Heralding A New Dark Age?

 

This is the most likely scenario based on all the various polling I've been following.  Arizona, Georgia, Florida and Pennsylvania are all "in-play."  I assume Biden will win one of these states and Trump will win three, when Trump's mail-in ballot litigation offensive is finally over with.  It might come down to Pennsylvania, specifically, how many vote for Biden in Philadelphia.  But, for the first time in my adult life, my vote might also make a difference in Georgia.  If Trump loses my home state he could be crushed.  See map at end of this post for how that might look.  If Trump wins Pennsylvania then Americans have probably voted to regress to the 1950's and our true colors will show us to be afraid of humanity's future. I made this map on 270towin.com.

I voted for Joe Biden in-person a couple of weeks ago.  Originally, I had requested and received an absentee ballot but with Trump's clear strategy of attempting to disqualify as many paper ballots as possible this coming Tuesday, I decided it was better to put on a face mask, void my ballot, and vote early in the county annex building.  Jennifer and I both went.  It took us about 15 minutes from start to finish.  There was a steady flow of people voting.

Long-time readers know that I have voted third-party a lot in years past.  In 2008, I voted for Obama.  But, in 2012 and 2016 I voted the Libertarian ticket.  During my life, I have voted for third-party candidates more than taking the traditional two-party route.  My logic was usually along the lines that my state was already decided.  My vote would not affect how my state's electoral votes would be cast, either blue or red, so I had complete freedom to vote for the candidate I most agreed with personally outside America's nearly bankrupt the two-party system.

That is not the case in 2020.  For the first time in my life, Georgia is a toss-up.  It could go either way.  So I wanted to make damn sure that my vote for Biden counted against Trump's possible post-election shenanigans.  Unfortunately, the ground work has been laid for the Supreme Court to help Trump win, even if he loses.  The Trump campaign is already waging war against the vote in Nevada and in Pennsylvania, particularly Philadelphia, among other places.  Voter suppression is Trump's first line of defense. 

As I indicated in my post on the 2016 election, Hillary lost Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to Trump primarily due to lower than usual voter participation in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee.  If urban voters had turned out as expected in those three cities Clinton would be president today and the Supreme Court would now be tilting Left instead of being overwhelmingly Right-wing.   This is the greatest tragedy of the Trump administration, but that's a topic for another time.

Now we see Trump's minions actively trying to suppress the vote among blacks.  So-called denaturalization tactics are another way Trump seeks to lessen the votes against him. Ultimately, Trump will seek to suppress as many mail-in votes as possible.  They are basically already doing that in a ballot-by-ballot basis, which is why I chose not to vote mail-in.

Trump's personality is one of projection.  Whatever he is going to attempt himself, he will broadcast it before he does it in an attempt to make whatever it is seem as if it is the result of something else.  In a nutshell, misdirection.  He will seek to invalidate the mail-in voting process, therefore, he has already declared the election will be a "fraud."  It will seem to be a fraud only because Trump will insist that it is one.  Projection.  Self-fulfilling prophecy.  Whatever you want to call it.  

Trump's endgame is clear. Create a train wreck and pretend to be the victim.  I expect Trump to declare victory early on the night of November 3rd, long before all the mail-in votes are counted in states like Pennsylvania.  When those mail-in ballots shift battleground states toward the Dems, Trump will cry "fraud!" and Election Day will become Litigation Day.  

Get the election into the courts where he has appointed the judges - and win it there, by court-justified voter suppression.  Although, for various reasons, this remains a long-shot scenario (his strategy might not work in the end), Trump has stated "I think it could end up in the supreme court."  He is projecting that he is going to try to get it there.  

Playing the victim is HUGE for Trump.  In typical projection personality fashion, he has stated that if Biden wins, it will only be because the Supreme Court aided the Democrat.  Insanely, this is the exact opposite of what he hopes will happen.  Trump wants the court to aid Trump.  So Trump projects "assistance" onto Biden that Trump is actually seeking for himself.  This reveals so much about Trump's twisted psychology.

As I have mentioned before, I am no fan of Biden.  He has a tendency to say stupid things.  He is no great mind and has very little charisma, beyond a perfect smile.  Brit Hume of Fox News claims that he is senile.  Certainly I question what comes out of his mouth sometimes.  I wonder about his inept articulation and moments of apparent confusion.

But he is also not an authoritarian narcissist with xenophobic tendencies who believes that America should go back to way things were in the 1950's.  He is not a climate change denier, he has never sought to minimize the pandemic.  He never suggested that injecting bleach would be a cure for anything.  He is not a thug with many of his closest associates serving prison sentences.  

All of these things are Donald Trump.  Our current wannabe dictator has disgraced the Office of the President.  He represents a dangerously regressive political agenda with which a large number of Americans agree.  This is where democracy gets dicey.  What happens when the majority of voters long for the past, long for isolationism, long for government by religion, long for more guns, armed militias exacting security, and mass detention while praising the government's lack of policy and coordination against the worse pandemic in a century?  What happens when most voters are Klingons and Neanderthals? 

Does anyone even recognize this seething America right now?

