Anxiety Attack

I carry a bunch of anger with me. Who I carry it for rotates. -- Daniel Woodrell, Give Us a Kiss

People are apparently getting "anxious" in the final hours, and while it's understandable it's also unproductive. This and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee, but here is my humble advice:  turn that anxiety into anger, and keep it like a grudge. Win, lose, or draw -- whether Biden wins with a 2:1 majority, a ten-million PV lead, and sixty Senate seats, or if Trump somehow manages to cheat and steal and bluff his way through this like he has everything else in his rotten excuse for a life, keep that anger.

Wherever you are, a year from now, five years, ten years, have that anger close by, always there to remind how you felt all year long, how you've felt since 2015. Use it constructively. Maybe you decide to take action at some point -- run for local office, lead a boycott, write off the poisonous people in your life, or just make sure to show up and vote every single time, right on down to dog-catcher.

Beyond that, there's not much you can control. That's why you're anxious. But regardless of the outcome, just as we are approaching the end of one thing -- either the end of a kleptocratic scumbag, or the end of what was left of our hollowed-out husk of a republic -- we are embarking on the beginning of another major project.

And whether that new thing is the long, slow process of trying to restore some semblance of governance and justice to a foul machine, or watching things slide inexorably into violent despotism, the thing for us as individuals is the same:  insulate yourself as much as you possibly can from the decisions of bitter, stupid people who can't let go of their sad, pinched view of the world.

There's nothing you can tell them. There is no point in arguing with them, and there is no compromise to be reached with fascists or supporters of fascism. There is only removing ourselves from their equations as much as possible, and moving forward.

The only things anyone "knows" ahead of time is that it's about to get worse and better. Beyond that, the order and specifics are always in a to-be-determined status. Should the expected take place, and Biden wins by a healthy margin, and the Dems flip the Senate back to sanity (Senaty? Sorry, it was there.), we should all resolve to communicate only with the Democratic politicians, and exhort them to move swiftly and deliberately. Time will be of the essence.

Other than that? You don't owe your Trump-supporting relatives and acquaintances shit. No gloating, no exulting, no "I told you so" or some lame more-in-sorrow-than-pity reconciliation, nor any pwning of conservaturds.

Just this:  they made their decision freely and of their own volition. They have their own bullshit justifications and rationalizations, but after all that is said and done and shat onto the lawn, they know what they supported. Understand them for who and what they are, and understand that it isn't your job to find some half-baked rapprochement with that. They have to take the step of doing the work on themselves to understand just how low they've sunk. You can't do it for them, just like you can't make someone quit their substance abuse habit or gambling addiction or whatever.

My gift for prognostication is not what it once was (and it was never much to begin with), so I'm loath to make rash predictions. I would say there is some non-zero chance for each of the four outcomes I outlined in the previous post. (In order from #1 to #4, something like: 10%, 10%, 5%, 75%.)

More broadly speaking, I think it's really down to one of two possible outcomes:  the statistically likely one is the Biden landslide, but the possibility of it being close enough for Trump to cheat and steal cannot be dismissed. I think we've seen entirely enough he can't do that scenarios where he does that and gets away with it, to just ignore that likelihood. A cornered animal with zero scruples will use everything they have to avoid their fate, and he does have some considerable tools to delay and deny and poison the well just enough. And he knows no one in either party will stop him from trying.

But let's not engage in last-minute doom-scrolling. Let's err on the side of cautious optimism and say that the landslide holds, that it gets called early and the spread only increases from there. That still means two months of Trump's wrecking crew stealing everything that isn't nailed down, pardoning every scumbag criminal enabler, leaving as big a mess as possible, etc. That still means the Democrats will have to be actively nudged by their constituents away from any sort of rapprochement whatsoever with the traitorous fascists across the aisle.

Again, use that anger and keep it by your side, like a faithful pet that you can nurture forever. Use it to remind yourself that who they are right now is who they were all along, and who they will always be until they resolve to change. Character is fate, as Heraclitus knew 2,500 years ago, and so people either recognize their issues and choose to deal with them, or not. The rest of us always have at least some ability to walk away from them.