II'm not the calmest person or the most anxious person. But Kamala Harris' road to the White House is getting narrower by the minute, and I'm sick to my stomach with worry. I wanted to go to sleep on election night knowing that Harris won and that we were safe. But it wasn't what we were expecting. At the time of publication, Trump appears to be the winner.
The anxiety I'm feeling now started a few months ago. During the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, my hair started falling out and one of my eyelids started twitching. A doctor friend said, “It's a classic sign of stress.'' Talking with colleagues on Halloween, I realized that we looked and sounded just like the people outside the intensive care unit waiting to see if their friends and relatives would survive.
The survival we were concerned about was the survival of democracy. Our flawed democracy, I should say. No one can pretend that we live in a country of equality and that large income and racial disparities do not exist. No one imagines that the rich and poor have equal say in who runs for office or in decisions about health care and education. No one would dream that either presidential candidate would stop funding wars in the Middle East.
Regardless of who is funding our political campaigns, those who run on a platform that declares, “I promise the American people that I will fight to protect our precious oligarchy!” Probably not.
So let's call it democracy. Because the alternative is much worse.
We understand the alternatives. We know what a dictatorship is. Millions killed by Hitler, millions killed by Stalin. Argentine troops unload prisoners from helicopters. Substituting laws and rights with the whims of a dictator. Dehumanizing others, flogging the majority and treating the minority as vermin, carriers of “poisoned blood.” The normalization of violence as part of the political process. One dictator praising another dictator. All voices except those of the dictator and his inner circle are silenced. The idea is that the elderly couple next door who are raising their grandchildren with a funny accent are criminals and should be arrested and thrown across the border. The joy of racist humor, the merry dog whistle of hate.
Imprisonment and execution of people who oppose the government are among the most common threats we hear during elections. Even with our system, it is possible to kill Alexei Navalny. In Pittsburgh, I met Abdelrahman Elgendi, a writer who spent six years in prison for participating in demonstrations against the Egyptian military regime. And what if a dictator decides against birth control or women's equal rights? What if misogyny is so openly prevalent that a woman's laughter is described as a witch's cackling? What would happen if
And what if the dictator loses his mind along with the nuclear codes? What if a dictator surrounded himself with power-hungry sociopaths, as many dictators do? What happens if a dictator decides that the sick, old, infirm, and poor are straining the economy?
I know these are snowflake fears, but they are backed up by solid historical facts. The most eloquent description of the prelude to dictatorship was written by Gabriel García Márquez in his essay “The Death of a President: The Last Days of Salvador Allende,” published in Harper's magazine in 1974. It is something.
All you have to do is read about the rally that took place on October 26, 2024 at Madison Square Garden. A comedian made mean jokes about Puerto Rico, the sex lives of Latinos, the cheapness of Jews, and the sluttiness of powerful women. A famous speaker said, “America is for Americans.” In 1939, 20,000 people attended a German-American Band rally, also at Madison Square Garden. One of the speakers said that if George Washington were alive, he would be friends with Adolf Hitler.
Regardless of who wins the 2024 election, this campaign was a snapshot, even if partially blurred, of our country. And it's not a pretty picture. Divisions may become deeper or even more open. In our peaceful rural neighborhood, someone has posted a campaign sign at the entrance to a long alleyway that leads to a peaceful town cemetery.
The purpose of a dictator is not to bridge gaps. They like division. They like it when people hate others. They like people who fear the country is at risk from fanatics who want to defund the police and provide welcome baskets to buses loaded with drugs and serial killers. We have been encouraged to imagine migration as a scene from World War Z (2013), where zombies scale fortresses and swarm cities of living people.
People have argued that the would-be dictator never actually intended to carry out the threats he made during his campaign. Economically, it wasn't a starter. Deporting illegal agricultural workers would cost $20 per orange! But I kept thinking about what journalist Marcia Gessen wrote after the 2016 election: “Trust the dictator.”
In addition to dark fantasies about our future, existing reality has recently begun to come under new scrutiny. With two major newspapers refusing to endorse candidates, we (surprise!) wonder how much of our media is run by billionaires, and the profits and losses that will be made depending on who wins. I reminded him that the company is managed down to the penny. It turns out that officials who play important roles in our government are setting prices as low as airline upgrades. For most of my life, I have felt more or less secure in the existence of the Supreme Court, but that rock-solid trust is no longer there.
Things are confusing. We want this country to get better, but we fear it could get worse.
People in other countries are clearly obsessed with the 2024 US election. They understand what is at stake. From afar, you can see why we sleep poorly at night and feel irritable during the day.
