The Election: It’s just a Paper Moon

The Election: It’s just a Paper Moon

By Ray Hanania

It’s never easy being happy about any election. You win some and you lose some. I guess we should be happy that we have the right to vote, even if it doesn’t always end up perfectly the way we want it.

I had hoped that the battle between President Donald Trump and Vice President Joe Biden would bring to an end all of the aggravations of this horrible election trauma. The tension and stress have been unbearable for everyone.

I’m not talking about stress involving winning or losing, but stress that comes from an environment of anger, hate and meanness.

Our televisions are inundated with “attack Ads,” because attack Ads, unfortunately, work. There are so many of them and they are nauseating to watch. You can’t help but to feel that you’ve been slimed when they end.

My emails have been drowned in election spam, with candidates begging for money or bullying for support. I spend much of my day sifting through hundreds of emails, deleting them one at a time until they are gone. But they’re never really gone and always return.

My cell phone and home phone have been ringing off the hook with campaign pitches, robocalls, and appeals for election money, too, that seem to mirror the calls that come from foreign accented grifters who try to scam you into giving them money, too. Or who claim to be agents of the IRS threatening you with legal action.

“This is an important telephonic message urging you to return this call with expedition and concern … failing to respond could mean imposition of money fines or jail.”

The phone call text sounds like someone who put their language though “Google Translate” which converts anything almost into something resembling normal conversation. There is always something that just isn’t right.

My mailbox is filled with junk campaign mailers that scream anger, hate and vicious namecalling. Some mailers identify the sender. Others, like robocalls and telephone scams, hide the identity of the person or group doing the attack. When a person hides their identity, in robocalls, attack mailers, spam emails, or in online comments, it usually means they recognize that what they are saying is ugly and they don’t want to be embarrassed. It’s kind of an internal shame that they can’t run away from.

I’m happy the so-called “Fair Tax” referendum was rejected. I just didn’t trust the sponsors to do what they promised. Whenever someone says they won’t increase your taxes. It usually means they eventually will.

I was disappointed that Tammy Wendt failed to unseat Dan Patlak, the north side Republican on the Board of Review, or that Kim Foxx was re-elected as Cook County State’s Attorney. Foxx’s re-election is affirmation that she can pretty much do what she wants including doling out favors to her friends and cronies, the way she did in defending the Hollywood Hoaxster Jussie Smollett. She had no consequences to worry about.

Foxx may not be a great prosecutor, but when it comes to helping her celebrity friends, she always delivers.

Judge Pat O’Brien was a longshot to unseat her. His problem was he just couldn’t connect with voters. He just couldn’t remove himself from the label of being a “Republican” in Cook County, which is dominated by Democrats.

Marie Newman won her election over Republican challenger Mike Fricilone to become Congresswoman from the 3rd District, previously held by Dan Lipinski, a nice guy who just didn’t have very good social skills with voters or constituents.

And since Illinois is such a “given” Democratic State, it had no real consequence in the ugly battle between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden. Biden easily won Illinois although we’re only seeing the start of what will prove to be an election aftermath that will be worse than what we saw in the old “hanging chad” battle in Florida. Except this battle will be drawn out in seven or more states where outstanding mail-in votes need to be counted.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t go to the polling place to cast my ballot, and I didn’t get a colorful “I Voted” sticker. I voted by mail, an enhanced option of the absentee ballot process we have had for years.

The system caused people’s heads to whiplash on election night. Trump seemed to be leading after the polls closed. Turns out many of his followers – mostly extreme conservatives who believe that COVID-19 is a constitutional issue and who refuse to wear masks – voted at the polling place which are counted more easily and quickly.

Many of Biden’s supporters voted by mail, mainly to avoid being in situations where they feared coronavirus infection. And counting them is a long drawn out process.

Polling place votes counted instantly gave the impression that Trump was winning. But as more and more mail-in ballots were counted, most from heavily Democratic areas, Trump’s lead quickly slipped away.

The worst part isn’t that we didn’t learn who won right away. The worst part is that we have to listen to the two sides scream at each other, adding more fuel to our stress.

Is it ever going to end?

When I first became a political writer covering Chicago City Hall in the mid-1970s, politics and elections were more like a baseball game. You put everything you had into the competition. You did almost everything to win – things you wouldn’t be embarrassed to explain to your own mother. Writers criticized politicians for what they did wrong, or that they failed to do. They accepted the criticism as being a part of the process. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” a saying goes attributed to the mild-mannered former president Harry S. Truman.

To balance off the admonition, Truman came up another slogan, “The buck stops here,” meaning he took responsibility for his actions or the actions of his underlings.

When the election was over, you shrugged your shoulders and walked away if not as friends than at least with some modicum of respect for the other side ready for the next series.

Not today, though. Today, elections are all about hatred. Anger. Name calling. Anonymous comments and robocalls. Nameless emails. Endless hate phone calls.

It’s not like we get anything satisfying from an election. We don’t. We don’t even get “closure.” Elections linger. Even when someone we voted for wins, they often do something we don’t like.

I compensate by saying that no candidate can represent 100 percent of your views. If they come close to 70 percent, you should be happy.

The late City Hall icon and my journalism mentor Harry Golden Jr., once explained to me after the surprise election upset of Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic by Jane M. Byrne back in February 1979, “It’s all a paper moon.”

What he meant is that we’re all just actors and audience in a huge stage productive played over and over again. It’s entertainment and fiction, more than it is real.

Tuesday’s election? It’s just a paper moon. So go out and get your tuxedo dry-cleaned for the next performance. There always is another one.

(Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall reporter who covered Mayor Richard J. Daley to Mayor Richard M. Daley. Email him at his website at www.Hanania.com.)