Ink Tea Stone Leaf

I’m not in the business of making political predictions anymore. That isn’t to say that I don’t have ideas about what will happen, just that I am too well aware of all the things that might happen. The only thing you stand to gain from making these kinds of predictions is a reputation as a prognosticator, and that is not what I am, even if it is something that any one might like to be.

The primary reason that I made it a point not to predict the future is that, after the presidential election in 2016, I determined that American voters were capable of absolutely anything – mostly in the negative sense. There is nothing so abhorrent that a sufficiently demagogic candidate can do that will make his victory unthinkable. He can brag about how his status as a wealthy celebrity lets him get away with sexually assaulting women; he can insult the honor and courage of American soldiers, particularly those captured or killed in action, all while wrapping himself in the flag and promoting his own “toughness;” he can smear men of color with the charge that they are essentially criminal. None of these things, even in combination, guarantee that a sufficient number of voters in just the right places will reject him. A sufficiently shameless man can prosper in spite of the most shameful behavior imaginable.

Of course, if the memories of his incompetent handling of a pandemic that killed millions of Americans are fresh, a sufficient number of people might be persuaded to kick him to the curb. But memories are short, and so four years later the demagogue may try again and find that he might pull it off again, despite inciting a riot to interfere with the lawful transfer of power to his successor, despite accruing nearly a hundred felony charges and two impeachments, despite engaging in any number of ludicrously transparent grifts, cons, and scams. You can do all these things and still win, just as long as you make it clear to the voters that you apologize for nothing and would do it all over if given half a chance, and promise that putting tariffs on every conceivable import while eliminating most types of domestic taxes will magically lower the price of eggs.

I am not going to spend too much time speculating about why so many people in the United States are so willing to support a fascist – and let it be stated with firmness, no matter what happens, Donald Trump is a fascist. I have known this for a certainty since the night he accepted the Republican nomination in 2016 and bellowed “I alone can fix this,” the classic authoritarian’s claim to indispensability as the invincible avatar of the Volk. Despite nearly everything he has done for the last decade, it is only recently that the idea that Trump might perhaps be described as a fascist without indulging too much in hyperbole has acquired any sense of urgency in the national media, thanks to testimony from stern, sober, Republican military men who watched him govern up close and know the threat he represents specifically to the U.S. Constitution, and generally to constitutional government and the rule of law.

I’ll say it again: Trump is a fascist. Many things make him so, among them the following:

• His policies and judicial appointments that have curtailed the rights of women and sexual minorities, in particular his creation of a Supreme Court majority that overturned the precedent of Roe vs. Wade and outlawed abortion for millions, and his aggressive demonization and denigration of LGBT groups while adopting a male chauvinist vision of public life.
• His promise to use the brute force of the U.S. military to round up millions of people he regards as dangerous “aliens,” despite their mostly living in this country in peace, and hold them in concentration camps until they can be expelled to whatever country he thinks will take them.
• His endless obsession with conspiracy theories and blatant untruths that explain all legitimate opposition to his sexism, racism, militarism, and criminality as the fruit of a nefarious plot to unfairly persecute him and his followers.
• His stated desire to use the power of his office, should he regain it, to oppress Americans who oppose him through malicious prosecution, discriminatory withholding of resources, and even the military occupation of American cities.

I could go on, but I will instead refer you to a list of fourteen common features of fascists and their movements, as formulated by Umberto Eco, an Italian writer who knew the original fascists of Benito Mussolini from his childhood. You may decide for yourself how many of these apply to Donald Trump; for me, the argument is settled. We will see if it will matter that more people are willing to call a spade a spade, but as I said, I don’t make predictions.

I believe there are many American voters who will say they don’t really know what fascism is, but that it might be worth a try if it will make them feel good about themselves. I know for a fact that there are many others who will reflexively claim that the real fascists are the ones who oppose the leader and his plan to spank everybody and make them call him Daddy. Others will claim the mantle with glee, either because they really are fascists in heart and soul, or because they derive vicarious satisfaction from watching fascists frighten and abuse people they don’t respect. I’m through trying to tease out why people support Donald Trump. I only hope that we can outnumber them, particularly in the places that count according to our Electoral College.

