Please let a new day rise

"Thoughts are energy and energy is matter, so we only need to think something to make it happen," says the older woman waiting in line in front of Amber and me for early voting. The woman beside her nods sagely, as though true wisdom has been dispensed on her unworthy head.

Ordinarily, I would mouth this back to Amber so we could revel in the glory of her overarching philosophy gleaned from the back of a New Age paperback. This being Our Covid Year, masks prevent the effectiveness of this. Instead, I grab her by the shoulders, and we stare into one another's eyes, mentally saying this to one another, which still provokes stifled giggles.

We have waited half an hour in the gloom, the day spotted with a chilly mist that compels every other person to bring an umbrella but none to use them. We will wait for more than another half hour. After another ten feet, a house has left out a bowl of candy for the voters. They must have a surfeit because there will be little trick-or-treating this Saturday--while not banned, it is "highly discouraged." The sweets might as well go to a good cause.

In other circumstances, Amber and I would still vote, but we might wait until Election Day, casting a quick ballot after work in the firehouse where we have never waited more than three minutes. The issue is not the pandemic--we have experience enough by this point to take reasonable precautions--but how badly it seems some would try to suppress the vote. I received a mail-in ballot weeks ago, but Amber refused to let me send it in. Even though New York is not going to turn red--the presidential election is decided by only a few states and ours is not among them (also, as Trump was born in this state, New Yorkers have hated him longer than anyone)--she needs to know that every vote is counted on Election Day. It is too easy for a mail-in vote to be terminally delayed.

I was incensed and shocked when George W. Bush was reelected. How could America be so fooled? In retrospect, W at least makes sense. He was a seasoned politician who had briefly tried to rally Americans after 9/11. He gave the appearance of being bumbling, but he was operating in a logical fashion, even when his actions resulted in the intentional deaths of many overseas. Trump is pure chaos and id, taking the sort of actions one would expect of a toddler Veruca Salt. At this point, you don't need me to explain this further. Either you know, or you won't ever be convinced. The one thing he does well is play upon the amygdalae of his followers, firing up their fears into thought-terminating cliches.

Our nation is a laughingstock internationally, even in the fascist regimes Trump loudly admires. This vote seems of paramount importance, but it is barely a beginning. Trump will fight anything less than a red wave--and he'll say that it's fake news anyway. He is still furious that he lost the popular vote in 2016 to Hillary Clinton. When W lost the popular vote, he did not feel the need to mention it much once he was inaugurated. He certainly didn't carry around pictures of the crowd when he was sworn-in, since he was busy trying to be president. For his multitude of faults, he wasn't fixated only on his fragile ego.

These are dangerous times. This election can, at best, only relieve the tension slightly after Trump invariable denies the result and inspires his followers to violence. Walmart removed guns and ammunition from the sales floor because they expect civil unrest next week, then reversed it when their customers assured them that they needed even more guns immediately. How we would despair with our condescension if we heard this were necessary in another country. What backwoods savages those people would be, desperate to be liberated by our military.

Over the weekend, there was a Trump cavalcade from Beacon to Red Hook. People in my town report (with videos) that they illegally occupied the park, screaming at children, and urinating openly. (There is a public restroom that went ignored. Better to piss in front of children if it will simultaneously piss off liberals.) They were invited and swore they were going to end at the VFW but chose the park without getting an easily acquired permit.

In Rhinebeck, a town away, they shouted at people on the street, blocked traffic on Route 9, and laughed as their diesel trucks spewed exhaust on people dining outside. The police were with them every step, threatening to arrest anyone who complained about the Trumpers. Not protecting them from counterprotests, but overtly choosing a side.

This cavalcade was not a matter of winning over undecided voters. It was meant as intimidation, to throw a middle finger at anyone to the left of corporate fascism, anyone who opposes Trump.

They drove around the block in Rhinebeck for an hour, harassing the people lined up for early voting, trying to intimidate them to leave. The police were indifferent to this, though it should have resulted in a fine or jail time. The voting was taking place at the town hall, across from the town court and the police station. The police had no reason to be bothered.

The counter-protest in Red Hook--if it can be called that--was kids chalking nonpartisan messages along Market Street ("Your vote is your voice!" and the like). I did not hear if the cavalcade harassed the children, so I will assume that they were unaware of the chalking. I do know that they shouted racist slogans at people entering or leaving one of the Mexican restaurants, across from the chalk protest.

