How to tell if your brain has been washed

5 questions that might help you know

This is a pretty exciting election.

If you have two basketball teams on the court, you don’t have to spend TOO much time wondering which squad is brainwashed, mistaken, or overrated. You just let them play and the better team usually wins. (If the better team doesn’t usually win, then this game sucks.)

I’m so happy it’s finally time to play ball.

This is a chance for the people who follow the better newspapers and news shows to save the people who follow the worst ones.

It’s a chance for the younger and more confident and hopeful (and fed up) to save the older and more bitter and prejudiced. A chance for black and brown people to save white people, women to save men, the civic-minded and generous to save the more frightened and mean. It’s a chance for a positive vision for the future to win out.

It’s not a fight between conservatives and liberals! It’s a fight between rational and irrational, thoughtful and knee-jerk, scared and angry. (Sure, there’s arrogance on both sides, and groupthink on both sides, and misinformation on both sides, and self-righteousness on both sides, and violence on both sides, but that doesn’t erase our advantage.)

I mean, that’s how I see it. I’m hopeful!

But call or text or email three friends/relatives today.

Even with record-breaking voting, 40% of registered voters won’t vote! So let’s all text or call at least 3 non-Trumpster friends and relatives today to ask if they plan to vote tomorrow. Ask if they know their polling place. If they aren’t sure, they can check at iwillvote.com.

Quiz: Are YOU brainwashed?

1. What do you think would be a better use of your time?

   a. Driving to another town to shoot strangers

   b. Staying home but arguing hotly on social media in favor of someone’s right to drive to another town and shoot strangers

   c. Twerking

2. Who is most likely to inappropriately fondle your granddaughter and then say something very insulting to her while painfully pinching the inside of her upper arm in a menacing way?

   a. Kamala Harris

   b. Mike Pence

   c. Melania Trump

   c. You yourself.

3. If you were given a carte blanche decorating budget for your home, which route would you choose?

   a. Maximalist luxury and saturated colors: marble mantles, silk wall coverings, velvet fainting couches, sumptuous rugs, and some of those mister humidifiers that really show you the cloud of lovely cool steam going into the room.

   b. Extreme minimalism, like Kanye West’s house: white walls and furniture, no doodads, very little art on the walls, no distractions. Just well-made pieces in the right places.

   c. Farmhouse delight: gingham, maple tables, whitewashed wood, chicken-coop-inspired shelving, rocking chairs, mason jars filled with brightly colored jams, a hook for all the aprons, and a blackboard wall for to-do lists written in chalk.

   d. Super modern: smart everything, a gray slate shower where the water just falls from the ceiling like rainforest rain, glass-front refrigerator that senses the food inside and reorders from Amazon when you are low on something. A home theater with big navy velvet reclining chairs that have a massage function. Self-cleaning tubs, a hover-coffee-table with no legs (no legs needed!), and two longhair gray AI hypoallergenic cats. “Alexa, get out the vote,” you say, and your house sends out texts to people in Pennsylvania on your behalf.

4. Which of the following best applies to you?

   a. You question your own motives and thinking daily.

   b. You are often filled with an inchoate feeling of fury, scorn, disgust, or envy that you do not bother interrogating.

   c. You have looked up “socialism” in an encyclopedia recently and were surprised by at least one fact.

   d. When you learned that you will not be legally permitted to own a cheetah or tiger, you felt anger.

5. Which of the following is like a law of nature that just cannot be changed and shouldn’t even be questioned?

   a. The beloved insurance industry

   b. Grammar rules

   c. Standards of beauty

   d. Everyone’s vote should count the same

   e. Very confident women under 30 are too big for their britches and should be taught respect

Answer Key

Please come up with your own key and assign yourself a score between 1 and 20.

Up Next:

Poetry is magic, how to train your cat to say words, sheet pan recipes for smart people, and what happens when you read the entire Sunday New York Times four weeks in a row.

xoxoxoxo

Emily