If you detect a slightly different energy in my voice this month, you're not wrong.

This essay was recorded one and a half weeks before the 2024 presidential election.

An election pretty much everyone on the political spectrum is describing as make or break for the fate of the universe.

Which I don't know, maybe it is.

But at the same time, there's this bizarre anti-crescendo sweeping across the land.

People are calmly taking out their trash at the usual times, and basically just glancing up now and then to see if the world has ended.

It's a really strange time to be analyzing politics, and it has me struggling to dig out the best cartoonist's metaphor.

So I'm going to try this.

You know, when you see three teenagers riding an e-bike at 30mph and none of them are wearing helmets, and the one steering is checking his phone, and you just watch them go by.

That's our presidential elections these days, isn't it?

We all know it has a very real chance of ending badly, but what are we supposed to do?

Yell at the bike.

They're not going to listen.

Put up a sign.

They're not going to read it.

Post something on Facebook.

Why should they care?

And that's the problem.

This is somehow a fundamentally difficult situation to interact with.

And so we think our thoughts and we project normalcy.

We take out the trash at the usual times, and we focus on our only real solace.

When the bike does eventually crash, we can all say, I told you so.

Happy voting everybody.