"Perhaps America will one day go fascist democratically, by popular vote."
"I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state... a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it."
-William L. Shirer, author, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The NYT today was filled with what felt like one last pitch for sanity, which may fall on deaf ears in a couple weeks.
First there was General Kelly, speaking candidly about his former boss's fascist leanings and utter disrespect for the military, figuring he couldn't stay silent any longer.
Then there was my favorite NYT pundit, Tom Edsall, with his compendium of warnings from political scientists about where we may find ourselves in a few days if the Very Bad Thing happens.
His conclusion is jarringly direct.
It's both frightening and disturbing to think that two weeks from now American voters could once again make someone as unhinged and unbridled as Donald Trump the president of the United States.
But Nate Silver, the country's most respected pollster, shares that his gut tells him DJT is going to win.
How can this be?
Meanwhile, one of our more pleasant employees has photos of herself all over her Facebook page this morning, sporting a T-shirt that labels her as a "Still a Trump Girl." The rest of the posse was out in public in similar fasc fashion.
That's the worst of it, not that the MAGA police will show up at my door one day and drag me off to reeducation camp in a closed department store-turned megachurch. Rather, it's that once one knows one's neighbors and colleagues are proudly part of that team, how does one share a space with them, smile on the way to the coffee pot and make small talk about college football? That this election is as close as it is already stands as a defeat for the principles we once stood for as a country. We've become something quite different now, something my grandparents would have recognized from the newsreels.
Time to get cleaned up for my first Zoom call, with a person who's almost certainly one of them. How awful.
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