This is America's Wiemar moment.  This election is a referendum on far more than Donald Trump.  It is about whether this country will regress 70 years to a previous "norm" or will we become more inclusive, proactive, innovative, and evolve rather than devolve.  How many of us live in fear, anger and dominance as opposed to hope, wonder and nurtured growth?  Because that is the real underlying choice in 2020, this election will tally that count more accurately than in any election in American history.  

So, again, what if most of the voters are Klingons and Neanderthals? 

Obama had the "hope" thing going for him, but we have never had anyone test the "fear" factor of our political nature like Trump.  It is a choice between hope and fear for the future course of this nation.  Are we headed for a new dark age?  We're so close.  We are literally at the precipice.  Do we jump?  Step back?  That is why this is the most important election in my generation.  

In 2017, Ken Wilber argued that Trump's election signaled a pause in American cultural consciousness.  Further, 60% of Americans live in an ethnocentric (or lower) stage of human psychological development.  He wrote: "If you think this ethnocentric stage - with its tendencies toward racism, sexism/patriarchy, misogyny, mega-tribal dominance, oppression, and fundamentalist religion - sounds a bit like hardcore far-Right Republicans, and that it starts to push into recognized Trump territory, you'd be right." (page 18)

To be fair, quite a lot of people on the Left are also ethnocentric in many respects.  The Left wants to control free-speech at the moment in America, for example.  Certain words cannot be said.  You do not have the right to speak anything that someone might find offensive.  Hence, the Left is in favor of restricted speech (in terms of sex or race) or mandated speech (in terms of transgender pronouns).  They also want to control whether or not a public prayer can be offered before high school football games.  And, of course, there is all the rioting and looting that is generally enabled by the far-Left.  The Left's ethnocentric aspects can be just as rash and absurd as the "far-Right."

Wilber goes on to indicate that the most progressive segment of American culture has a lot of work to do, not so much to convert the 60% of potential voters who tend to be regressive, but simply to articulate the future in a way that is not threatening, that is more inclusive of those who are hesitant about the way the future is unfolding.  

According to Wilber, the Left has done a horrible job at polarizing everything, just as the Right has.  In its often abrasive and shocking manner (medicare for all, free college for everyone, boys can play girl sports if they decide they are a girl) the Left is frustrating the Right.  The rhetoric of the Left is often enraging to the Right.   That majority is more likely to support a progressive vision if they are not angry and fearful of it.

Which is precisely why someone like Biden can win this election.  Whatever else he might or might not be, Joe Biden is not a threat to our country.  Joe Biden is not angry at anyone.  How refreshing!  Trump is a walking soap opera of karmic anger.  Anger (ethno-anger) is Trump's trump card.  Maybe this time that will make a difference.  Obama recently noticed that it would be nice to have a "normal" president again.  It would be good for our every day lives.

This election is all about fear and anger.  Will Americans fear Trump's fascist authoritarianism more than they fear the rioting in cities like Philadelphia and Portland and the seemingly absurd movement to defund the police?  Will Trump's ineptitude in the face of the pandemic, fanning the embers of urban violence and pretty much pissing off virtually all world leaders (all of which thrills his sizable ethnocentric base) motivate the majority of voters reject him for being the threat to American democracy that he actually is? 

There might be many voters out there who are motivated by some sort of hope but, especially in 2020 (I mean look at this world of shit), I am not among them.  I am the person who felt a strange chill this January reading Thoreau.  I am the one who was affected by The Shadow Over Innsmouth just before the plague struck.  I was in existential angst mode to begin with.  The world did not feel quite right to me even then.

Obama might have floated "hope" but Trump has brought on so much "fear" in America as to become something to be fearful of himself, and particularly fearful if unleashed from the accountability of ever being re-elected again.  Strange, but in 2020 we find so little of Obama's hope; everything everywhere, even the climate and biology of the Earth itself, is frightened.

For me, this election is not about anything positive.  It is a referendum on where America is as a "conscious" nation.  The nation seems polarized into tribes of American fear and anguish in different parts of the country.  The side with the greatest amount of fearful rage will win, which was true in 2016 too.  Weak turnout in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee decided that election.  They were not angry and fearful enough.  Trump was elected in a red wave of fear and anger directed against many decades of progressive ideology.

Hope is the ideology to which I aspire.  But its existence has been made so fragile by the ways and wrath of Trump.  In all honesty, I did not feel inspired about voting for Biden.  I felt nothing but anger and anxiety toward Trump.  I did not vote for anything.  I voted against Trump and am proud of it. That is not a happy circumstance for American democracy but it is where we find ourselves this November.

Flush the turd November 3rd.  I voted in-person.  I hope most of America chooses to.  Those that don't are going to complicate things.  Then cross your fingers that he does not steal this election by suppressing the vote against him.  Regressive politics will soon do great damage to this nation.  We will go backward on the environmental issues and on a multitude of human rights once made possible by liberalism.  And the election is close.  Trump is very close to being re-elected.  Pennsylvania might be the only thing standing in his way.  Oh god.

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.” - H.P. Lovecraft

What a big Biden win might look like.  Here I assumed that Trump wins none of the states in-play.  If the stars align like this then regressive and repressive politics will have lost in America big-time.  Not even the Supreme Court will be able to save Trump under these circumstances.