CSotD: It’s Now or Never
Skip to comments
Chappatte offers a concise description of the day: This is the point at which we declare what and who we are. We can get off the road to autocracy, or we can keep going the direction we’ve been going the past few years. But it is obviously the last exit, the last chance to change things.
It’s less a choice than a diagnosis. Late tonight or maybe tomorrow morning, we’ll know where America stands. If you believe in democracy, you’ll accept the outcome as an indication of who we are, even if the answer is that we prefer to live in a dictatorship or an oligarchy or a plutocracy or a kakistocracy rather than a democratic republic. Vox populi and all that.
I often think back to high school and even to college, where we learned that noble, democratic Athens went to war with brutal, nasty Sparta, and we heard about Socrates and Pericles and how wise and wonderful they were, but somehow they glossed over the fact that Sparta won.
It reminds me of the scene in War and Peace in which young Nicholai Rostov is unhorsed and sees French soldiers racing towards him, and thinks “Who are they? Why are they running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom everyone is so fond of?”
Being a good fellow may get you into Heaven, but it’s little protection here on Earth. If you don’t accept the possibility that this could be the end, you’re in no position to change what is about to happen.
But you really ought to vote.
Brown lays the matter out in a way that echoes our Athens/Sparta teachings. It’s not that he’s wrong. I used the term “cult of personality” to discuss Trump and his followers back in 2018, and it’s only become more obvious as time has gone by.
But the fellow in the red baseball cap is also going to vote today. And if you watched Trump come down that escalator and laughed, I guess the question is whether you’re still laughing?
The vote of a thoughtful champion of democracy counts just as much as the vote of a cult member, no more, no less. There is no “plays well with others” grade being given and we’re not being marked on a curve.
It’s all about the numbers, and you need to be one of them.
Espinoza depicts a wish that isn’t going to happen. The idea that the people currently in power are going to wake up in the morning and ask some passing child to have a goose sent round to the Cratchits’ house is naive. And believing it is a good way to prevent anything even similar from happening.
Politics ain’t beanbag, as the saying goes. We’ve seen how the hunger for power overwhelms any urge to preserve the values we’ve seen play out in this country since the Second World War. If those values continue, it won’t be because anyone on the other side of the aisle had a change of heart. Nobody surrenders power; it must be taken.
The turnouts at the No Kings rallies provide hope that we’ll see crowds at polling places today, hungry for reform.
As an election official, I’m offended by de Adder’s suggestion that we are helping Trump to make an honest election problematic. I realize that he’s from another country and unable to see our system close up, and he’s certainly right that Trump is finding as many ways as possible to disrupt the vote, particularly given how the polls show it will go very much against him.
But I don’t expect trouble as a poll worker tomorrow, and, frankly, I think we’ll be too busy to mess with the system.
We’re too small and remote for armed guards to descend on our particular polling place, and, if they do, they’ll be outnumbered by the citizenry. We may be a purple state, but I handed out ballots in the primary and, while operating with strict neutrality, I still saw how often we had to replenish the Democrats’ stack and how rarely we ran out of Republican ballots.
The fear, however, is not of corruption at the polling places, but of large scale obstruction after the count.
Morland, viewing us from Britain, predicts two outcomes: Either Trump wins or he makes a move to overturn the results, as he did before. He has said he’s accept the results “if they’re honest.” We understand his narcissistic definition of “honest,” and it’s likely he’ll cry foul if the predicted blue wave occurs.
Fuller offers a more analytical look at this likely outcome, suggesting that rejection of the midterm results will be part of a concerted effort that has led to this point, and we’ve certainly seen enough tomfoolery and utter fabrication thus far to justify his view.
It has been an ugly campaign, with campaign ads consisting more of personal insults rather than policy disagreements, and fear-mongering in place of promises.
Mostly, we have indeed seen a concerted effort to, as seen above, “pave the way” to rejection of the results.
And viewing our elections from the Netherlands, Wolterink sees Putin and Netanyahu as puppet masters, one directing Trump’s disruptive behavior and the other pulling the strings that made Haley Stevens suddenly come up with a last-minute turn on her Democratic colleagues.
Are his accusations fair? What’s “fair” got to do with anything that has happened in this campaign?
Obviously, it’s not as simple as portrayed in a cartoon. Russian interference has gone well beyond Trump’s odd, unpatriotic affection for Putin, and Stevens is perhaps more to be pitied than censured.
It all adds up, but it still comes down to the numbers, and the numbers will come down to turnout.
One must always remember Molina’s background in viewing his cartoons. Having fled Nicaragua, he’s an expert in governmental repression, and his point here carries additional weight, though the overall message should be obvious.
It doesn’t seem that many of the tricks intended to suppress voting have worked very well, and the courts have slapped down some of the more outrageous efforts, but the fact remains that the current party in power wants to stay in power, and you have to ask why they feel that retaining power requires attempting to keep a fair vote from taking place.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Sorensen offers her reasoning in a conversational setting, while Deering echoes Frank Capra’s WWII series, “Why We Fight.”
Whichever approach you prefer, they’re both right: There are critical reasons to vote in this election. Midterms won’t completely alter the way we’ve been going, and there’s an excellent chance of a major pushback against the will of the people, but it matters, and the larger the margins, the harder it will be to deny the will of the people.
It ain’t over until it’s over. And it won’t be over then. We are at a critical juncture right now, today, but democracy is an ongoing process, always.
Be part of it. That’s how you keep the faith.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
Comments