Trump photo by Joyce N. Boghosian / Biden photo courtesy of Joe Biden for President
Here we are at the scariest time of the year. Yes, Halloween is upon us. Hopefully, you’ve made your pilgrimage to the Ghost Busters-themed A & J’s Halloween House on South Clement Street in Bay View and made a donation (it goes to Pathfinders). Maybe you’re busy making sugar skulls for Dia de los Muertos. But, after the ghouls and goblins fly off into the night, the real scary part is yet to come—Election Day.
These are extraordinary times. Once upon a time, it would have been unfathomable to opine that if Putsch came to shove, we could depend on the military to be on the side of the Constitution. Yet, I’ve found myself doing exactly that during the many conversations I’ve had on the matter.
I remember the good ol’ days back in 2011 when mock Nazis in Ernst Roehm brownshirt array showed up at PrideFest to proclaim “not in our town” before returning to their bier-garten for brats and brews. Ironically, that year the concern wasn’t the cosplay stormtroopers but rather the militant queers who had promised to disrupt PrideFest to protest its corporatization.
Meanwhile, those mock Nazis are now real ones, armed to the teeth and plotting assassinations and kidnappings of elected Democratic officials. A must-win swing state, Wisconsin is on the list of those facing a potential threat from armed right-wing terrorist groups. Of course, there’s also the GOP’s strategy of voter suppression, intimidation and foreign disinformation campaigns along with the active participation of the regime’s complicit postmaster who dismantled sorting equipment and engineered a slow down to interdict the vote-by-mail process. Oh, and there’s that “Stand down and Stand By” order.
Reason for Optimism
Still, optimism should prevail. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris represent the most pro-equality candidates that have ever graced a presidential ticket. They’ve garnered thousands of endorsements across the spectrum of scientists, media, labor, political and national security leaders. The early voting turnout is reassuring particularly in swing states and especially among young people. Of course, that’s in great part due to the regime’s concerted attacks on reproductive and LGBTQ rights, the ACA and the environment as well as its failed response to theCOVID-19 pandemic with a body count now nearing a quarter of a million Americans. Barring an upset engineered by GOP connivance, a Biden/Harris win is likely as is, perhaps, Democratic control of the Senate.
The challenge will be the peaceful transfer of power. Should that be successfully implemented, the business of undoing the damage done will be the first thing on the agenda. That will, no doubt, mean packing the Supreme Court of the United States to save those institutions the majority of the American public embraces.
By now, most of my friends have voted. At this point, for those who haven’t, there’s little more to say than “vote.” Hopefully, those who didn’t cast a ballot in 2016, whether due to laziness or narcissism, will, if only out of contrition for getting us into this mess to begin with, participate in saving the nation.
Should the unthinkable happen and the current regime maintains power, God apparently told evangelical Pat Robertson that victory will usher in the End Times. I have no doubt He’s right.
To read more My LGBTQ POV columns by Paul Masterson, click here.
