I can think of only two elections in U.S. history as consequential as this one; 1860 and 1932.
In both of the earlier elections the public had stark choices.
In 1860 it was slavery or war. A vote for Breckenridge, or a vote for Lincoln, were equally votes for the war that even then many, if not most, Americans must have known would come of those votes. As Lincoln himself put it; "Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came."
In 1932 it was plutocracy or...something else. A vote for Hoover was a vote for the Gilded Age status quo that had impoverished the nation. A vote for FDR was a vote for some new thing, the "New Deal", that promised to change that. The background to that election were the dire warnings from Europe; the communist and fascist revolutions of the Twenties, and the growing power of Naziism of the Thirties.
In 2020 it's just as binary. A vote for a Republican - any Republican - is a vote to end the promises written into the Constitution by the amendments of 1868 and a return to the original of 1789, an end to the pretense of "equal justice under law". It's a vote for Making America A White Oligarchy Again, a return to Gilded Age economics and pre-Twentieth Century social rules.
A vote for a Democrat - and let's not kid ourselves about silly emo "protest" votes (or NOT voting); the First-Past-The-Post U.S. electoral system means that there's always going to be two large parties. Your only choices are which party, and what you can make that party into - is a vote to try and continue to move away from those things towards a country that tries to make good its promises to all its people.
Here's the thing.
A Republican win today will mean absolutely nothing harmful to me, personally.
I'm an old fairly well-off cis/het white guy. By my demographic I should be a raging red MAGAt. I'll be dead long before the bill for the idiocy the GOP is locked into regarding climate change comes due. I might lose a slug or so in the tax-hate the "no-new-taxes" morons have for blue Oregon's recognition that without the damn taxes you don't have roads or schools outside the gated communities. I'm not going to miss a meal or a buck because my country is governed by a pack of nitwits who want to repeal the entire 20th Century.
The Plague might kill me - they're going to completely screw the pooch on that - but otherwise?
I'm MAGAt-proof.
No, the fury I feel is purely for the fact that the GOP enthusiasm for returning us to 1822 is over such petty, worthless, insignificant, idiotic "causes".
Seriously, people?
Abortion? Drag Queen Story Hour? Owing fifteen Armalite knock-offs? Paying taxes? Having to not call people childish names, sit down, shut up, and listen to people who actually know what they're talking about?
The reality is that the GOP's primary objective is fluffing rich people. You'll note that the actual "accomplishments" of Trump's administration have been a massive tax cut for the wealthy and a fanatic drive to eliminate any and all restriction on wealthy people's businesses to dump their shit in the public air and water, fuck up perfectly good land, and screw over customers without risk of punishment.
Everything else has just been pure assholeism; punching down on poor people, immigrants, anyone duskier than printer paper, lefties, and anyone to the left of Pinochet or religiously less fundie than Falwell.
It's not that I'm angry about losing. I'm angry about who I'm losing to; these fucking nitwits who vote Republican for these worthless things that the GOP tosses them so they can get the plutocracy that's their real endstate.
It's like being run over by a truckload of fatheads because they're desperate to snare cheap plastic Happy Meal toys.
It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world.
But for Wales?
I'll meet you again on the other side.
Brilliant.
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