The 2020 US Presidential Election: A Catastrophe

Today is the last day to cast a vote in the 2020 Presidential election in the USA. This is one of those moments when bare statements of fact can elicit more emotion than any adjective heavy hook. Sometimes, however rich your vocabulary the only way to properly express something is through kindergarten words. The kinds of words you'll find on brightly colored construction paper all across the country to help the very small name those too big feelings.

I'm scared. I'm angry. I'm sad.

Recently, I learned that the word catastrophe has a meaning beyond simply a calamitous event. From it’s Greek roots, catastrophe can be simply a sudden turn or a climax of some chain of events. Both meanings seem apt for the moment we are all enduring.

This all may seem hyperbolic; I certainly hope that it is. And I want to be clear that this isn’t just another polemic from your Good Liberal™ neighbor about how Trump is to blame for all societal evils. For one thing, I’m not a liberal and I don’t even have a yard where I could put a sign declaring our household beliefs. But, for what it’s worth mine would say ACAB.

What I am is one of the millions of people in the US currently bracing for violence and unrest in the face of a presidential election. I am not afraid for my own safety. I am afraid that I live in a country where people are stocking up on essentials not for a natural disaster or even the pandemic that is making this all the more surreal, but for political unrest following an election where voter intimidation and suppression are already commonplace. Just under 100 million votes were cast before election day, and republican leaders have wasted no time trying to throw many of those votes out after months of casting doubt on various early voting methods and this is certainly just the beginning.

The kind of violence that we are all but guaranteed to see in the coming days simply does not fit with my understanding of the world. While I understand that it is a matter of pretty great privilege that I can say this, I simply cannot wrap my head around an election in the United States leading to these sorts of fears and expectations.

And yet, it also feels as if this is inevitable and just the logical conclusion of the events in this nation.

For how long did we expect to watch person after person, Black man after Black man, be killed by the police while the righteous and justified rage steadily built without something giving? For years we have watched police excuse acts of violence, both lethal and petty, outfit themselves with surplus military gear, and draw that thin blue line that makes everyone of us the other in the strongest sense, and yet somehow we feel that moment of shock when we see them use violence and tear gas against protesters, members of the media, and even children. There are a thousand other injustices that many of us have met with little more than angry grumbles. While we did our best to fight our personal battles and tried to teach our children to be better, racism and violent right-wing extremists festered and grew more powerful in the shadows. We’ve watched right-wing extremists rise to be the biggest lethal threat in the US, run down protesters with cars and celebrate others doing the same, and come armed into cities that aren’t their own to seek out and find violence under the pretext of protecting someone else’s property.

When Trump was elected four years ago, we saw it as a catastrophe. And it was one: in the fullest sense. All at once, it was calamitous event, a sudden turn, and an inevitable climax. And it is a catastrophe that, in the particular way of history, is still unfolding. History doesn’t actually happen in those sort of bare declarations that are presented in our history books.

Those statements are nothing but a signpost. For those of us who are unlucky enough to live through these interesting and unprecedented times, they conjure up all of the emotions and ideas and practical concerns and through that conjuring say more than anything else can.

But in 100 years, when a history book explains our reality for our descendants it will be seen as the culmination of a neatly composed narrative with clear winners and losers.

I don’t know what will happen when the polls close and the votes are counted. I certainly hope that every vote cast will be counted and that Biden will win so soundly that no doubt is possible about the will of the people. Not because I like Biden–I don’t and I understand those who cannot in good conscience vote for him–but rather because I desperately want to see a repudiation of the last four years from those people that are otherwise silent.

I don’t know and I can’t know what the details of what will happen in the coming days and weeks will be. What I do know is that even a resounding repudiation of Trump, a resounding and overwhelming rejection of everything he has done and everything of which he has become a symbol, won’t be enough to stop the catastrophe.

Police will continue to kill and abuse people while hiding behind their militarized gear and bloated budgets. Immigrants will still be deported and dehumanized and children kept in cages. Marginalized groups will face violence and death either at the hands of police or right-wing extremists. And in the richest country in the world, billions will be made by the few while at least half of a million people are without homes on any given night and 35 million struggle to feed themselves and their families.

No single election or person brought us here and it will take much more than a victory for the Democratic party for things to even begin to improve. But hopefully tomorrow we will see the train that is hurtling down the tracks slow just a hair and give us a bit more time to see if we can make something better become inevitable. But either way, I’m making a scrapbook.