Life is usually much more boring.

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Allegations of massive voter fraud. Lawsuits to try and throw out millions of votes. People screaming that there is a massive conspiracy and active attempts to overthrow the government, to abolish democracy. We’re being hyped up like it is a cataclysmic even in a Michael Bay film, queue explosions.

I understand that in our desire to know everything right now, to have all the answers and all the decisions made in our technological world where the entirety of human knowledge and information is available at the tips of our fingers, we are being told to be patient. Often it seems that during these periods of uncertainty, we are left to wonder and speculate as to why things are being held up the way that they are. And with the lack of reasonable explanation, the mind creates stories to fit what is known. This is in our earliest days of storytelling, how myths and legends are born.

Life tends to be pretty boring, like the first few rounds of a game of telephone. I remember when I was in high school being a part of the school’s ADL (Anti-Defamation League club) we did an exercise in which there were several participants, all of whom were sent out of the room. The rest of the group who was not participating was told a story along with the first participant. Then, the second participant was invited in and the first participant was instructed to retell the story to the second participant. The process repeated itself over and over until the last participant had heard the story, then they were to tell the rest of the group. The intent of the exercise was to show how the story elements changed based upon the person telling it. Everyone has things that they focus on, highlight, and embellish. There are also other things that each listener/teller dropped, minimized, or forgot. And finally, there were details that became part of the story that were not what happened in the original event. It was an exercise in the evolution of storytelling.

So what do I think happened this election? I think that we had a lot of people acting out of loyalty and fear. I think that people listened to the storytellers recount second and thirdhand versions of stories, making their embellishments and minimizing other details to elicit the emotional reactions they wanted. I think that people turned out in droves as a rejection of Trump’s personality, and that they believed it to be a higher priority than Trump’s policy. I think that some people in their fervor, may have done some suspicious things, but some grand conspiracy is highly unlikely. I think that both sides believe that they are right, and that their positions are so righteous that any disagreement is on par with blasphemy (and I do mean that in a religious sense).

Real life is much more boring than that. We’ll move forward, the results will be certified. Trump will be out, Biden will be in. We’ll wait to see what happens in the Georgia Senate races. Things will move on. Everyone will blame everyone else, and things will get back to some semblance of normal as the vaccines get distributed. We’ll get about 6 months off from the political ads then we’ll move back into the next cycle of name calling, insults, and intransigence as both sides resume their pissing contest.