The dating conventions b.c. and a.d. were early victims of cultural vandalism at the hands of those who cannot bear the thought of C. or D., and they were replaced with b.c.e. (“Before Common Era”) and c.e. (“Common Era”), leaving history bisected by the same apparently unmentionable Event but the Event itself unspoken. The 2020 presidential election can be divided with the same convention, having been launched in the now misty distance of history b.c.e. — Before Coronavirus Epidemic — a very different time from the present.
Republicans in May c.e. are worried. Trump’s poll numbers are down, and that does not seem to be the result of Trump’s Trumping his way through a press briefing and spit-balling daft ideas about mainlining Lysol or giving the old lungs a good scrubbing down with Clorox. Democrats are worried, too, having apparently just realized that Joe Biden is, was, and always shall be, Joe Biden.
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