A/N: Tried to make this unbiased! Please stay safe and don't ditch your friends or family over differences in opinion. Try to see where each other is coming from! Stay safe!
Disclaimer: Hetalia is still not mine.
Heated.
The best word to describe this feeling. The burn of the air. The sweltering feverborn ache. His heart feels like Hell.
Alfred digs his palm into his face. It comes away wet. Perhaps sweat; perhaps tears. Perhaps both. Liquid pain.
Everything hurts. He doesn't know whether it's primarily the coronavirus or the crash of the economy. Which one worse? He pants against the mask, his breath echoed back against his mouth. Some of them told him it's necessary. Others called them liars.
He winces. They said the air is warming. They said he is to blame.
He's really sick. Some say it is Yao's fault. Others say it is his. This pandemic has shaken up the world.
The year of 2020 was the year of Covid. Of lockdowns and masks. Social distancing and shutdowns. A giant sized impact from a tiny germ and the waves of talking points that followed.
And yet despite the warnings, people would gather united by the phrase "Black Lives Matter." They say that black people were being murdered by the police. Call his boss a bigot. Calling for justice to the oppressed.
Yet these gatherings come with fire. Smashed buildings. Other people will call these rioters, not peaceful protestors. And weren't they worried about falling ill?
His people are afraid of fascism. Of Marxism. Of Nazis and social justice warriors. Antifa and the alt-right. His brain is racked with denouncements of the fake news media and police and ICE and religious extremism. The fears of his citizens who worry about losing their livelihoods over their their sexual orientation or their race or what they joke about on social media. Young people who keep secrets they worry will prevent them from getting ahead.
This is what it is like to be a nation divided. He doesn't know what to believe anymore. Who to trust or what to do. He feels as if he is turning against himself. The last election was tense. This one? Tenser.
It's that time again: time to pick a new boss. Or the old one again. Does he want to keep Donald Trump? Or Joe Biden, the vice president of Obama, his boss from before?
Decency is on the ballot.
Policies matter more than character.
Biden's character is worse; they're fake news.
The president does not want a free press. And he is violating human rights.
No; what the president doesn't want are liars. It is the Left trying to take away human rights.
He doesn't know if he can even trust himself to make this choice, yet he will do it anyway. He casts the ballot.