Trump pushed through another Supreme Court justice a week before the election, helped by amoral opportunist on the right and toothless fist-shakers on the "left." (The number of Democratic politicians that are other than center-right could fit in a van, which the Trump Train would try to force off the road. Biden and Harris would not be among them.) Both Coney-Barrett and Kavanaugh feel loyalty for Trump. The latter has preemptively made it known that he doesn't think the election will be (or should be) valid. Trump is depending on their votes when it comes to a contested election, which he all but assures we will have. His taint will linger for generations. Our vote, though necessary, seems dilute. If he could, Trump and his adherents (not Republicans but Trumpists) would not hold a presidential election. The last thing they want is a democratic republic. They have convinced a vocal minority to pledge allegiance to Trump and not the nation.

People I know will suffer further because of Trump. I care for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans people in my life. I know women who have had abortions and miscarriages. I am friends with nurses who were incapacitated by COVID. My friends who own restaurants are suffering or have lost their businesses. I don't know when next I will have a normal holiday with my family or friends. All of this is due to Trump's mismanagement or was done intentionally. He is proof that the safeguards that should protect our country have been gutted or ignored. And so, I must stand in the drizzle on an October evening in a blue state to fractionally counter people cheering for the collapse of the Republic.

This is shouting into the void and preaching to the choir at once. The core is that so much that I thought of as America--and I was no Pollyanna--has been rent asunder in the last few years. I fear where we are going. Trump wasn't a fluke but the culmination of decades of partisanship and division by greedy cynics and self-defeating so-called elites. This presidency has as much to do with the Tea Party as it does McCarthyism and those who fought school integration; this is nothing new, only acute. I have never believed less that the political machine gave a damn about America or Americans. I have never believed less that our experiment with self-governance would prosper into the future. I don't care to rely on commonplace hyperbole--"Trump is Hitler and is sowing white supremacy to cause a violent civil war because he craves the ratings it would bring"--but I cannot deny how extreme this all feels, how dire. Our country is actually on fire, our government denies climate change because it makes their cronies a few more dollars (and they will all be dead before we see the worst of it), there are riots in the streets over the militarized police getting away with murder, and a woman whose limited experience on the bench (almost three years!) cements her antipathy for the rights of other women--feeling that they do not deserve rights if white landowners centuries ago did not think to acknowledge them.

I don't feel safe. When the truck with five full-sized Trump flags tears through my quiet town, honking his horn at people--which I have witnessed more than once--it is a threat. He doesn't love Trump; he just hates people who don't support Trump. His honking and visibility-blocking flags are not a yard sign or bumper sticker. I cannot fathom doing that for any other politician, that virulent fanaticism. People liked Obama, but they didn't fly enormous Obama flags in place of the American one and threaten to murder people over it. If Trump loses, he will have months to try to gut the country, facilitated by his enablers (assuming they are reelected). He has made clear that he had no intention of leaving the White House with all the lawsuits and charges he will be facing--not that I expect they will amount to anything because they have not yet. (Kowtowing Democratic politicians expecting us to scream "Yass, Queen!" when they sarcastically clap for Trump have been some of his most fervent enablers.)

But I am reduced to voting for what would be a conservative party in most countries because they aren't supporting Trump. They, too, are not given reason to improve because they will get votes by dint of not being open fascists. Then they move further right to court the Republicans, who themselves use this to move even further right, all while calling a hawk a dove, knowing that the truth of it is irrelevant. They got the soundbite on the news. That is all most people will ever hear.

A reporter on a podcast to which I listened said that that wanting to be president should be disqualifying for being president. I cannot agree more.

This is not a sport to me but genuine concern for where we are going. I could not have predicted it would be nearly this bad, but I understood it would not be good by any stretch.

I wish the Democrats were half as liberal and powerful as the right-wing propaganda says (when not calling them "do nothing"). I wish we had a true opposition party who would put up more than token resistance to the Republicans and go on the offensive--which is always the Republicans' largely successful tactic. The Democrats see no reason to do other than roll over and appease. All they need to do is not be Trump, even if they facilitate what he does, and they will get votes because the other option is maddening. It is a cancerous system and it's unclear which gasp is a death knell.

I am not abandoning ship and leaving the country, in part because I cannot. My family is here, my people are here, and I don't believe any country would grant me asylum merely because our Trumpist party is monstrous. We are a viral hothouse. Who would take in an American now?

Maybe my vote is as much magical thinking as the philosophy the woman in front of us espouses, but what is the other option? I still must hope that this ship of state can right itself, even as my countrymen punch holes in the hull to own the libs.

There are easily a hundred people waiting in front of us. When I enter my ballot in one of the four machines, I am number 888. I don't know if that is since early voting opened days ago or just for today. I suspect that most people voting here, the same ones speckled with Trumper exhaust yesterday, are voting for anyone but Trump.

Soon in Xenology: A new administration without civil chaos? Pretty please?

last watched: His House
reading: Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World