When We Wake Up

I've bloviated far too much over the last two years about what is at stake when we awaken tomorrow, on fucking facebook no less. I don't need to tell you, in yet another way, that this is the world's most important election in 80 years. After tomorrow, the most powerful country in the world will either remain a democracy, however flawed, for another era, and in all likelihood, it will; or we will fall into autocracy for many, many years hence.

But it's not over tomorrow. Trump will find any reason at all not to concede, and even if he does concede, he will claim that he was coerced and manipulated into it within a few weeks. To all who worked us to the point that he can be beaten tomorrow, even if only temporarily, the world thanks you, but we're all far from done.

Whether in 1933 or 2016, there is an enemy and we call the enemy by its name. The enemy is not the Republican Party, it's not even fascism or authoritarianism at its base, however much they resemble the enemy and however much they are symptoms of the problem.

The enemy is purity: purity of race, purity of sex, purity of money, purity of class, purity of agreement, purity of speech, purity of religion, purity of science, purity of technology, purity of ideology, purity of party, purity of motive. It's a cancer that metastisizes its way through Right and Left alike and can kill anything that might be helpful in them both and leave only death in its wake.

The way to beat it is to hold all that exclusivity up to the light - there is no one solution, no one doctrine, no one country, no one race to rule, no one class structure to overthrow. The solution is to strengthen the immune system. Everyone in America to be able to talk to each other, and not just talk, but yell, scream, insult, slander, question motives, and do it all mercilessly, while still being able to remain friends. That is how a democracy stays functional, that is how it stays healthy. Go in peace, whatever happens, I'll yell at you Wednesday again, with renewed resolve to hold nothing back. The fate of all democracy depends on the trollishness of this facebook feed.