Cameron Hendy

It goes without saying that reading mainstream American news has become both pointless and profoundly depressing since the election of Joseph R. Biden. The overriding message, as far as I can glean, is that the world should be overwhelmed with gratitude upon daily remembrance that Biden is now president. Should you have any reservations whatsoever about the legitimacy of the vote or the behavior of the House Democrats over the last four years you are most welcome to eat shit and die because you're a right-wing extremist and you lost. The coup failed, democracy prevailed, fascism has been defeated and banished from these shores forevermore! I get it. We're a bunch of filthy pack animals who get a dopamine buzz when our side wins and the other side loses.

This is a piece about death. Obviously death is a serious topic, perhaps as serious as anything you could possibly write about, but in these truly weird times of a global pandemic and unprecedented threat to what most people would conceive as normality, let’s start with a joke. How do you make ordinary citizens accept an indefinite period of economic shutdown and deprivation of their most basic civil liberties? Two weeks at a time!There seems to be a bit of a trend regarding disclaimers among those who have an opinion in favor of a return to everyday life anytime soon so I’ll start with the usual caveats: I accept that coronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 or whatever you prefer to call it, is a serious health threat.

If there ever were a theme to emerge from the Trump era it is this: hypocrisy. We're all guilty, we all change our minds and contradict ourselves on occasion. So it is that we come full circle during the ascendancy of Joe Biden and observe that the very same commentators and pundits who once suggested that Donald Trump was mentally unfit for office find themselves enthusiastically endorsing one Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. for president. There's something especially egregious about declaring Trump intellectually incapable of governing while supporting the candidacy of a man who often forgets where he is and the office for which he's running. In the spirit of the time we find ourselves living in, let's name and shame the worst offenders.

Let’s be honest – the best part of primary season is seeing just how wild some of the fringe candidates are. Every election cycle throws up a few quixotic single-issue mavericks without a hope in hell of actually securing the nomination. Such campaigns are usually admirable attempts to force concessions from more viable contenders or shift the debate on some key issue or another – standard politicking. Somewhat more unorthodox is the campaign of Mike Gravel – the ex-politician who doesn’t want anyone to vote for him at all. Mike Gravel, former congressman and senator from Alaska has been politically reincarnated by David Oks, a high-school senior who is now serving as his campaign manager.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘charisma’ as ‘compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others’ – how fortunate then that the Democrats have been blessed with two exceptionally charismatic 2020 candidates in Beto O’Rourke and Andrew Yang. The candidacies of Beto and Yang are especially intriguing as they represent a pitch to the American people delivered from two opposing ends of the charisma spectrum. Beto is the hyper-sanitized, telegenic, photogenic, focus-group optimized old-money Texan who, as he says himself, was born to be in it. He’s also physically attractive, which counts in politics. This was true for John F.