“And the winner is…”

The phrase itself may accelerate your pulse. It does mine. No need to ask an American – or any half-informed citizen of earth – what contest we’re referring to. Avidly, even frantically, we read pundits’ predictions, as we might a biopsy result – and they don’t know. Could be this, could be that, a draw, hung jury, a (gulp) tie! Our wrath rises. The wrong result would be bad enough – the end of the world – but a tie? Now we’d be really angry – not just at our opponents but at our allies who failed to do their part or, most terribly, at ourselves, who should have done more. Any of us, for Chrissakes, can sway a few votes more than our own…

How we handle such a calamity will describe us as a people – and the picture won’t be pretty. The mildest of us may turn violent in frustration. We will devolve as a nation into an infantile fist-fight: “You started it,” “No you did,” “No you!” Some of us have lived through this before – remember hanging chads? – but divisions and antipathies have deepened since then. I hate, sorry to say, Trump and his MAGgots, hate them – the Sermon on the Mount notwithstanding – and don’t doubt they feel the same toward me. Our differences, as they say in divorce court, are irreconcilable, only there’s no matrimonial magistrates to oversee the breakup of these United States.

I don’t expect such an outcome. I expect in the coming weeks the majority, in a spirit of self-preservation, will lurch in the sane direction. There will be more Liz Cheneys – a lot more – who vote for Kamala holding their noses, because the alternative is so much worse. I believe that young people, historically apathetic, will wake to their peril and harry themselves to the polls. I am optimistic – but perhaps that too is self-protective. A second Trump Presidency might shatter my shaky psyche. Been there, done that. No thanks.

I’m ruining your moment now to steel myself. Mithridates (135-63 BCE), rugged king of Pontus (much of present-day Turkey), inured himself to poison by ingesting it deliberately in sub-lethal doses. That’s my wont too, forever envisioning gruesome calamities not to be leveled by them. The more I love you, the more I’ve buried you. How am I to cope with the death of the American dream (for it would be that)?  Inconceivable! – yet I must.

A few thoughts arise from the rubble of my gloom. First, we’ve got to fix our elections so results can’t be equivocal. Trump’s mad scheme to overturn the 2020 election was fueled by the possibility. The Electoral College, whatever its utility in the past, invites present mischief. We should get rid of it. Let my vote count the same as a North Dakotan’s.

We must ban big money from politics. Let my vote count the same as Elon Musk’s (who gives me hives). If the Supreme Court obstructs reform, let’s reform the Court. (Senator Wyden has proposed a dandy plan.)

Let’s mandate probity. Freedom of speech cannot mean freedom to malevolently lie. This is a complex touchy topic – but, for sure, if we don’t clean up our public discourse it’s curtains for democracy. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

Childhood’s Advent calendars counted down days to Christmas. So I the days till November Fifth. The suspense feels intolerable. I’m so preoccupied with this election I wonder how my brain will busy itself once it’s decided. Beware PPD – Post Plebiscite Depression. The happy news about this awful period is it’s almost over. Please, don’t forget to vote.