I’ve said a lot, and most of it is just the same stance I’ve always taken regarding Trump, a man who has been a very public symbol of greed, racism, and misogyny since he studied at the noxious feet of Roy Cohn over forty years ago. I really only want to say one other thing, though it may take a few more paragraphs to say. No matter what happens this November, it is important that as many people say this as possible.

Donald Trump’s plan to engage fake electors and disrupt the official counting of electoral votes in January 2021 was an attempt to steal the presidential election that he had just lost. His claim that the election was actually stolen from him was false, and no evidence exists which proves that significant fraud took place in that election. The evidence that Trump and his supporters cite is nothing more than innuendo, misrepresentation, and fabrication; that is to say, it is a lie.

Donald Trump may well win the election of 2024, which would require him to receive a majority of votes in the states that will give him at least 270 votes in the Electoral College. He also may not. Both of these possibilities exist, and the numbers indicate they’re about equally likely. If Kamala Harris achieves her goal and becomes the first woman President of the United States, it will not mean that she cheated. Despite Trump’s manifest deficits of character and his un-American, open embrace of fascist ideology in all but name, this is essentially a coin flip, and either win would be statistically as remarkable as heads or tails.

Democrats are not trying to steal this election, they are trying to win it. They are trying to win it by getting as many eligible United States citizens as possible to vote for Kamala Harris. Many of the people who will vote for her, such as myself, will have voted by mail; if this election is similar to the last one, then more of the mail-in ballots will be for Harris, even if more of the ballots cast in traditional polling places are for Trump. Because of the way mail-in ballots are processed in order to ensure their accuracy and security, they often take longer to count. In 2020, this meant that some states where Donald Trump had an apparent lead in reported vote totals on election night were ultimately won by Joe Biden. It is possible this scenario will play out again, and I want everybody to understand that this would be entirely fair and legitimate.

The principle of one person, one vote, requires that every vote cast by an eligible U.S. citizen in the jurisdiction where they are registered must be counted. There is no need, even in principle, for all of the counting to be finished on the day of the election. What matters is that they are counted accurately. It would be a violation of my civil rights if my ballot, for example, were disregarded because officials were unable to count it before midnight on November 5th, whether it would change the outcome or not. Likewise, it would be both irresponsible and a violation of the core concept of democratic elections if an election were officially declared to have been won by one candidate while a mathematical possibility existed that votes yet uncounted could change the result.

This is such a simple concept: every lawful vote must be counted, and what matters is the total result among votes cast by election day, not merely the votes counted by election day. But I remember clearly, in those days after the election in 2020, when Trump, other Republican politicians, and the crowds they exhorted, loudly declared that it was illegitimate to count lawful votes after election day. It is so clearly necessary to count every vote that I can only conclude that a person who demands that the votes not be counted, knowing full well that they are lawfully cast, is engaging in a depraved and cynical lie for the sake of seizing power, contrary to the will of the people. I don’t see how I can or should condone a person who holds to that lie, or who chooses to propagate it anew next month. They are literally enabling fascism at the expense of a democracy that is more fragile than any one thought possible eight years ago, when Trump first declared that the only legitimate outcome could be his own victory.

I ask for nothing else than that people should reject what is untrue and reject the candidacy of a man who has done everything in his power to prove that he does not deserve to be the President, and who represents a dire threat to the freedom, health, and prosperity of the United States, as well as the rest of the world. A world where Trump is president is one where authoritarians all over the world, who he deeply admires, are free to oppress their own and other people. It’s a world where the United States deliberately undoes what progress has been made in addressing climate change, which will lead over time to greater misery and conflict. What we face together is not something that can be addressed by hollow displays of isolationism and callous indifference: it’s conflagration and famine, rising seas and devastating storms, lost homes and dying children.

As for ourselves, we have to decide whether this country will aspire to humanity and to true freedom; not the false freedom to terrorize and dominate the vulnerable while exalting those who claim to be strong, but the freedom to worship, migrate, love, reproduce, and work as we individually see fit, to live as real human beings in an era which ought to be our best and most liberated. These are the stakes. This is why it is critically important to vote for Kamala Harris, and to name Trump for what he is.