gracchusdixit

In less than 72 hours, millions of Americans will go to the polls to vote in what will arguably be the most consequential election of my lifetime.  That is not hyperbole.  At stake in this election is nothing less than the future of our republic.  Will voters turn their backs on the national nightmare that is the presidency of Donald Trump?  Or will they turn a blind eye to his criminality and his pathological lying, not only allowing his authoritarian instincts to reign unchecked but unleashing them?  

If voters make the latter choice, the democratic institutions by which we have been governed for two and a half centuries will suffer unspeakable, perhaps irreparable, damage, from which we may never recover.

This may seem to some like a contradiction in terms or even an absurdity.  Surely, it is not possible that the citizens of a democracy might willingly vote to end their own democracy.  Precisely that, alas, has happened all too often in human history.  

Hitler and Mussolini were both “voted” into power by the mechanism of supposedly democratic elections, and once in power, they shut down those mechanisms and ended the power of the vote.  When such a political Rubicon has been crossed, there is no going back except through a river of blood.

I know what the polling says.  I know what the pundits are predicting.  I know what bets the odds-makers in Las Vegas and London are placing.  All the “smart money” says the Democrats will win a majority in the House of Representatives, pick up governorships and legislative seats in states across the country, and even have a chance, however slight, of eking out a majority in the Senate.  

None of this makes it any easier for me to sleep at night.  I am frightened to death.  I am frightened, not merely because so many of the same prognosticators got the 2016 presidential election so hopelessly wrong.  I am frightened, because of what a similar outcome this time would say about my country and my fellow citizens.  

The election of Donald Trump was nothing less than a political volcanic eruption.  It opened a yawning crack in the earth, unleashing a long-suppressed, sulfurous magma of poisonous hate and prejudice—against immigrants, against people of color, against women who dare to speak up for themselves, against anyone who isn’t white, Christian, or “straight”.  

Thanks to this volcanic eruption, racists and would-be Nazis are now routinely excused or defended, not only by Trump himself, but also by his innumerable surrogates and supporters. Some of those supporters are brazen enough to sport t-shirts proclaiming, “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat,” a declaration that would have been considered treasonous before Trump’s election, by traditional Republicans most of all,  His defenders are now willing, even eager, to justify the use of judicial vengeance or physical violence to silence his critics.  The chant, “Lock her up!”, continues to punctuate his never-ending rallies, and has become, for his adoring and witless followers, the equivalent of the national anthem.  

Far worse than the t-shirts and the chants, however, is the actual violence that Trump has unleashed—violence that has led to the murder of black Americans worshipping in their churches; the attempted bombing of opposition politicians and critics; the slaughter of guiltless Jewish Americans in their house of prayer in Pittsburgh.  All this awfulness has unfolded without a convincing word of remorse or rebuke from the President of the United States.

All this is what keeps me up at night.  All this is what frightens me.

But then, my fears come face to face with other realities.

The reality that Americans have become more politically engaged than has been the case in decades.  Not only engaged, but outraged by Trump’s toxic rhetoric and scandalous behavior.  Not only outraged, but determined to stop him in his tracks.

The reality that millions of women have decided that they have finally had enough of being bullied by callous or clueless men, who dismiss them as “hysterics” and their peaceful protests as “mob violence”.  Republicans may revel in the boost they believe they got from the confirmation hearings that sent Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, but they also revealed their utter contempt for women, millions of whom will never forgive them.  

The reality that an overwhelming majority of Americans reject the demonization of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, are horrified by the spectacle of immigrant children being torn away from their parents, and see Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant harangues for what they are:  cynical and hateful demagoguery.  

The reality that most Americans no longer swallow the old canard that any form of progressive law-making—an equitable tax code, a decent minimum wage, health care that doesn’t drive ordinary people into bankruptcy, the protection of Social Security and Medicare—is a step on a slippery road toward godless “socialism”.

I do not pretend to know what will happen Tuesday.  I have no idea what my fellow citizens will decide.  All I can say is that I am simultaneously frightened to death and filled with hope.  Above all else, I am filled with the hope that hope will prevail.