"Think of it, as we sit here, in space above us
the destiny of the galaxy will be decided
for the next ten thousand years."
An aging Baby Boomer shared a memory about having grown up during the 1960’s:
Like other 6-year-olds, I didn’t have much of a handle on the two-party system or tripartite government, but I was tuned in enough to recognize a certain mystique around John F. Kennedy. He just exuded a sense of gravitas, but also charisma and humor. For a child, it was comforting to know that he was in charge. Of course, when Kennedy was shot and killed, I felt a sudden surge of panic, but Lyndon Johnson’s calm, adult presence was somehow reassuring, as though he was one of the “helpers” Fred Rogers so often invoked.
On the other hand, when Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in 1968, I remember having this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, a real sense of foreboding that some vague calamity might be forthcoming, and that the presidency could not be relied upon as a source of goodness. And yes, Nixon was ultimately responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in southeast Asia, he decimated Black communities with his cynical “war on drugs,” he bungled domestic economic affairs, and he crippled, perhaps irreparably, American trust in its government and public institutions. Yet for all this, the country didn’t fall apart. The rights of the people to vote for the candidates of their choosing, the Constitutional system of checks and balances, the peaceful transfer of power – i.e., all of the fundamentals of a functional democracy – came through pretty much unscathed. Even after Nixon, the center held.
In fact, over the previous two centuries before Nixon, the presidency had already endured no shortage of incompetence, corruption, deceit, and bigotry. And yet always, the center held. To be honest, we’ve had some pretty bad presidents since Nixon too. But always, the center held.
Still, this election feels different. The prospect of a Trump victory is beyond horrific, while a Harris victory hardly gets the country out of the woods, as Trump and his foot-soldiers are certain to respond with an onslaught of aggression far beyond what we saw four years ago. The Toteboard and its like-minded friends are not the only ones sensing something terrifying in the air. A jaw-dropping recent survey revealed that more than four out of five American voters are anxious about threats to democracy, while nearly three quarters of them are worried about imminent political violence. In a bizarre sort of twist, it’s not just that people on both sides of the political divide are worried about what will happen if their preferred candidate loses; they’re also worried about what will happen if their candidate wins. The center really could begin to shatter within a few days, regardless of what happens with the election.
However, in the interest of intellectual balance, it is worth noting the possibility that such fears may be rooted, at least in part, by a kind of temporocentrism, i.e., a mistaken belief that the challenges and crises of the present moment are utterly unique and historically unprecedented. In this case, many of us, perhaps due to inadvertently drinking too much of the implicitly millenarian American Kool-Aid, could be projecting an apocalyptic narrative onto a moment where it simply does not apply. If this is indeed the case, then a Trump victory may indeed bring about the worst years of our lifetimes, but it will not really signal the end of the world; it won’t really determine the destiny of the galaxy for the next ten thousand years. It will just be another unfortunate, albeit horribly unfortunate, and temporary swing of the political pendulum in the wrong direction. As a Toteboard friend (also an aging Boomer) recently put it, after vividly rehearsing some of the most abominable acts and subsequent effects from the first Trump administration: “Do I think Trump 2 will be worse than Trump 1? I think it will be terrible, but not as apocalyptic as some predictions, i.e., similar to last time.”
But of course, as a good self-critical skeptic, he quickly added: “Maybe that's too optimistic, and certainly hope we will never know for sure.“
In any event, however fearful we may or may not be about whether the center will ultimately hold, it certainly feels like a giant asteroid is hurling rapidly toward the Earth, and we won’t know for (at least) three more days whether it passes us by at the last minute or slams into us squarely and launches a period of devastation. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to receive a deus ex machina intervention like the one that prevented the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire from annihilating each other. The election may be Tuesday, but the internecine tribal/cultural war will continue long after that. For now, we have to wait and see what happens next.
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