The Elections Monster: Zombie Edition

The election has been over for almost a year now, but something monstrous is happening that can't be ignored anymore:

The election of 2016 will not go away.

From the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling, to the continuing hate rallies/campaign stops Trump keeps holding, the election never seems to be over, everyone is still waiting to make this monstrous choice. Not too long ago it was Hillary Clinton tore into Bernie Sanders for sinking her presidential bid in her new book about the debacle, What Happened.

I stopped myself from writing this post immediately after Clinton's book came out because even though I believe attacking Sanders (and Jill Stein) is misplacing the blame, she has every right to say that in her book. I didn't want to get caught up in the hashtag telling her to just go away, as much as I wish the 2016 election would.

Witness today, in the Rose Garden:

It's time that we recognize the nature of this problem. The monster we're dealing with is a zombie. You can run, you can arm yourself, you can try to set traps, but it cannot be stopped.

With all respect to George Romero, I hate zombies. Not because they want to eat our brains, but because the anxiety behind the trope of the zombie repulses me. I hate them because they take humanity and reduce it to a pure physicality: only a few surviving characters in zombies movies are real people whose lives matter. Everyone else is walking meat that has to be dismembered, incinerated, or exploed to stop. Zombies give us permission to start blowing people away. The monster is the dehumanization, not of the lumbering horde, but of the cast of heroes. And in the context of this election, that is very frightening idea.

Image credit: Altered from "Groupofzombies" by Joel Friesen [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons