Black Sun (The Anomaly)
This is something I wrote for my blog, A Bigger Camera, the day before election day in 2020, Trump vs Biden, in a post sharing these images for the first time.
———
Yet here we are, the day before the election and we are talking amongst ourselves, both Republicans and Democrats, about whether our democracy is endangered, whether something is happening now that will signal the end of whatever it was we had before and the start of this new thing, which no one wants. It’s just happening, everyone acting in their self-interest as good little capitalists bewildered by the creative destruction of our society’s institutions.
I called my mom earlier today. Her elderly friend, who was never interested in elections before, is worrying herself nauseous over the outcome of this one. It is the Great Team Sport of our time and you can’t debate anyone on the other side because all they shout is their political version of “go team, go.” They are wrong and we are right no matter what they say.
Liberals have their crazies and we don’t think too carefully about our paramilitary groups and we eat our young. But something really is wrong, so very wrong, over on the other side.
On the same call to my mom she mentioned another group of her friends who are voting for Trump since they are Republicans. I laughed with my mom. Republicans are the shipwreck survivors of the modern political age, a seemingly ever-enduring vessel suddenly foundering, sabotaged from within, former passengers drag-staggering out of the surf and onto the rocky shore, not comprehending that their ship is gone.
Talk show hosts of the Conservative Movement ridicule Republicans who haven’t adopted the Tea Party fanaticism as RINOs—Republicans in Name Only–mocking them, denigrating them as part of the Tea Party’s multi-front Civil War.
Every day I feel we are getting weaker, too, consumed with battles over symbols, still forgetting about those workers who used to be the sturdy backbone of our progressivism, antagonizing them in our Twitter-quest for empty victories that we share with our friends in real-time.
The election is tomorrow but we won’t have a winner. Trump, having encouraged his supporters to vote on Election Day in order to have their votes more quickly counted, may be ahead on the television by bedtime. By Wednesday he may have declared victory, pointing to the shifting numbers as the mail-in vote is counted as proof-positive of fraud and a coup. His supporters know that chaos brings opportunity and they will act. Their opponents, anticipating the action, will act as well. Somehow in the smoke and with unidentified soldiers on the streets and an electoral college that no one understands, not deep down like we should, and with competing narratives and talking heads and lies and confusion, we need our democracy to make it through.
Trump wins by winning the vote or Trump wins in the blackness of his own resistance. He becomes president or a shadow president, a political TV star, a modern Max Headroom demagogue at last. He has only the one road to follow to whichever outcome. Trump is a winner, always.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking of moving but there is nowhere to go. I’m thinking of doing something but there is nothing to do. I’m thinking of saying something but there isn’t much to say that hasn’t been said.
I just watch and wonder at it all.
