Election Tuesday is here. And what a dreadful day it is. Anxiety doesn’t begin to describe the cloud hanging over this country. Four years ago, I learned that I lived in a very different country than I thought I did. Four years ago, I wept, brokenhearted and terrified. Four years ago, I penned two posts with two different target audiences, one for conservatives and one for progressives. Both were unbelievably naïve.
At the time, you see, I mistakenly thought conservatives and progressives were each putting forward good faith arguments for the best way forward. I’m not talking about the elite party bigwigs or the dark money that fuels them, but the general rank and file constituents.
Over the next several months, the scales would peel off my eyes and I would see with disturbing clarity the growing rift between the two realities Left and Right experience. I saw echo chambers consume friends on both sides of the aisle. And then I learned of the Russian interference in our election, realized I had shared Russian propaganda, engaged in Russian talking points, and contributed to the problem that led to the rise of the psychopath currently in the White House.
I obsessively sought out more information on the Russian operation that so successfully stoked the fires of chaos and discord. And the more I learned, the more I realized that Trump was not merely an immoral bigot capitalizing on the racism, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia embedded in the DNA of this nation; he’s the single greatest threat to American democracy I’ve encountered in my lifetime.
Slowly, over the course of four years, I began to understand how precarious our democratic institutions are. I thought we had a system of checks and balances that would prevent Trump’s worst impulses and keeps us more or less safe from outright authoritarianism.
We have no such checks and balances. And now, I sit here in dread, wondering if we’ll have a free and fair election, fearing that violence is inevitable, terrified that we’re on the brink of literal civil war. I never would have guessed I would live to see such frightfully worrisome times.
Four years ago, I didn’t think there was that much Trump could do. But now I understand that given another four, you and I will not live in the United States of America anymore. I don’t know where exactly it will be that we will live, but it’s not what you and I have called home for all our lives up to now.
And even if Biden wins in a landslide, we’re not out of the woods. Even if everything goes perfectly for the Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, we’ll still be at the starting line, not the finish.
I don’t even have the energy to proofread this post. I just needed to get this off my chest. God, I hope the world looks a little brighter in a few days. I’m not counting on it.