1) I appreciate this for some reason during impending-apocalyptic-feeling times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAzaaqXFpRM
2) If you're voting in hopes of expediting the end times or to spite elites that you despise you're not voting for the right reasons.
3) If you despise the elites - whoever they are - consider how much power they've lost. The Republican elites couldn't push their 1st, 2nd, 3rd . . . they ended up choosing between Ted Cruz, whom everyone who knows him hates, and the tangerine abomination. In 2008, the Democratic establishment's choice was defeated by a charismatic first-term Senator; this year, she was nearly defeated by a cranky septuagenarian Independent self-described socialist.
In a sense, our Republic has never been more democratic, in both the positive and negative senses. Yes, HRC is an establishment figure. But the "establishment" is losing the ability to dictate our choices to its satisfaction. So please don't use your vote this year to kick the elites while they're down; use it to keep a man who can't be trusted with a twitter account from the nuclear codes.
4) We're either getting a female president or someone who treats and speaks of women like Trump and who would appoint SCOTUS justices who would seek to reinstate government regulation of a woman's personal life.
5) I dictated this while walking in the woods the other day. Here is what the phone decided I said:
I am walking in the woods alone right now. Among the fallen leaves, at the end of the day. With the wrens singing. I think to myself: this woods will be here after Tuesday. These woods will be here after America, whatever that means.
America has not been alive for half the lifespan of the Roman Republic. Already, we are showing the signs of a decadent Republic or an empire that is dying. We have lost a sense of what civic virtue is. We have gotten into foreign wars for the glory or profits of men despite the lessons that history tells us about overextending a sphere of influence or occupied territory. And most importantly, I suppose leaders seem to have been compromised. We have investigative and intelligence agencies that go without supervision or consequences to their actions, giving them more or less the ability to do what they want. I cannot imagine what kind of explicit or implicit threats an incoming President might receive from the agencies that they supposedly control. The FBI director's leakage of "more Hillary Clinton emails to be looked at" and the public reaction to it illustrates the above concerns. It was a shameless hit job on the agency's non-preferred candidate, in favor of a more authoritarian candidate who will likely give them more power or let them do what they want unimpeded. And we have a public that can't differentiate smoke from fire.
We see the decline of civic culture and public spiritedness in our politicians, who do what they do need to do in order to ensure a good and steady income and whatever they define as personal success, and a news media that is much more interested in profit then in providing any public service in their reporting. We have two political factions, there's an industrial complex for each of them, and members of each will do what they need to do in order to toe the line and stay within the good graces of the faction. Toeing the line is much more important on the right wing of the spectrum, though. The right wing has acted with more political discipline among its voters. And they have finally expressed a desire for an authoritarian. And an executive agency that has acted with periodically authoritarian ends for decades has openly tried to get the authoritarian elected with less than a week to go.
My attention returns to the wrens as the dusk falls. They remind me that no matter what happens, America is temporary. We are temporary. That the world is temporary.That everything, even America, must die. I will I wish that my late mother were here to talk to me about this, but her unexpected and recent demise says everything to me. Enjoy good things while they last. Take nothing for granted.
Authoritarianism has been the default for most of history. Our avoidance of it is what makes us special, and whats so sad about seeing a boot coming down on our face. Even if it doesn't land this time, the future of America, as O'Brien claims, does look like a boot on a human face. Maybe it won't be. But if it is, I do not think, unlike O'Brien, that it will be on the face forever. Attempts at governments that are based on and seek to enable our best nature will fledge, and sometimes, if only for a while, they might soar. We must savor the times at which we are at our best; we will not be anything forever.
