There’s been a lot of speculative chatter in the press and on social media about the very real possibilities of violent unrest in response to whatever transpires tomorrow — Election Day.
Late last week, I noticed a slew of businesses in my neighborhood — Staples, Sweetgreens, Warehouse Wines & Liquors and …er… The Nutella Cafe — all boarding up their exteriors, presumably in anticipation of the same kind of looting, vandalism and rioting that transpired back in June in the wake of revelations about the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. While I understand that many already-struggling businesses really took a hit during that period — and really don’t want to have to go through it again — I have a hard time imagining the sort of insurrection that would prompt the populace to take out their ire on the Nutella Cafe, regardless of who is (and/or isn’t) declared our next president. That just seems a bit paranoid and over-compensatory to me, but maybe I’m being fancifully naive.
It feels disingenuous to me try to quantify the proper responses to these respective events. The brazen brutality blithely meted out to a defenseless black man by a white policeman— on fucking camera, no less — that resulted in his death ... and the hotly anticipated outcome of probably the most supercharged election of United States history are surely both triggering scenarios, but they ultimately speak to totally different parts of the brain.
The demonstrations and outbursts this past summer were viscerally emotional reactions to YET ANOTHER racially charged diminishment of a black man’s basic human rights, singularly amplifying that for all our alleged progress as a civilized society, there is still much to be done. The ensuing unrest spoke to lifetimes of prejudice, inequity and oppression. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were just two more names in an impossibly long list of victims that dates back centuries. Why those murders sparked outrage should not be a mystery to you.
Meanwhile, regardless of what the Trump Administration might have up their sleeves, there was always going to be an election tomorrow. Fraught or not, for many of us, since the day Trump was sworn into office, the clock has been counting down to tomorrow, and we have barely been able to conceal our zeal to get to this day and vote his evil ass out out. No matter how agitated all parties concerned are, this is still part of a quasi-orderly, centuries-old process.
But in terms of reactions to how it all plays out, … I don’t quite know what we’re all expecting.
For a start, while I am hoping for a landslide referendum that eliminates all possible doubt that Trump has lost the office, I fully realize that we may not get that. I also suspect we probably won’t get a decisive answer for days — or even weeks — after the fact.
Should that be the case, I fully expect that Trump will pull out all the stops to obfuscate and delegitimize the ballot count via whatever means are at his disposal. He probably won’t even be subtle about it.
At that possible stage of proceedings, I sincerely hope all my similarly-inclined friends on every strata of the Left realize that wanton violence will only fuel Trump’s narrative. Be angry. Be outraged, surely — but be focussed. Keep your shit together.
Now, if the inverse occurs, and Trump is indeed officially and legally ousted from the presidency, should we expect violence from the Right?
That's the big question. Will hordes of MAGA-hatted Proud Boys flood into New York City like marauding Orcs from a Peter Jackson film? Will the forces of QAnon and Antifa clash in the streets like an apocalyptic re-boot of "The Warriors"?
Personally speaking, I firmly believe Donald Trump is a lying, indefensible and proudly ignorant scumbag who has no clue what he’s doing. I’m getting up tomorrow morning just as the polls open at 6AM and am planning to cast my vote to remove him from the Oval Office.
We’ll see what happens after that.
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