❝ Whatever else it will be, Tuesday will be a relief. We will finally find out where we are in the surreal dystopia of the last two years. We will see, in a tangible way, what America now is.
These years have been overwhelmed and saturated by a single figure with no political experience, who won almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent, has had consistently lower approval numbers than any of his recent predecessors, and speaks and acts in ways no previous president ever has. He has cast a staggering spell over a hefty segment of the population, and he has earned the intense loathing of the rest. And for these very reasons, it has been tortuously hard to see what is in front of our noses.
❝ Is this the new normal? Or has this been a detour into the freak zone, with a president accidentally elected, a major party temporarily hypnotized, but with a population still aware of something called reality? We’ve tried and tried these past two years to figure that out, and there are many layers of meaning here, but we haven’t had a clear test of anything. Polls are not elections. Only elections are elections. We are entering the human phase of the trials.
With my heartfelt commitment to science since I was a teenager, I appreciate the analogy of the peoples’ fightback against the plague that is Trump and his loyal followers. Like other distortions of science that threatened humanity – from eugenics to death camp experiments – Trump is no less a stinking lesion on the body politic than was the infamous Dr. Death, Josef Mengele.
“We cannot wait for someone to save us. We must do it ourselves. This Election Day is a crucial opportunity to again demonstrate the best in each of us by doing our duty and voting for leaders who are committed to the values that will unite and protect us. Years from now, when our grandchildren learn about this critical time in our nation’s history, they may ask if we got involved, if we made our voices heard. I know what my answer will be. I hope yours will be “yes.”
Captain ‘Sully’ Sullenberger
America’s political hacks care as much about education as they do about affordable healthcare, infrastructure or electoral democracy. Which means “not at all”. Being voted into office is only a job skill. An ignorant, bigoted population makes that practical for the most corrupt demographic in decades.