Well, here it is. Election day, 2020. A day that I have both been looking forward to, and paradoxically dreading, for a very long time now. Years. Probably ever since that horrible evening in November of 2016, when Donald Trump stunned the world by winning the White House in the election.
I say looking forward to, because it sometimes feels like his defeat is inevitable.
I say dreading for more reasons, because it often felt like his defeat was inevitable back in 2016, and look what happened. Dreading also, because both candidates, Biden and Trump, are mediocre, even if Biden is the lesser of two evils. But I also say dreading, because even if he loses, it seems to me that surely, Trump will declare himself the winner on Election Day. Like Bill Maher, it seemed obvious to me as soon as he won in 2016 that we would never easily be rid of Trump. That he would never, ever refuse to admit to any kind of defeat. His enormous ego just won't let him. I also say dreading because if that happens, if Trump does what everyone predicts he will, and declare himself the winner, his mindless supporters will believe him, and possibly be ready to take up arms if and when that is challenged, even if Trump loses, and clearly, at that. A scenario like that can quickly descend into chaos, which this Fake President thrives on. In all seriousness, I am not sure most Americans even realize how much of their democracy they have already compromised, if not lost, nor how close we really are to another civil war. Indeed, some militant groups already feel we are in one.
So yes, dreading this day, as well. Because unlike other election days, where I felt the drama would only go up until that point when one candidate is officially declared a winner, I am not so sure about this one. I would love to believe that Biden can and will win, and that a new era for this country will arise on the morning of January 21st, the day after inauguration day, when we wake up and Biden started the new day as president, and Trump is just a bad memory. I do not mention the actual inauguration, because it feels like Trump will not peacefully transfer his power if he loses this election. But man, would it be nice if indeed, we have a new president officially installed on the 21st, and day one of undoing the Trump stain on this country begins. Let us hope that this is the scenario that plays out. We shall see, but it begins today.
So here is a paradox: I long suspected that someone like Donald Trump (in terms of polarization and setting back the clock for the country, and perhaps the world) would rise to the top political office in the United States, I never would have actually suspected that it would be Trump, a slick New York business tycoon with a stunning level of arrogance and a false sense of entitlement, to say nothing of his addiction to a glossy lifestyle, beautiful women used as a status symbol, and an addiction to trying to make headlines.
Here is another paradox: while I cannot stand Trump and what he represents, not to mention what he has done to this country, there is no one who seems as fitting, in a strange way, to be the head of the country. Seriously, he personally embodies all of the worst excesses of the nation: constantly playing the victim when, in fact, he has victimized more people than probably anyone else I know of. A wealthy man born to incredible privileges who nevertheless complains more frequently and more loudly about how poorly he has been treated than anyone else. A man who claims to be a genius, but often sounds outright like an ignorant moron. A man who claims to basically have created his own fortunes, but who received stunning levels of help along the way. A man who claims to be incredibly wealthy, yet who hides his personal finances from the public, and who as it turns out, owes far more money than he can pay off. A man who never seemed particularly political, and seemed to flip back and forth between political ideologies (he used to support a single payer, universal healthcare system like the one championed by Bernie Sanders), and then decides to run, and effectively makes his positions up as he goes along, and who allows other experts (Steve Bannon in particular comes to mind) to mold his political platform into a seemingly coherent whole. A man who lies all of the time, yet who his supporters insist is a beacon of truth, indeed perhaps the only source of real truth today.
The paradoxes are staggering, but they do not end there. After all, he symbolizes the country that he now leads in so many ways, and by and large, not in any flattering ways. For a very long time, the United States was the world’s leading superpower, and it also tended to flaunt this status in a loud and often obnoxious way that did not exactly win it friends all around the world. It intervened in foreign affairs all around the world, and fought some wars that it likely never should have fought, earning more enemies. It remains – at least for now – the world’s leading superpower in terms of military and economic might, although many Americans feel that the country is clearly in a state of serious decline, and many of these same Americans, both to the left and to the right, act like victims in this regard, and believe that the world community has treated the country unfairly. And far too often, much like Donald Trump himself, when the message from this country has lacked substance and/or logic, the reliance instead has been on repeating things and increasing the volume. For example, the ridiculously and obviously false claims that Saddam Hussein was linked to the September 11th attacks - which the Bush administration largely fed into, but which it also denied – and hyping Saddam’s Iraq into what would have amounted to them being a de facto world superpower, all in order to justify the unjustifiable invasion back in March of 2003.
