High Anxiety Here

Okay, this is the night before election day and there is so much dire news out there. Everybody seems to be talking about “end of ______________”. All of that talk is making me anxious.

But it is not just talk, it’s a couple of incidents leading up to the day: constant threats towards doctors, teachers, school boards, election officials and workers; the acting out of violence towards the FBI and Pelosi; the violent rhetoric on Twitter and at rallies; the references to white nationalism, Christian nation, and Neo-Nazi talk; monitoring mail in ballot boxes with the implied threat underlying wearing camouflages, masks and guns on hips.

The overall sense of violence and threats in the air is not good.

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.

And if the election goes as the polls are suggesting, then the next two years will be hell with all of the violent discourse and probably attacks ratcheting up. Nothing productive will be done, much like during 2016 – 2020 when only the tax cuts (mostly for the wealthy) were enacted. I can’t think of anything productive done.

So, a little metaphor here as a reminder: a long time ago, I applied a little metaphor of truant underage kids being given opportunities to turn around because they are too young to know better. If they go to some junior truancy school, I think their records are closed to the public so they can be given a clean record when they become adults. Something like that – as a child, you are given chances to straighten out and head into adult life with a clean record.

But once a child reaches the age of eighteen and he does something bad or illegal, the young eighteen-year-old will be tried as an adult and given a record.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, by similar analogy, if you continue to support the ideology of violence and support the “Big Lie” through violence, at some point society will stop listening to you to understand you and starting regarding you as bad or a willing player in the craziness.

Right now, I’m hearing/reading about people who are finally saying the problem is not just the politicians but the voters themselves who support the “Big Lie”. For a long time, pundits, news reporters, and others said the voters are being deceived or they have valid issues for choosing the extremism. They called for reaching out to these people to understand them and try to coach them back to reality. Mainly, stay in contact with them and continue to talk to them.

Now, I’m seeing a change: a few, here and there, are saying, our real issue are the voters who keeps voting in these extreme candidates or who are threatening politicians with violence. Even if we were to vote out the crazy politicians, those voters will vote in another crazy candidate.

Now what does that portend? I have no idea what that means for the future.

I have heard another person equating our current group behavior as lying on the same path that the Germans were on back in the 1930s. In 2015 and 2016, there were a couple of news articles about people who lived in Germany, or maybe Europe, during the 1930s and those elders saw a lot of similarities between the speeches and rallies of Trumps with Hitler. They said the times felt too much like that of the 30s.

Those articles then died down.

Until just recently, someone who studied and taught history (at least he intimated that he taught history) made the remark that we’re on the same path as the Germans were in 1930s.

That is worrisome when someone is making that connection and others are beginning to say, the problem lies with the voters. You can’t get Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boubert without the voters, especially if they vote them in again. Voting them in again means their behavior, their violent speech is okay with them. Think about it: after 7 years, we know what they are and to still vote them in says a lot. It’s saying those voters want the bullying, the threats, the violence. They want the corruption, the cruelty, the craziness.

I’m dreading the results of the election.