Not that anyone should be surprised at this by now, but over the last few days you have a real choice of things to know about Donald J. Trump: that he's probably a massive business and tax fraud, and that he's definitely giving aid and comfort (and probably veiled orders) to white supremacist groups.
Just keep all of that in mind if things get especially hairy in the run-up to November 3rd.
The title isn't intended to be overdramatic. Honest. But the feeling I've been having lately is that we're all standing near a very deep pit and while there may be a bridge there, it's not all that visible. Matter of fact, the fog in this place is quite thick, which is not only a warning to watch your step but make damn sure that the bridge is still there as well.
Consider this: in September 2020, we currently have a President who is anything but an ideal leader for anything - including leader of a squad of garbage pickers doing community service for drunk driving. There's tons of news articles and Tweets (most of which were authored by him) that prove this point. He's one of the people who put that metaphorical hole in the ground, along with any number of domestic and international political enablers. The stakes for the upcoming general election are extremely high, and the possible fallout has been theorized about in things ranging from the Transition Integrity Project's wargaming of a contested election to Mike Selinker's darker four scenarios for a post-election civil war. Things are precisely that dangerous right now; the situation literally makes the legal fallout from the 2000 Presidential election seem like a contentious PTA meeting in comparison.
My own opinion is that things might go in a direction where we're not all screwed in the end. Notice the key word there: "might". There's no guarantee that a sitting President who's been exceedingly reluctant to guarantee a peaceful transition if he loses will actually accede to leaving voluntarily at noon on January 20th, 2021. But the real problem is that period between November 4th and January 19th. Just about anything can happen - much of it bad. I'm hoping it doesn't. But hope is just that - a best of all possible worlds conclusion to this mess we're in. It may happen. Then again, it may not. Again, the stakes are just that high.
And then there's me as the individual, as opposed to me as a blogger. If things go especially pear-shaped in the US, it wouldn't surprise me at all - not in this era, and not under an increasingly dysfunctional Federal government. I hope it won't. But I'm in my 50s and I fully realize that my life expectancy would be on the downside in any major civil conflict that would go off because of a contested election result. There's been a lot of things that haven't worked out in my life, but something like this would dwarf them all. I was in preschool and elementary school during Vietnam. I saw 9/11 on the TV like practically everyone else, as well as Afganistan and Iraq. But all of those happened overseas, not in Chicago, Washington or New York. If things get that bad, all of the previous wars and terrorist attacks would be like nothing in comparison. The bloodletting could be precisely that awful because it would be in American streets instead of Kabul, Baghdad and Mosul. And in a case like that, a lot of the people reading this right now might not be around to survive it.
...unless I'm wrong, of course.
I'm hoping I am. But I've never felt this insecure about the possible results of an election in my life, and although my money's on sanity winning out in this situation I can't guarantee it.
So here's hoping I'm wrong for a change. Because that metaphorical hole in the ground might not have a bottom.
Chronopolis and Other Stories by J.G. Ballard, which is a restart from January 1st. The reason? I've been remiss in my reading habits (the last novel I finished was in July 2019), and real life has been so bizarre and even vicious over the intervening eitght months that I lost the urge to read anything except non-fiction, and usually online. So it was time for a change
For those of you who scoff at the idea of getting the hell out of the country if Trump gets re-elected, let's put it like this:
You can wait until the November election is over and done with. At the first sign of the Orange Duce not accepting a Biden win or declaring some sort of national emergency or martial law to nullify a loss, you better be prepared for the worst. I don't believe for a minute that the lunatic in the White House will ever accept any sort of voluntary departure from the oval office as legitimate. He can leave on a stretcher with a blanket over his face after Tweeting himself into a stroke at 5 in the morning, or he can leave at the business end of several guns held by Federal agents next January. He's already made ridiculous noises about "negotiating" a third term as if all of this was just some business scam he's participating in, and he probably believes it.
So be prepared. The worst hasn't happened yet, and I'm doing my best to not be alarmist, but when your house is on fire you don't just sit there and let it burn. You call the fire department, or try to put it out. And we may be at exactly the point in time where we're all starting to smell smoke. I sure as hell hope we're not, but I'm not sure of much of anything any more. And I wish I was.Just another reason why 2020 is practically the Abyss of recent history, especially in the United States.
