“This,” as Etiquetteer’s Dear Mother used to say, “is an opportunity to practice Patience.” Patience is, after all, a virtue. Usually it was not easy to hear that good advice, and it is no easier giving it today to the millions of people waiting anxiously for the results of the American elections. As of this writing, both Presidential candidates are about the same distance from an Electoral College victory, and both sides are about the same distance from claiming, or reclaiming, control of the Senate. Etiquetteer can just hear Norma Desmond in the next room, crying out “My nerves are being torn to shreds!”
And at the other end of the room we hear Elizabeth in Young Frankenstein sensibly replying “Calm down!” We will know the results when every vote is counted, and not before. Hand-wringing and fretting will not get them counted any quicker. Stop doom-scrolling about the What Ifs of this admittedly tense situation. What can be denounced, however, is the suggestion that Certain Parties are making that votes counted after midnight simply don’t count. Leaders — and anyone who aspires to be a leader — not only need to encourage Patience, they need to practice it and lead by example.
So, be patient, keep calm, and . . . take another drink? NO! Alcohol has always played a visible part in American elections — this 2016 piece at Vice has some interesting anecdotes — but now, instead of candidates trying to bribe or incapacitate voters with free booze, we choose to anesthetize ourselves. Mercy goodness, the number of tweets or status updates about drinking in despair or celebration! Indeed, That Mr. Dimmick Who Thinks He Knows So Much broke out a bottle of champagne last night, along with bottles of blue curacao and absinthe. For a blue victory, the former would be added (that makes a Ritz Fizz), for a blue defeat, the absinthe* (which makes a Death in the Afternoon). By 10 PM it was absinthe, and by 11:30 the curacao was back in the pantry.
At this point a better use of alcohol would be as an ingredient in an election cake, a sort of yeasty fruitcake containing sherry, brandy, and/or rum. Etiquetteer, not always a dab hand in the kitchen, might get better results marinating a store-bought pound cake with a bottle of whiskey.
Please, dear readers, whatever choice you made in the voting booth, as weary as you may feel, as anxious, you are stronger than the current moment. Let’s get all the votes counted and then, as they used to say in court, “consider our position.”
*The active ingredient of which is wormwood, which turned the waters bitter in the Book of Revelation.