Indeed, many people all around the world look at the United States today as a country clearly on the decline. Some people voted for Trump in order to stop this downward spiral, and to make America strong again. For many other people – most Americans, and most people around the world – Trump’s political rise was itself the clearest and most undeniable sign yet of this very decline, and feel that he has hastened this decline dramatically.
To me, Trump symbolizes the American decline. Often, the United States has been compared to the Roman Empire, and if we can make this comparison, than Trump feels like the arrogant Roman Emperors that we have heard about, and which are portrayed sometimes in popular American movies (like Gladiator). If we take that comparison a little but further, the blatant levels of corruption so evident in Congress that have become the norm, and which have been so blatant as to basically be out in the open, is yet another sign of a serious fall.
Nor are the levels of decadence restricted only to government, for that matter. Look around the country, and it seems undeniable that Americans, who have seen their economy alter from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, have become addicted with luxuries, often mistaking them for necessities. We have fought wars which, for many average Americans, were fought largely to keep oil prices in check, while many of the most staunch supporters of these wars unnecessarily drove around in gas-guzzling SUV’s and pick up trucks. We are collectively fixated on trash television, and this has contributed to the American people increasingly earning a reputation around the world for being dumb.
Americans seem to want to be entertained at any cost, and so it was only natural that this would spread to our politics. Think about how the country seems to have shortened it’s attention span, and it then becomes easier to understand why much of the political discourse that we hear comes down to soundbites and three or four themes that are relentlessly repeated by both sides. It may have started as early as the 1960’s, when a handsome and youthful looking John F. Kennedy seemed to embody the very best characteristics that Americans believed of themselves. In the debate with Nixon, many listening on the radio felt that Nixon had actually won. But those who watched on television, and saw the handsome and confident looking Kennedy appearing far more in his element than the sweaty Nixon, felt that Kennedy had won. Ultimately, he won the election.
Since then, we have voted in a successful actor, Ronald Reagan, who played the part of the president that many, if not most, Americans wanted. He is still held up as a model of a successful president, to the point that Barack Obama held Reagan as the model for a successful presidency. And now, we have a reality star who has been elected to the top office. His credentials were very questionable when he was running and after winning the election, and they have not improved since he took power, for that matter. He has lied as a matter of habit, has actively polarized the people of the country, has rolled back environmental protections and censored any viewpoints that contradict what he believes. He has been condemned the world over on numerous occasions, from his refusal to clearly condemn outright Nazis, to pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord and nuclear deals, to mindless comments where he dismissed countries in Central America and Africa as “shithole nations.” And, of course, he disbanded the White House Pandemic Team quickly after taking power, and then looked and sounded completely unprepared when a pandemic reared it’s ugly head earlier this year.
Through it all, he tries to appear strong, claiming things that are so obviously not true, that they would be comical under other circumstances. Yes, his claims should be laughable, except that there are tens of millions of people who believe him, even when it seems clearly to be untrue and/or wrong. This has led to some obvious comparisons with the reality in the United States today, and that of the fictional, dictatorial model of George Orwell’s 1984, where up is down, and where the state dictates what is right and what is wrong, so that 2+2 can equal 5. In Donald Trump’s America, the vast majority of experts in any given field are viewed with skepticism, while hucksters and snake oil salesmen, like Trump himself, claim ridiculous answers without a shred of proof. Trump and his family claim that the Covid-19 crisis is largely over and done, even though the numbers in recent days have set new records for infections.
And this is what has won out in our political sphere. Right now, Trump is in the Oval Office, and Republicans in Congress have bent over backwards to accommodate his every move, his every whim.
Sad times for this country, and indeed, for the world.
Donald Trump basically amounts to one thing, above all, and it is this: might makes right. Just like in Orwell’s 1984, where the state ultimately dictated reality because it had the might, Trump gets away with anything and everything because he has had the audacity to keep gambling, and unfortunately, winning. It has been to the detriment of the entire country.
