The election is probably close. How close is impossible to say, of course, because the future is not here yet, despite the eye-crossing level of tea leaf reading of the polls and early voting. But let’s go with it’s close.

How on Earth can this presidential election be close? On one side you have a competent leader, Kamala Harris, and on the other side, you have a deranged talking yam who is openly fascist, Donald Trump.

How can this be, you say? Well, from what I am seeing and hearing from friends and Black women online, being a Black female up for a promotion against a dipshit white man, and it being up for grabs, is all too familiar. We have a race problem, of course, and a misogyny issue.

All that said, there are three main issues in the campaign that many seem to be basing their decision on: crime, immigration, and the economy. Herein lies the problem.

Public perception of these issues is way off. We have a bullshit problem. Let me explain.

We’ll start with crime, which is an oldie in that it has been a perception problem for a long time. The following graphic is from a 2016 Pew study:

What about now? Well, after a brief pandemic spike, crime is falling again. However, public perception is completely off, once again. Late last year, 77 percent of Americans in a Gallup poll believed crime was rising, despite it falling.

Here’s the thing…if crime is indeed rising every year, and has been rising every year for many many years, why are we not living in a violent hellscape where crime is high everywhere? If crime matched the perception, that would be very bad. But it’s not. The facts and reality do not back it up.

Then there’s immigration. If you listen to Trump and much of the media, immigration at the southern border is an open faucet because Biden has instituted an open border. This is just not true, and like with crime, objectively not true. Border crossings are down, way down, during this year. The idea that Biden has an open border is as ridiculous as believing hurricanes are made by Democrats to kill Republicans. This is not how an open border works.

America needs better immigration policy but it also needs immigrants. Tough immigration laws in states like Florida have been an economic disaster. Immigrants have helped to keep Social Security solvent. We need a rigorous debate on immigration because the system is almost 35 years old and outdated, but we also need it to be based on reality.

Finally, the long-running debate on the economy has been kind of insane. I will preface everything I am going to say by noting that of course, there are too many people struggling. And high prices have been a challenge, especially in housing, education, and healthcare where increases have been steep.

But the thing is, after the pandemic caused a global economic downturn, America has recovered better than any other peer nation in the world. Unemployment hovers around 4%, the stock market is roaring along, wages are doing well, and inflation has slowed way down.

But perception is the opposite. Half of Americans believe we are in a recession and have near-record unemployment. Gas prices are down, but I recently talked to someone who believed they had been rising for three years now. Okay…let’s just assume they were rising 10 cents a month, that’s a $3.60 a gallon increase, which should put gas at over $6 a gallon in the national average. This is just not living in any sort of recognizable reality. I haven’t even mentioned the CHIPS and Science Act, the infrastructure bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act’s positive impact.

So why is perception so off? We’ve had several years of over-the-top news reporting on crime (nightly news programs running stories about individual local murders, something they didn’t used to do, hasn’t helped). The hype over inflation occasionally became embarrassing and raised questions about the airport drinking habits of certain pundits. We were absolutely firehosed with images of people crossing the Mexican border, although that has curiously slowed down.

Hard to say why people believe what they do, but it’s a real mess. Our economy, all things considered, is a story to be proud of. We had hammered out an immigration bill that was the start of a solution but Trump killed it. Crime really is falling and that should be great news given how many guns are out there.

All this should help Harris. She should have a substantial lead, especially given her ideas on how to build on this momentum. And especially given how on the other side, we have a man who has some absolutely horrible economic ideas that will raise prices and potentially wreck the economy, and who has crime and immigration solutions that are pure, unfiltered fascism.

But instead, the election seems very close. I suppose if you look at just how many of our fellow citizens exist in a place far from reality, it starts to make a lot of sense. Here’s hoping Harris continues to make her case and brings a few more people over from the bullshit side to the reality side. And maybe, just maybe, pay more attention to the facts instead of the vibes.

The last word goes to India.Arie.