I traveled to eastern Vermont, to a one of those New England towns where all the bed-and-breakfasts boast about a hero of the Revolution who slept there.
I went into a gift shop and handed the woman behind the counter a rubber-banded stack of brochures for services I offered to the public (not sure what those were), and said to her, “If you’re going to just throw those in the trash, please hand them back.”
But she insisted she would take and distribute them. Then she suggested I browse the gift shop.
I walked over to a display of potpourri and picked up Bernie Potpourri in a little plastic bag stapled to a cardboard closure. It smelled like mothballs. The camphor smell was pleasant to me, though, and I inhaled deeply.
The retail clerk came over to me and said, “Bernie is really about helping old people. That’s his true constituency.” I decided to buy Bernie Potpourri.
**Interpretation**
Early in the primary season, I reluctantly decided I would support Andrew Yang. I hated to support a male candidate when there were many qualified women running, who seemed to actually have a chance of winning, but Yang’s platform was just too good and well thought out for me to ignore. Yang has a degree in economics, as do I, so that’s probably part of why his ideas made sense to me. (Actually, I think Trump also has a degree in economics, but he’s from a different school than I, in so many ways.)
I paid enough attention to the primary to see how Yang did, but I’m tired of this election season already, and I’m not watching debates or keeping up with developments. Of course, there’s really no way to escape it, so subconsciously I probably have been trying to make up my mind who to vote for.
I thought I was probably going to vote for Amy Klobuchar. She’s proven to be a competent legislator, which is important given how hard it is to accomplish anything in Washington these days. I would pick someone like Klobuchar with her limited vision, who can actually accomplish something, ten times over someone like Bernie, who has an attractive vision but hasn’t done much in all the decades he’s been around.
Plus, Bernie’s a dick. He switched to the Democratic Party in 2016 to run for president, then left the Party after he lost, then switched back recently to try for the Dem nomination again. As a registered Democrat, I resent him asking for my vote after that snub.
Also, like most people, I’m tired of his supporters. In 2016 I thought they were sexist, but this time around I’ve decided they’re also racist and homophobic. Mayor Pete is not my ideal, but they’ve been vicious toward him and won’t leave his supporters alone. He is definitely gay, even if he isn’t Queer enough for straights with interesting hairdos. And as for the other candidates being “too white” – what is Bernie? I guess whiteness is something we shall overcome, if we’re woke enough whites. Why didn’t the people making this argument support Yang, or Kamala Harris or Tulsi Gabbard (who is still in the race, I think)?
Yet I think the dream was telling me to vote for Bernie. It didn’t change my opinion of him, but it was telling me that a win for Bernie would be beneficial to me personally. I was gravitating to that mothball smell. The mothballs could apply to Bernie himself, who not only is old but is an old-school social democrat, or it could relate to good ideas that have been ignored for awhile that he would take out of storage. Mothballs could also relate to old people, reinforcing the message from the retail clerk (who was very nice, not like a Bernie supporter at all), that the demographic that would benefit most from his election is the senior one, which I haven’t reached yet but can definitely see from here. It was a potpourri, so there were a lot of unrelated plants being offered, but the camphor dominated.
Another aspect that is interesting is the stack of brochures. It says that I have things to offer that I feel have been rejected, and which people in the Bernie camp – no, Bernie Gift Shop – would value. Sometimes little details in a dream are important, so what about the rubber band? Rubber: flexible. Band: sticking together. Rubber Band: tying things together.
The touristy village where the dream took place is significant, and it says that this election is fundamentally related to the founding of the American government, relating to the ideals we like to think we live up to. But the village was selling access to heroes of the Revolution, suggesting there is another revolution coming. I think it’s interesting that the clerk was female, because the village was pandering access to long-dead men. The suggestion was that despite the sexism, there was something for me here (I guess since I’m also getting old).
Even though I would love to get more feedback on my dream, I’m closing comments on this article. I don’t want to hear more from Bernie Bros, or from the Bernie Bro Handmaidens with their “I suck dick for socialism” T-shirts*, and they can’t resist jumping into all conversations about the election. I’m tired of you guys. Tired, tired, tired. You have made me old and tired. Just go suck some dicks. I can’t wait for the day after Bernie is inaugurated, when you start throwing tantrums about how he betrayed you, by being the conceited old fart he’s been all along.
*I’m not making this up.