May I say I am petrified thinking about the election in two weeks?
It's not just that the candidates are "neck and neck," and that the outcome will be determined by a tiny subset of the electorate who claim to be undecided in swing states - not by folks like me (although I am bombarded by messages, pleading and scolding and hysterical, telling me my $3 or $47 could save the Senate, the House, the nation in one race or other). The US has been split uncannily nearly fifty-fifty for as long as I can remember.
It's that one of the candidates is loco and it seems not to matter. I can't decide whether I think the bulk of those likely to vote for him are misinformed about him and his opponent, whether they know but think him the lesser evil, or whether they know exactly and, quietly or loudly, approve of the madness. The former is worrisome enough. What can one do in a media environment in which distortions, lies and conspiracies run rampant, egged on by foreign powers, malevolent billionnaires and cynical opportunists at every level? (The mainstream media has played its part, too, perhaps lulled by the rhythm of our fifty-fifty history to normalize a candidate and party which have declared war on the system.) Jill Lepore saw this fateful fracturing of a shared reality by new media already in These Truths in 2018.
But the even more frightening possibility is the latter, which a wider historical view suggests is eminently possible. They know what they're voting for: they want it! I keep thinking of what Karl Popper called the "paradox of democracy" - that a people could democratically end itself, knowingly vote in a tyrant. Usually I take for granted that, if everyone voted and things like the Elector College did not distort things, the good guys would win. The outcome I half expect, based on recent history, is a clear popular vote majority with swing state-caused uncertainty or worse at the level of electoral vote tally. But the possibility that large numbers of people have so lost faith in the system as to support the side promising to demolish it haunts me.
