If all went well, I've voted. My round of ammo is spent. Nothing more for me to do but wait and worry.
And I will worry, because it feels like a different year and because I'm not sure any of us know anything about what is going to happen. Some Democrats are nervous some people who might be inclined to vote for Hillary Clinton will believe she's got it locked up and stay home. Some people may show up at the polls intending to make people who don't support their candidate uncomfortable. There might be some ugly incidents.
I'm not afraid of election fraud, but I fear recent polls might be less accurate than we've come to expect. I'm afraid they're overstating Clinton's advantage. Maybe a lot of people who are planning on voting for Donald Trump aren't keen on advertising the fact. There are only a couple of Trump-Pence yard signs in my admittedly blue neighborhood; surely there are more Trump voters than that. More on point, there are hardly any in the reliably red Heights neighborhood of Little Rock. As difficult as it might be to believe from the coverage, there are some quiet Trump supporters.
On the other hand, I figure there are quite a few women staying silent out there, just biding their time until they get the chance to cancel out their husband's vote. I'm aware that some women support him, but then there were Jews who supported Hitler. From 1921 until 1935, the Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (Association of German National Jews) supported the Nazis. They favored the total assimilation of Jews into the Volksgemeinschaft--a term that literally translates as "people's community" and suggests a nation of equals--through the self-eradication of Jewish identity. They also supported the expulsion of eastern European Jews from Germany.
The point is people can talk themselves into just about anything. And plenty of people would like to talk themselves into voting against Hillary Clinton.
While I'm reading Clinton has a double-digit lead in the polls and that it's more likely she'll win in a landslide than Trump will somehow pull off an upset, I'm not comfortable. On Sunday morning on Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com they'd calculated that Trump had a one in seven chance of winning the election, which makes it sound like Clinton's pretty safe until you consider that it also means a candidate in Trump's position could be expected to win the race every 28 years.
I find that sobering. Once every 28 years is not exactly a drought of Cubbsian proportions.
And I should also say that Trump might not be the disaster as president a lot of us think he would be--his behavior as a candidate notwithstanding, he might be a very careful president. He might be the complete opposite of everything he's shown himself to be these past 40 years. He might be all right.
You don't have to be an especially talented person to govern well in this country, but you do have to be decent and aware of your own weaknesses and lack of expertise. We don't need the best and the brightest in Washington; we need the best and the brightest curing cancer, teaching kids and making art.
Nobody with any sense believes that politicians are made of finer stuff than the rest of us compromised, fearful and thwarted humans, so a lot of elections devolve into contests between petty evils who run TV ads trashing each other. While there are apologists eager to tell us that politics has always been rough sport and that no campaigns were nastier than the ones fought in the early days of our republic, I remember when campaigns used to close soft, when the candidates would finish up with messages of hope and reassurance rather than last-ditch slashes at their opponents' throats. After the Willie Horton attack ad in 1988 it all escalated; we moved deeper and deeper into a world where sensation trumps rationality, where equanimity and thoughtfulness are perceived as weakness.
I first started writing a newspaper column in 1984 so I've had a reasonable view of the decline of public discourse. These days, "liberals" attend to NPR and "conservatives" to Fox News, and the alt-right pack to breitbart.com and other angry white sites not to be informed but to be affirmed.
You get the opportunity to write for a newspaper, you have to expect that some people won't agree or like what you write. Even now most of my correspondence with readers--even those who vociferously disagree with my point of view--is mannerly and mutually respectful. But it got noticeably uglier this year. It got a little scary this year.
A significant minority of our fellow Americans get their history and manners from movies and reality TV shows. Sure, they've got the right to vote, but should we be upset if they fail to exercise it? A few of the smartest people I know abstain from the process, either on the grounds that voting only encourages them or because they can't morally reconcile themselves to voting purely in self-defense for the lesser of two evils.
While the newspaper columnists' playbook calls for me to scold these folks and say something silly and wrong like those who don't vote shouldn't complain, I believe not voting is a legitimate form of political expression. If you don't want to, don't --you don't have to justify it as a refusal to validate as legitimate the weak choices we've been allowed. You have a right to decline to vote.
I believe politics matter and that no vote is insignificant. But I am exhausted by the empty rhetoric of those for whom politics is the only form of show business for which they're suited (it's less show business for ugly people than for untalented people). I am weary of the incessant arguments and the failure of politicians to address the genuinely difficult questions facing us. I am tired of the winking rancor of campaigns and the disingenuousness of self-professed "political junkies." I am tired of stupid ads pitched to stupid people and the winking narcissism of those who would report on "the process." I am sick of ridiculous reflexive positions and habits of thought, of orthodoxies of the left and right. I am dismayed that the conventions of shout shows have become the lingua franca of our society.
Yes, I voted. It was a relief. But I'm still worried.
------------v------------
Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 10/25/2016