This election is a pale imitation of democracy

Does anyone else feel like they’re living through a simulation of democracy? All the apparatus of democracy has been laid out before us today. The polling booths, the ballot papers, the boxes to stuff them in. But the stuff of democracy, the substance of it, feels oddly, sadly absent. We’re being canvassed, but not engaged. We’re being asked to vote, but not to think. Not really.

The whole thing has felt like a phantom election. Not to get too Baudrillard about it, but is an election even taking place? It must be because they’ve been talking about it on television. You might have seen them while idly browsing the channels in between Euros matches. But in the real world where the rest of us live, the election has been notable by its absence. I have not overheard one conversation about it. Anywhere. And I’m an instinctual eavesdropper.