early voters just the best?)

And don't just do it so that you can vote for Donald or Hillary or one of those other people who don't stand the chance of a fart in the wind of winning but you're just so mad right now. (And if you really are going to toss off your vote as a protest, please consider voting Vermin Supreme. He's the only candidate who supports "fully funding time-travel research in order to go back and kill Hitler before he was born.")

There are so many other things to vote on! There are so many other things that deserve your attention and respect that I can't list them all here without severely annoying my editor. But there are steps you can take to climb this mountain:

(1) Get a copy of your ballot. Read all of it.

(2) Do some basic research beyond whether there's a (D) or (R) next to a name. For example, if support of the arts is your big thing, then check out MN Artists' survey of candidates for their stances on arts support.

(3) Find out where your polling place is. Go there, no matter how long the line is. You're not registered? No problem. We have same day registration. And don't let your boss guilt trip you about missing work. Minnesota state law says: "Every employee who is eligible to vote in an election has the right to be absent from work for the time necessary to appear at the employee's polling place, cast a ballot, and return to work on the day of that election, without penalty or deduction from salary or wages because of the absence. An employer or other person may not directly or indirectly refuse, abridge, or interfere with this right or any other election right of an employee." 

(4) While you're waiting in line and your mind starts generating excuses for you to just get the hell out of there and not bother voting, remind yourself over and over again that all of these ideas are stupid.

(5) Vote.

After you vote, if you theater people still want to immerse yourselves in the briny waters of politics, you have many choices of theater events to attend. Seriously, you have so many other choices than wallowing in anxiety and depression. And if you're going to sit at home crawling slowly into a bottle of whiskey until your can no longer see straight enough to refresh FiveThirtyEight, at least do it with some friends and loved ones around. Have a party! We have the ability to vote and weigh in on the decisions that our leaders make. The majority of human beings who have ever lived did not have that privilege. Celebrate that privilege with whatever intoxicant you are legally allowed to have.

Then, after you've done all that, after you've woken up tomorrow morning to whatever earth-shattering new paradigm you've feared or championed, I'm going to ask you to do the unthinkable. I'm going to ask you to stay involved. I know. I know. You're all exhausted and frazzled and dizzy and you just want to lay down and die. You're at mile marker 26 of the marathon, and that last 0.2 of a mile feels like it's going straight up the side of a mountain forever. It just hurts so much, and you don't want to run anymore; but the reason it hurts is because almost none of us have trained ourselves to be able to run this long. Between those massive marathons every four years, the vast majority of us drop our running shoes in the national closet, plop ourselves on the big old American couch and never get out onto the trails where the political rubber meets the incredibly strained metaphorical road. This is why those "off-year" elections have such low turnout, and it's why you've got the "broken" system that you all say you hate.

If you want to master the marathon, if you want to cross the finish line the next time with grace, then you have to practice running the rest of the time. You have to pay attention, you have to go out and do those little sprints and 5ks called your local elections. You have to jog every morning and work out that body politic, because, otherwise, every single big presidential election that you're forced to run alongside will feel like another flabby, bloated, painful slog.

So, you think the election process was flawed or "rigged" this time around, because your ideal candidate didn't win? Great. Go out and start lobbying to fix whatever process you think is broken as soon as this election is over. Don't wait until the next one is already up and running before you decide that we should start overhauling the rules. It's already too late at that point; the starting gun will have already fired.

Because even after that is done, we still have so many other things to work on. Our provocative new ideas don't just stop when there's no election. Our very real economic and income worries don't get magically fixed by one person or the other occupying a pale mansion near the Potomac. They have to be wrestled with and resolved by many individuals who willing to get their sticky fingers all up in those problems day in and day out until they are solved. (Or at least made manageable. Let's have a realistic attitude.)

And that all starts with one simple step: listening. And I mean actually listening to all kinds of people. And not just people you agree with already. Where's the fun in just hearing your opinion regurgitated back at you, anyway? That's just disgusting, you sitting there with half-digested chunks of your own solidified opinion dripping down your shirt. Ick.

So, let's get this thing rolling. Let me take my own first step in actually listening. Last week on News and Notes, I talked endlessly about the Globe in London and their sacking of Emma Rice. I repeatedly told you how dumb and backward and stupid and wrong I thought that decision was. I showed you links to all sorts of people who agreed with me, and we had a grand old time spitting congealing chunks of our shared smug opinions back and forth at each other like a pair of infant twins determined to destroy every last ounce of their new parents' belief that their children really are the future. The one reader who left a comment on that article said "I admit I'm of a divided mind on this controversy" and that's great! I want to be in that mind state as well, so here's an article from somebody who is smart and a good writer, and with whom I often disagree but usually respect. My liberal theater people, I am sending you all to the Wall Street Journal, to listen to Terry Teachout tell us why Emma Rice being fired is a good thing.

Let the healing begin.