Why I’m Watching the Election With My Much-Younger Boyfriend

Tonight, I’m watching the election results roll in surrounded by my friends, and my much-younger boyfriend.

It’s not just that I want his rock-hard stomach and line-free face to distract me from the impending doom facing America. It’s not just that I’ve worked hard, and deserve to find out whether America has chosen to be led by a Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich with someone who is still both hot and naive enough to find me impressive. No, the reason I want to find out whether America prefers to have a rapist or a war criminal in the country’s highest elected office with a man (boy) nearly a decade younger than me is that I want to suffer through this moment with someone who doesn’t know a simpler time.

There was a time when the government was run by honest, trustworthy people with good judgment and strong moral convictions. We’ve truly entered a new era when it comes to political malfeasance. It pains me to know that my thick-haired, energetic boyfriend will never get to experience the world I knew.

The 1990’s were such a simpler time. It was a time when the sitting Speaker of the House was fined $300,000 for breaking tax laws and lying about it.

My sweet, innocent boyfriend has never heard of the Michigan Representative who used scholarship funds for personal expenses and had her House staffers clean her house and curl her hair.

These days every side is accusing the other of rigging the election, instead of admitting that maybe it’s more likely that voters just aren’t that into them. When I was growing up, voter fraud was adorably low-tech. A Congressman just had to complete absentee ballots for the elderly residents of a nursing home.

Last week, my dad told me he was worried about the integrity of electronic voting, because a company connected to George Soros built some voting machines. In my day, our leaders were chosen the people of Florida using good old fashioned paper ballots. Specifically, our leaders were chosen by the Floridians too stupid to figure out how a paper ballot works.

My boyfriend grew up with the internet. He saw his first Tumblr of hardcore porn gifs at the tender age of 11. I didn’t get my first cellphone until I was in college, and I was out of school when the iPhone debuted. When I was growing up, the internet was so new that an Oregon Republican Congressman could make up an internet startup to bilk 11 investors before he was indicted on federal money laundering and tax evasion charges. Those truly were the days.

Unaware of what’s been lost, my virile lover doesn’t want to Make America Great Again. He doesn’t yearn for the days when a sitting President could lose the right to practice law, but not to run the country, as a result of lying under oath about what he did with a cigar, a dress, and an intern. But I do.

He’s not With Her, either. Probably because when Turd Sandwich tried to discredit her husband’s alleged rape victim, he was just a twinkle in his father’s eye. My boyfriend watched credulously when, without a shred of irony, she released a campaign video whose central message was “Believe victims.”

Tonight, I’m watching America’s season finale with the people I love most and a guy who is definitely not “low energy.” I weep for children like my boyfriend. They don’t know that what’s happening now is truly without precedent. These kids have to grow up under a government that’s cynical, corrupt, and felonious. So unlike the government I grew up with.

Tonight I’ll weep into his muscular chest, for America. My only consolation, beside his broad, strong shoulder to lean on, will be that my suffering will be over so much sooner than his.