ARE WE LOOKING INTO THE ABYSS?

Sunlight/Dark

 

 I’ve never felt afraid before election day.  Excited, maybe.  Worried, maybe.  But never afraid.  

 

We’ve all heard about things that might happen, election challenges, protests, lawsuits, vengeance, even regardless of who wins.  I have never felt so aware of anger bubbling throughout the country beneath the surface.  In some counties in this country the anger is overt, nothing subtle about it.  Fed by outright lies, misinformation, half truths, circulated more insidiously than ever before.

 

On the surface here things are quiet.  The Trump signs and the Harris signs are scattered here and there, not much different than in Trump’s last time around. Only the Trumps signs are occasionally accompanied by an American flag.  I resent the co-opting. 

 

If Trump wins, or even if he doesn’t, the emotions won’t die. Here’s a telling anecdote:

 

At a Trump rally in Georgia on Wednesday [10/23], Tucker Carlson gave a rant that became an instant classic of perversion. In a shrill tone, he spun out a metaphor in which America is like a house where the children are misbehaving. The toddler is smearing feces on the wall; a 14-year-old is lighting a joint at the breakfast table.

“There has to be a point at which Dad comes home,” Carlson said ominously, to raucous applause. “Yeah, that’s right. Dad comes home, and he’s pissed!”  

 

Maureen Dowd, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/us/politics/tucker-carlson-trump-spanking.html

 

Guess who Dad is.  That audience knew, and started calling out his name.  Dad is pissed!

 

When Dad is pissed, he can curse.  He can call people names. He can be tough and he will be being because tough is manly.  Because “children” need to be put in their place.  Who are they, these children?  All those doing things that maybe you don’t much like, all of them bad, bad behavior.   Immigrants, transgender kids, Democrats, liberals, what the heck, all of them––anyone who won’t give Dad the time of day.  Dad is fickle, so consistency doesn’t matter. Dad is old.  But all dads are old, right?  So what? He’s more important than the law. He’ll fight the bad people in a bunch of different ways, depending.  Doing it so you don’t have to.

The rally at Madison Square Garden, kind of an emblematic moment, an apotheosis of giving the world the finger, insults, curses.  The crowd boiling.  Ready for anything.

 

Next week will tell us something.  Something.  Back from the edge?  Too late for that?  

Uh oh...

 Pretty dark down there...