Quick Take
On the eve of Election Day, it's important to keep in mind those most vulnerable to persecution. Everyone has something to lose in this election, but for some, those stakes are highest.
And so, here we all are — like Woody, Buzz and the other toys in that unforgettable scene in “Toy Story 3,” sliding into the incinerator, nothing left to do but hold hands and face our fate together.
In our case, of course, that awful inevitability is Election Day, a pivot point in history, a tornado swirl of reckless hope and consuming dread, a ship on the horizon we’ve been watching for years, finally coming ashore.
The surrealism of this moment is that no one — no pollster, no pundit, no candidate — knows now what everyone not in a coma will know a week from now. What I wouldn’t give for a quick text from next week’s me, telling today’s me what the world is like on the other side, even if told solely in emojis. Just a 😄 or a 😫, or even a 🤕 would do the trick.
Like so many millions of Americans, I’m caught in the psychological strain of living in a country where half the people experience a reality utterly alien to the other half. And I fear and loathe the bad actors and the sophisticated media tools they wield to convince their followers that no, the sky is not blue, water is not wet. It is beyond frustrating to have to retreat to basic fundamental ideals to find a floor of basic agreement on which to be an American. I would think “truth matters” would be one of those ideals. The assumption that such a notion is at the bedrock of belief for almost all Americans dies hard with me, but it is dying. Because of these daily outrages, I, like so many others, am facing down threats to my mental wellbeing.
But I am privileged and fortunate, insulated by race, gender, education and class in a way that millions are not. And, in a fundamental way, this election is not about people like me. At stake for me are cherished ideals of what America means in world history, my conception of the American character, my own sense of being at home in my native country. But for many others, all that stuff is just so much thumb-sucking, a luxury for the comfortable who, if things go awry, can always retreat to their bookshelves and Ken Burns documentaries for solace.
ELECTION DAY NOV. 5
Now is the time to think of the most vulnerable among us, those targeted by authoritarian voices looking for scapegoats, those threatened by the full force of a political campaign powered by the unambiguous support of half of the country’s citizens, those “othered” by all this “enemies within” rhetoric. Those folks are not concerned with bruised ideals. Their lives — their essential right to exist — are on the line.
I spent a few days last week in one of the handful of swing states that will decide Tuesday’s election. Judging by the cascade of TV ads, it’s clear that one side is betting that a critical mass of Americans are willing to risk representative democracy for the sake of keeping trans people out of girls high school basketball games. Both sides are evoking their respective daughters — one to ensure her fundamental right to bodily autonomy, the other to guarantee she won’t have to compete in a swim meet with a “biological man.” Vonnegut in his heyday couldn’t conceive of such absurdity.
I miss conservatives. Though I am not one, I recognize that conservatives are an essential part of a healthy political system. Conservatives are those who say it’s too big, it’s too expensive, it won’t work in the real world, it’s not in keeping with our best traditions, it’s not what government is supposed to do. They are often wrong and short-sighted, and sometimes venal, but real conservatives are generally honorable people, these days cornered into a coercive kind of bigotry and tribalism that cosplays as conservative.
I miss masculinity, too — not the cartoonish, performative, chest-beating brand of it that would tolerate Hulk Hogan speaking at a political convention, but the stoic kind, the kind that stays out of the lifeboats until the more vulnerable are safe, the kind that recognizes strength is best expended for the sake of those who have less of it. In the modern world, strength is not rippling muscles and puffed-up, comically heroic poses for the camera, but affluence and privilege. If the election validates the authoritarian right this month, those of us blessed with that kind of strength are obligated to stand up for those with much less of it.
Thomas Jefferson once said of the politics of his day, “A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.” Of course, that was 225 years ago, yet I’ve still kept faith in the idea that America’s periodic lurches toward irrationality are a bug, not a feature, of the American experiment. That closely held notion is on the block with this election, and I’m faced with the disturbing possibility of having to live under the reign of witches to one degree or another until the end of my days.
Still, that’s thin stew compared to what’s at stake for those targeted as the enemy within by the ascendant right. After the 2016 election, there came a burst of anti-authoritarian activism and demonstrations. No one particularly wants to crank up that apparatus again. But this time, those with a target on their backs are going to be experiencing a level of persecution that will remain an abstraction for the rest of us. Whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s election, the American impulse to scapegoat the vulnerable will live on. Sure, we’ll all think of the election and its impact on ourselves, our families, our friends and our communities. But the “Toy Story” toys are not all on an equal footing. Some are much closer to the abyss.
To paraphrase FDR, we have nothing to scapegoat but scapegoating itself.
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