Finished off half a bottle of wine during the day to take the edge off. Around 7:30 decided I should get a nap. Those four decisive hours are the worst for me. Uncertainty is pretty awful.
I woke up around 11, asked my wife how it was going. I told her we'd get through it, and then started shaking uncontrollably for about half an hour. Sometimes I can work myself up into a panic, sometimes I lose control of my thoughts and freak myself out, but that wasn't how it was this time. It was just a pure physiological response. I'm not sure I've ever experienced anything like it, and I have a long history of both mental illness and polypharmacy.
Tried talking through it with friends but that didn't get very far. What I wound up going back to was a talk I had with my friends earlier in the week. I wanted to try and be prepared for the worst. It was an interesting talk.
Even though all my friends oppose Trump, people are in a lot of different places when it comes to what he means, what dangers he poses. I guess it's not so surprising when the candidate himself ran on a platform pretty much wholly composed of lies to be uncertain as to what he actually represents.
How you view Trump says, really, a lot about who you are, about what your values are, and this applies just as well, if not more, to those who oppose him. The particular lens I view Trump through is twofold: First, a historical-critical perspective, and second, a racial perspective.
I'm a white man. Of the two, the historical-critical perspective scares me more. When I look at Trump, I don't try to psychoanalyze the man, to see who he is as a unique individual. I don't try to look too deeply at the electorate, though certainly that's a pretty important factor. When I look at Trump, I try to look at similar figures throughout history.
And those parallel figures, the people who say the kind of stuff Trump says during a similar time in their political careers, you know, they're pretty scary.
Yes, Hitler is one of them. Some people get mad when I say Hitler, because he's a super-loaded historical figure. It's kind of paradoxical- everybody agrees the North Korean state is the worst country in existence today, and that tends to smooth over disagreements and arguments. Most everybody agrees that Hitler was the worst leader in history, and yet even in death he starts more fights than anything.
He's reduced to this sort of one-note caricature. Like Hitler is the Holocaust, which was, apparently, a unique and unrepeatable circumstance in a lot of people's minds. I'm not saying Donald Trump is going to start building death camps. But at the same time, I'm not going to be so irresponsible as to ignore the clear and unambiguous historical parallels.
And, you know, it's not just Hitler, if Hitler gives you a problem. Some people like talking Mussolini. You can talk Putin. You can talk the guys who tried and didn't make it, like Huey Long. The point is this: If you compare Trump to any populist dictator in world history, he's pretty unambiguously more similar to them than he is to any past major-party Presidential candidate in American history. He's not the first racist President in our country's history, but he's just not anything at all like Woodrow Wilson. He's not the first extremist candidate in our country's history, but he's not anything at all like Barry Goldwater.
And some people think that, you know, the American system is strong, it's robust, we can _control_ him. But that's what people who acquiesce to dictatorships _always_ believe. The system was designed to prevent a man like him from achieving office in the first place.
I've been thinking long and hard about next steps. I am absolutely, unshakably convinced that this is not OK. This is not going to be OK. The only thing I'm more sure of is my total opposition to violent resistance. And the Trump opponents who are saying it's going to be OK... I understand why they're saying that. We're not all on the same page about this. Whatever gets you through the night, I think. On one level.
On another level, it does bother me. I have this deep-seated distrust of ready compliance, of easy acquiescence. Most of the time inaction is a pretty easy stance to take. I'm not going to vote because they're both corrupt. Well I voted for Clinton but we have to respect the Will of the People.
And this notion, the concept of the Will of the People, this is a myth! It is an absolute myth. We are not one nation. Most Trump supporters have known this for years and years. They do not live in the same reality as those of us who, reluctantly or enthusiastically, support Clinton, think she would make a good President.
In Marxist thought there's this concept known as "heightening the contradictions". I pretty strongly reject this. I think this is sort of a luxury of those who are not actually threatened by whatever the enemy ideology happens to be. If you are black and you try to "heighten the contradictions", you got shot dead, on camera, and your killer walks. Maybe he gets a medal. "Heightening the contradictions" is a crock.
But that doesn't mean I'm not willing to pick a side. When I was younger, sure. I was very much a "can't we all just get along" kind of person. Trying to thread the needle, trying to get people to see that we're not as different as we seem to be.
Now is not the time for that. That Dante passage from the Inferno I posted earlier today, the one JFK and RFK paraphrased- it speaks to me. It speaks to me deeply. Now is a time for choosing. Not yesterday. Today. Yesterday's election was not our last choice. It was an opening statement on a new era of America. It is...
No, no, I'm getting highfalutin and rhetorical. No speeches. No speeches, action, action and justifications for that action.
If we want to make a difference, we have to work together. If we want to work together, we have to be together. In flesh and blood, we have to be together. And we starts with me, and with my wife, and with the choices we make in our personal lives.
One of those choices is that we need to move away from Indiana. Not to Canada. Not, you know, fleeing the country. Even if I wanted to run, there's no escaping the second-order, the third-order effects. America is a behemoth. There are a lot of bad things that could happen, and being in Canada is not a particularly good safeguard against most of them.
To Oregon. I have friends in Oregon. That's the most important factor. The personal factor. Moving to a strange city where you don't know anybody, it's hard. Being alone, it's hard.
Beyond that, Oregon, at least the Western environs of it, is not Donald Trump's America. America is not one nation. America is not one people. But we still have free movement, and those of us who can afford it, and my wife and I fortunately can... we can choose which America to live in. It has no overriding leader, no President or king or central committee. You know, "Stronger together" still means something to me, and I hope to many, many others. It maybe just didn't mean what certain people thought it meant.
