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.
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