{"id":24181,"date":"2024-11-04T14:52:08","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T18:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/?p=24181"},"modified":"2024-11-04T15:51:55","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T19:51:55","slug":"the-devil-a-mic-and-a-can-of-selzer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/11\/the-devil-a-mic-and-a-can-of-selzer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Devil, A Mic, and a Can of Selzer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

the word \"vote\" spelled out in Scrabble tiles
image via Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I suppose this will be the last of my lighthearted and snarky Election Updates for the year.<\/h3>\n

As I\u2019m writing this, on Monday, we have about thirty hours until the polls close in the Eastern time zone, and then the candidates-earning-votes stage of the election is over and the litigation stage can begin. I don\u2019t like that the litigation stage is now an expected November tradition, but nobody asked me.<\/p>\n

Please refer back to my boilerplate<\/a> about voting and Catholic Social Teaching: it is not a sin to vote for a candidate who supports an intrinsic evil, as long as you don\u2019t vote for them BECAUSE you like that intrinsic evil. That\u2019s the rule of the Catholic Church. You\u2019re supposed to vote as your conscience directs, for the person who you think will be the very best leader or the least bad one, and neither I nor anybody else ought to spiritually abuse you about your choice.<\/p>\n

Now,\u00a0 let\u2019s see. What was the big election news for the week?<\/p>\n

Well, it seems that Tucker Carlson was attacked by Old Scratch.<\/h3>\n

I don\u2019t know that this should be the thing that\u2019s been on my mind the most, but here we are. On Halloween, Tucker Carlson announced that the had been physically mauled by a demon<\/a>. And immediately, the inimitable Rod Dreher tweeted that this story was all true; he knew it because Carlson had told him about it years ago.<\/p>\n

Carlson claims that, some time ago now, he was in bed with his wife and four dogs. While lying supine next to another human being and four apex predators, Tucker had a classic sleep paralysis episode where he felt the presence of a demon in the room. Then the demon attacked. He woke up with a start, glad it was all a dream, and that\u2019s when he found the bloody claw marks on his body. His wife and dogs didn\u2019t hear a thing, despite being light sleepers. Tucker concluded that he\u2019d been visited by an evil spirit and began studying the Bible.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go over that again, shall we? Tucker was in bed with four dogs and another human. That\u2019s a total of sixteen clawed feet plus Mrs. Tucker all in close proximity. And when he woke up with claw marks, he didn\u2019t say \u201cI\u2019d better get a separate bed for my dogs,\u201d he said \u201cIt must have been the devil!\u201d<\/p>\n

My personal theory of the events of that night is that Mrs. Tucker clawed him because he wouldn\u2019t stop snoring. She then pretended to be asleep when he woke up, intending to blame the event on the dogs; she couldn\u2019t believe her luck when he started ranting about evil spirits and she didn\u2019t have to make an excuse.<\/p>\n

After that fun Halloween interlude, the buildup to election day continued as expected, until Donald Trump encountered a bit of trouble with the sound equipment at his rally in Milwaukee.<\/h3>\n

Last I heard, the problem was not with the microphone itself, but with about half of the speakers in the facility, but Trump assumed it was a problem with the mic. He started ranting about assaulting the sound techs and complaining that he was going to \u201cblow out\u201d his arms by holding a different microphone. And then he bent to the podium and started pantomiming a sex act<\/a>. There\u2019s no video in that article link, in case you\u2019re concerned.<\/p>\n

I was a chaste Catholic homeschooler growing up and I went to Franciscan University, so I didn\u2019t even recognizing what everyone was reacting to when I first saw the video of the pantomime. I thought he was just blowing into it to see if it worked, but I was living in a fool\u2019s paradise.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m trying so hard not to say the name of what he did.<\/p>\n

After all, I\u2019m told that Trump is the champion of the pro-life party, the party of decency and Christianity and wholesome nuclear families. I\u2019ve been informed more times that I can count that the real sinners are the Democrats, who might corrupt children by exposing them to sex. I\u2019m informed I\u2019m in mortal sin if I don\u2019t fall in line to support the man.\u00a0 I still remember mid-2016, when I was a brand new Patheos blogger, and two more famous Catholic bloggers were fired from a Catholic newspaper for using vulgarity on social media. I remember specifically that one of them was chided for referring to the original awkward-looking Trump-Pence logo as a \u201cbl*wj*b swastika.\u201d That was considered far too dirty a thing to say. And last weekend, in between rants about abusing stage hands, that same presidential candidate waddled up to a microphone and gave it one of those on live television. He\u2019s yours, Republicans. Have a good time.<\/p>\n

Sometime after the microphone episode, we got the famed Ann Selzer poll<\/a>, which has been uncanny in predicting election results for quite a long time now. And the poll showed that Kamala Harris was pulling ahead of Trump in Iowa.<\/p>\n

Instantly, the narrative we\u2019ve been hearing all along that Trump and Harris were neck and neck evaporated. Everybody started talking as if Harris was going to win in a landslide. Even Nate Silver begrudgingly adjusted his projections to show Harris getting 270. For the first time since March or so, all the hats switched and REPUBLICANS started telling everybody that polls don\u2019t matter. DEMOCRATS started dancing around with glee as if they\u2019d already won. And that terrified me, because if 2016 taught us anything, it\u2019s that the worst possible thing a Democrat can do is be confident. I haven\u2019t been good and scared that Harris was going to lose until the pundits started celebrating. Now I\u2019m freaking out.<\/p>\n

I have no idea what\u2019s going to happen tomorrow night or in the coming days.<\/p>\n

For all I know, we\u2019ll be inaugurating President Jill Stein in January.<\/p>\n

What I do know is, any Catholic talking head who tells you you\u2019ve got a moral obligation to vote Republican ought to be laughed into oblivion. Vote your conscience. Vote your common sense. Vote for the one who wasn\u2019t making love to a microphone this weekend. Or just leave the top of the ticket blank and vote for your local tax levees, if you must. But our country is in a very dangerous place right now, and you mustn\u2019t fall in line behind the bullies.<\/p>\n

Get out there and vote; you\u2019ve got one day left.<\/p>\n

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Mary Pezzulo is the author of\u00a0Meditations on the Way of the Cross,\u00a0<\/a>The Sorrows an<\/a>d Joys of Mary<\/a>, and\u00a0Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to \u201cThe Little Portion\u201d on\u00a0paypal<\/a>\u00a0or Mary Pezzulo on\u00a0venmo<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a0 I suppose this will be the last of my lighthearted and snarky Election Updates for the year. As I\u2019m writing this, on Monday, we have about thirty hours until the polls close in the Eastern time zone, and then the candidates-earning-votes stage of the election is over and the litigation stage can begin. 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