The question in this election, as I see it, is whether or not we will allow the doctrine of “Might Makes Right” to continue to rule, to gain a stronger hold over the government, and thus, over our lives. Both sides often turn to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers for guidance. But if the Founding Fathers seemed to advocate anything, in my opinion, it clearly was in trying to protect the country from a tyrant who believes too deeply in the self-serving notion of might makes right. And we have someone like that now, who is actively trying to get rid of the system of checks and balances and always seeking to gain more power.
In the United States, which it bears repeating, remains the world’s most powerful country, the notion that absolute power corrupts absolutely is now being practiced by our supposed leaders, and in full view of everyone. The danger of Trump is that he is blatant about his lust for power, and increasingly, he clearly does not see any reason to even be secretive about his corrupt ways of doing things. He understands that Americans have grown dumber, and that his supporters have become loyal to a fault. Trump lies all of the time, but there is one thing that he said about his supporters that stands out more than any other that he said, and which rings true: he could shoot someone in a crowded New York City street in broad daylight, and not lose his loyal supporters. It seemed like a shocking thing for him to have said at the time, but what is infinitely more shocking is that time has proven this to be true. His supporters never question or scrutinize anything that he does. He can – and does – get away with literally anything and everything that he wants, and his supporters will always be there, stomping their feet and cheering loudly, proclaiming that he is keeping his promises.
That is why he needs to be stopped, before this style of blatantly corrupt and authoritarian leadership becomes the norm. If we are to salvage anything from our democratic traditions before Trump stomps them to the ground, then it has to happen now. We cannot wait until 2024, and remember that Trump has suggested on more than one occasion that his supporters might insist that he run for a third term. Already, eh was simply assuming that he would get that second term, and even though the polls clearly show him losing this election in almost all projections, he has suggested that he would not necessarily accept the results, and has not committed to a peaceful transition of power, even if he loses fair and square. If he loses, and then claims – as he surely will – that the election was one big fraud, and that he did not lose legitimately, then those tens of millions of his loyal supporters will also not accept it. And when he incites them to take action, that can easily lead to violence, even possibly a civil war. No, I am not exaggerating, because that, more than the actual election results, is what I am most worried about in the coming weeks and months. That is what makes him dangerous.
It has been said that every empire in history has fallen after becoming too inward looking. Sadly, that seems to be happening here in the United States. Right now, it feels very much the case, as we have a man in charge who reflects this, because he is like Narcissus of ancient Greek mythology: all he sees is himself and his own delusions of grandeur. And increasingly, the country is also blinded by this cult of personality, which has become, arguably, yet astonishingly, bigger than the country itself.
Ultimately, I feel that this is the question that the country is actually grappling with. Are we, as a country, bigger than Donald Trump and his infamous ego, as well as the prejudices and hatred that he enables and even tacitly encourages? Or are we witnessing the final stand of what once was a pretty decent democracy, when we finally drop the pretense of being the world's leading democracy, and go all in for a de facto imperial presidency that is a democracy in name only?
I wish that I could express confidence that we will choose wisely. But the best that I can say right now, since certainty either way just is not there, is this: let's hope, and let's wait and see.
One thing we maybe should keep in order to maintain some sanity is humor. And so I go back to comedian Stephen Colbert, who imitated a boxing announcer's famous line, "Are you ready to rumble?" and altered it a bit for comic effect, to show just how far our democracy as deteriorated already. So borrowing from Colbert, I am using his line here to end this particular blog entry, as we all await the results of this election:
“Get ready for democracy to crumble!"
In the meantime, while we are waiting. it seemed like a good idea to share a link to a video that seems like a plausible foreshadowing of what is likely to happen on Election Night, and the days that follow. Also, the man doing the video, Lee Camp, explains why the polls wind up so often being dead wrong so often. It is not a happy, feel good video, but it is something that Americans should understand. So please watch (sorry, but I am not able to upload any videos because of the problems that I currently have been experiencing with this blog page):
What's Gonna Happen Tuesday? (Web Exclusive)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPfmVVbbEYM
