Trump: Now officially a huge loser. Open thread.

I doubt the number of “troll the polls” Trumpies could be high enough to skew the polls by the magnitude of the observed discrepancy. We’re talking over 5% here. The number of total Trumpies is, based on Trump’s popular vote count, a minimum of 71,563,696. 5% of that is over three and a half million. That’s a hell of a lot of trolls, and although trollish Trumpies seem to be ubiquitous online these days I seriously doubt there are nearly four million of them as that large a number would have completely eclipsed all other discourse with their endless yammering. I expect the troll contingent to be a very vocal minority of, perhaps, a few tens of thousands, and possibly “mere” thousands.

Another reason is that the activist-trollish subset would be over 1% of the entire US population and probably enough to monkey-wrench the whole system with street violence. If there are that many with the willingness to participate in active sabotage themselves (not just vote for it) I’d have expected lefties to be very badly outnumbered at Charlottesville and in subsequent street skirmishes with them, which fortunately is not what happened.

An argument can be made that the bar to overtly lying right to a poll taker’s face, while higher than the bar to casting a vote for a major party candidate, however odious, is lower than the bar to engaging in street violence with its attendant physical risks, I suppose, though.

Meanwhile, I have a problem that could become acute (indeed, life-threatening) within a month or so, and other more chronic problems that continue to fester away where I still have no clue how to fix them, and this is an open thread, so …

First, the immediately threatening problem. It’s a perennial one for me: groceries. Why has this gone from chronic to acutely threatening, you ask? It’s the declining stamina. I’ve been increasingly resorting to taxis (despite the COVID risk) to return home from the store, generally when getting anything particularly bulky or heavy. Having cut out COVID-impacted small luxuries, such as occasional meals out and cinema showings, has allowed me to avoid hemorrhaging savings so far, despite this (and despite the “cramp gremlin” succeeding eventually in forcing me to pay out of pocket for the cramp-preventing medications, whereupon it seems to have relented from its up-to-then systematic and clearly-intelligent obstructionism).

So what’s the problem? The taxis here are not reliable about being prompt. Usually one shows up in about a five-to-ten-minute window after calling, but occasionally it can be 20, even 30 minutes. The wake-up call for me was when it took over FIFTY minutes one night, and I was starting to get uncomfortably cold while waiting (I had dressed for the weather under the assumption that I’d be exerting myself during the outbound leg, and I’d be in a warm vehicle 40 minutes sooner than I actually was, and not outside not-exerting for more than ten to twenty minutes or so. And it gets quite a bit colder quite fast now once the sun is down, most nights, so an extra 40 minutes shortly after sundown has a big effect.)

In another month or so, there will be no usable outdoor seating. It won’t be pleasant to stand around for five or ten minutes shuffling my feet, while dressed for the weather, but it won’t be lethal.

Fifty minutes is another matter entirely. If there’s another ludicrously long delay I’ll basically be fucked. Walking home would necessitate abandoning some subset of my purchases, essentially flushing money down the toilet and likely running out of something I desperately needed to not run out of. Staying put would mean freezing, due to the lack of exertion, and for some reason I find it actually more tiring and uncomfortable to stand up unmoving for that length of time than to be upright and walking for the same length of time. In any other year that this might have happened I could just wait inside the store, as long as I didn’t have frozen stuff — both grocery stores I shop at have indoor seating by the exit — but this is the year of COVID, and spending any longer in a public indoor space is a bad damned idea (and could even mean inadvertently harming other people who are shopping, in case one is unknowingly infected already!), and, of course, sometimes I will have stuff that needs to be kept frozen.

Short of a magical elixir to restore my stamina to its pre-2020 level, what can I do about this? Also, what could be the cause of the sharp stamina drop I experienced around March of this year? I would go to a doctor for that sort of question, but of course I don’t have a doctor, thanks to the cramp-gremlin, and apparently never will again, so unless the stamina loss turns into an acute, 911-worthy emergency I’ve no way of having it professionally evaluated.

(Note: the stamina drop seems unlikely to be COVID-related. I lower my mask when outdoors walking except if forced to go within two meters of people, though I raise it over my mouth and nose to go indoors. So it’s not some mask/breathing/O2 issue. Nor can it be COVID itself, since I’ve not caught it, unless it was an asymptomatic case that shouldn’t therefore have any long term impact. Even that would be exceedingly unlikely as only a few hundred people, thus far, in a county of about 100,000 are known to have had it, and I’ve had no known contact with any of them, and far less potential-exposure-time (indoor-in-public-time) than most people. I have Canada’s COVID alert app on my phone and it has yet to indicate any potential exposures, also.)

Another, more chronic problem is that I continue to be held to very high standards for everyone else’s behavior, for some reason. If I screw up, I experience the negative consequences. If Bell, or any other business or service I rely on, or any person in proximity to me screws up, I experience the negative consequences. For some reason I am punished for any mistake made in mere proximity to me, regardless of my own (lack of a) role in causing it.

This causes me to constantly underperform, or at least seem to (and sometimes publicly be seen to, harming my reputation). I frequently achieve only 95% of my theoretical capability when performing a task, and occasionally as low as zero percent, despite having performed every step of the task correctly and with exacting precision. I simply cannot seem to catch a fair break, or be credited for 100% of the skill and effort I put into a task, much of the time! This is clearly wrong but I have no idea what the cause is or how to remedy it. I can go to the store, make no errors in my actions while doing so, and come home with only 95% of the items I intended to get. I can fire up a game, perform flawlessly, and be treated as having lost because some gormless twit at Bell saw fit to somehow screw my internet connection up for five minutes in the middle of it. And so on, and so forth.

What do you people do to avoid these things and get 100% of what you have earned when you have put in a 100% effort and have the competence to not make errors while doing so? It is but one of the many things that apparently slipped through the cracks during my abnormal childhood and abnormal schooling that everybody else seems to have no difficulty with.

Why not just put up with being treated as only 95% as capable as I am (and believed by others to be only 95% as good at things as I actually am)? Two reasons:

1. Until this stupid neoliberal system is overthrown, like it or not I’m in a cutthroat rat-race, and people will evaluate and treat me according to my apparent worth … to billionaires. Even a 5%-average handicap is a problem in such an unforgiving system, and being seen as 5% less than one actually is is likewise dangerous, as it will cost opportunities. Don’t forget the debacle of my short-lived post-graduation career as a job-seeker: not one response, let alone interview, let alone an actual job. I was invisible, maybe because of that missing 5%.
2. I’m forced, by financial and similar constraints, to skate very close to the margins. For example I am constantly on the verge of running out of one thing or another, most of the times food. My finances are so finely balanced these days that my bank balance is essentially a constant (thankfully far enough away from 0 to buy me some time to fix it if something starts to go wrong). Think of me as an airplane with a lot of altitude, so far, to play with but perpetually low on fuel, underpowered in the engines, with an airspeed barely above stall speed. 5% could easily one day be the difference between pulling up in time and a fiery wreck.

So, how do I get my missing 5%? I not just want, but quite probably someday will need, to close that gap between what I actually earn through effort and skill, and what I actually receive from my efforts. Every day until then represents a theft, and if ever I should not survive some calamity that I would have with the added 5%, I shall have been murdered, though I am unsure by whom, specifically. The system itself?

OK, it looks like new comments to this thread are not becoming visible to other people. Why?

@surplus.. maybe people dont have time to read your Novel that u posted..