Pre-Election Jitters
I had the jitters before the last election, and I have the jitters about the next one.
‘Jitters’ is a word that sounds like what it means: a sense of panic or extreme nervousness (www.merriam-webster.com).
I’m sharing a post I wrote right before the last presidential election. It’s still pertinent. Because here we still are… it still seems possible that a man who has shown himself to be spectacularly unpresidential throughout his entire public life could actually become the last president of the United States. USA RIP. No more president…just Dictator Trump; King Trump, His Royal Highness, Trump the 1st.
When the Colorado Court ruled that Trump shouldn’t be on the primary ballot because he shouldn’t be allowed to be President because insurrection (among other things), I was like, DUH… I can’t believe this hasn’t been the general consensus all along.
Obvs the man is unfit to be president. I can’t understand how the media keeps acting like he is some kind of viable candidate for what is considered one of the most consequential jobs in the world. The Leader of the Free World. (Lots to quibble about there, but it’s an expression.) Being President of the United States is not the same as owning a casino, or being the head of a mob. (See post below.)
Viewing Trump as a viable candidate is like saying, “Wine, or arsenic? Let the people decide!”
Fuggedaboudit
I published this on Medium a few months after the attempted coup in DC. (I’m moving my work off Medium onto this platform.) I think it’s pertinent in light of the fact that Trump is still with us. He’s the front-runner in the Republican primary. Lately he has been talking about how he wants to get rid of ‘vermin,’ aka anyone who does not buy into his se…
From November, 2020
Before the election I’m thinking, if Trump wins, maybe I can move to another country. Maybe I can hide under the bed for four more years.
Because aside from the substantive damage Trump does to everything he touches— laws, rules, integrity of governmental checks and balances, people’s rights, safety and well-being, democracy itself—Trump and his cronies have been so mean-spirited, so embarrassing, so depraved, such big fat liars in a cultural, public discourse way, that I feel traumatized.
I just don’t want to have to see and hear this man any more.
Dream on, sweetheart.
Unfortunately, whether or not Trump wins, he’s not going quietly into that good night. Nope, while he lives and breathes I daresay we’ll keep hearing from him. Maybe after a while he’ll just have his own QVC channel where he can sell steaks, zirconium jewelry, and conspiracy theories. Maybe he’ll sell molded plastic Trump Hairdo Helmets that protect people from Antifa’s Mind Indoctrination Waves which are being transmitted everywhere on the 5G network.
I truly hope Biden wins.
Who is running the government is going to help or hurt the actual challenges we face in this world whether we like it or not: accepting reality, accepting cause and effect, accepting the consequences of our actions and then creative problem solving.
The race is on! Will we wake up in time to save our species from self-destruction, or will we sleepwalk our way to an environment that cannot sustain us? The race is not between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, or any other cultural either/or. It is between maturity and immaturity, which is less a duality and more a sliding scale.
No matter who wins, a lot of people will vote for Trump. It is hard for me to understand what people who vote for Trump are voting for. I have some ideas but I don’t really know. I want to understand, and if I can’t, I need to embrace Trump supporters anyway, as fellow citizens, fellow travelers, as part of the great mix that is the United States of America.
Because all this talk of a divided country is both true and also not true. We are a whole country and we are a citizen of the world. And no matter who wins or even steals the election, our work continues. Less governmental obstruction and more governmental support would be nice, but the real work at hand can only be accomplished by collective moral force, acting on the ground (of being). That means each one of us figuring out how to be best, as Melania says. Or as Gandhi said, how to be the change we want to see in the world.
I want to be that change by being courageous, strategic, and soft-hearted. And creative and thoughtful. And if possible, funny.
Hang in there, kids!
Update: January 2024
It is not my intention to write about politics. It is my intention to write about what matters to me in the context of as big a picture as necessary. Politics is part of that context, so it creeps in now and then.
There are plenty of other people far more qualified than I am to offer intelligent and helpful political analysis. May I suggest some fine authors I read on this platform: Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, Robert Hubbell’s Today’s Edition Newsletter, Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse.
And I am so impressed by Jessica Craven’s Chop Wood, Carry Water. She is so upbeat and does all the heavy lifting to provide you with easy actions you can take, like scripted letters to your elected representatives.
It seems plausible that the election in November will be between Biden and Trump (unless Trump’s fragile psyche implodes before then). My dream is that Trump will lose so badly that accusations of a stolen election won’t fly and he will finally slink off into the shadows to lick his wounds. Maybe just the shadows of his untethered mind. As powerful as he still is, he becomes more Gollum-like every day. My preciousss…
As a political activist, I am pretty lame. Sometimes I imagine myself writing postcards and calling people on the phone, but I know I won’t. I will try to do my part this year with graphics and writing. I have a bunch of VOTE postcard designs which I plan to offer in some way to people who want to write postcards. Here is one of them. It’s not partisan:
The voting system is still working, in spite of continual attempts to game/trash it. So let’s use it to protect ourselves from a will to power that cares for nothing but itself.
Politics, in one sense, is just a thin candy coating on top of deeper systems of power and control. Yet there is no system based on myopic self-interest that is not vulnerable to what it ignores and discounts, aka reality, aka sustainable systems based on reality.
Just like us.
And now to the cartoons!
A few people who responded to my question about whether my cartoons should be separate from other kinds of writing convinced me that it’s okay to offer up who I am and what I do as a melange. As they say in Al-Anon, take what you like and leave the rest.
One of these days I will make a post showing all the cartoons I have made in response to the phenomenon of Donald Trump. I have conflicted feelings about making political cartoons. I get the urge though.
Here are a few….
Political cartoons can be amazingly powerful. The best ones put the political into a vision that goes beyond politics… like the work of Art Young, American cartoonist and writer (1866–1943), an artist I greatly admire. His work is brilliant and profound. It would be more accurate to call it cultural cartooning, even though some of his work was frankly political.
I also greatly admire the people who put in the time and effort to promote the political outcomes they want. It makes a difference. I greatly admire everyone who is working in their own way for a better world, which in my view means a world with greater consciousness, greater awareness, greater responsibility and love.
Onward and inward, my friends!
Courage! and keep it up.
Will you be posting your postcards?
Linda
Janina,
The fruit and nut cartoon is perfect.
Especially with the smug expression on his fat face!