"One must have a mind of winter"

The agonizing bleakness of the presidential debate.

It seems obvious to me that Donald Trump is by far the lesser of two evils, and this settles the matter of who to vote for. Beyond this key point, the embarrassing spectacle that was called a presidential debate struck me as a massive exercise in demoralizing the American people.

Only by adopting a posture of total emotional detachment was I able to get through it. This mental state reminded me of the Wallace Stevens poem, “The Snow Man,” in which the poet imagines what it’s like for a snow man to stare at a bleak winter landscape.

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.