High Anxiety

Why I am starting to freak out about the upcoming election

A new documentary looks at the Right Wing’s voter suppression project. Watch it here.

So, I am now officially panicking about the election. In what follows I am going to share my reasoning, for whatever good it might do. We have a month to go. The dynamic could still change in many ways. I also recognize that the fate of the election — perhaps the US and the world — may come down to a small handful of voters in a few swing states, where I have close to zero influence. 

Because the election is so agonizingly close, it feels like the Lorenz butterfly effect is in full effect: “For a sufficiently complex system, a small change in the present quickly balloons into a large change in the future. Lorenz's example was a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil subsequently producing a tornado in Texas.” Hence, I am going to share my fears in what follows, and also propose some productive actions we can take. 

Good Ol’ Boys remembering the Confederacy, from Vigilantes

My worries and qualms have blossomed into deep anxiety since the Vice Presidential debate. I have been meaning to bring JD Vance more into focus. Now that I have, I am extremely concerned.

Vance is not an incompetent imbecile like Donald Trump. Vance is intelligent but completely unprincipled: Willing to lie, intentionally, to further his agenda, as he did through last week’s debate, where he refused to admit Trump lost the 2020 election. At one moment, when the anchors challenged one of his many outright lies (for instance, saying Tim Walz supported abortions in the ninth month), Vance reminded them, angrily, that they had agreed to not have any fact-checking so he could lie without restraint. 

Vance is young, 39, born in 1984 (another little factoid that makes me uncomfortable). He worked in tech and venture capital before winning an Ohio senate seat three years ago. Vance has close ties to the secretive Catholic cult, Opus Dei. He has very powerful people in the tech world behind him, like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. If the obese 80-year-old Trump wins and then dies in office, Vance will succeed him. I would say it is very obvious that the goal of Vance and those backing him — Heritage, Thiel, Opus Dei — is dictatorial control. 

I just discovered that Vance wrote a blurb for a new book, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, with an introduction from Steve Bannon. Vance also wrote the forward for another new book by the president of The Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, that came out last month. Roberts is the main architect of Agenda 25, which they intend to implement if Trump slimes his way into office. The original title and subtitle was: Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America, which has since been modified and made less incendiary. Vance’s foreword ends with a call for the Right to “circle the wagons and load the muskets.” He describes Roberts’s ideas as an “essential weapon” in the “fights that lay [sic] ahead.” 

Let’s focus on Unhumans for a bit. This horrible screed paints an extremist portrait of leftists, socialists, and communists — who they do not distinguish from ordinary, run-of-the-mill democrats — framing them as not only ideological opponents but as existential threats to human civilization itself. The authors use the term "unhumans" to describe all of those they claim work avidly to undermine society, arguing they have rejected their own humanity to pursue nihilism and destruction:

By becoming consumed by nihilism, unhumans oppose everything that makes up humanity. As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman. They specifically reject the human rights of others. So if and when they get their way, they will unhuman you, too. They convert, and that which they cannot convert, they destroy.

In their childlike writing style, Posobiec and Lisec characterize Leftists and even Democrats as devoid of genuine concern for equality or justice: “They don’t believe what they say. They don’t care about winning debates. They don’t even want equality. They just want an excuse to destroy everything. They want an excuse to destroy you.” 

The authors portray their political opposition as an existential threat to humanity itself. This is pure Fascist rhetoric that not only demonizes the left but also justifies extreme measures (like imprisonment and execution) to "fight back" against those who disagree with their Right Wing extremism.

The authors offer a heroic revision of General Francisco Franco, calling him a "Great Man of History" who saved Spain from the destructive forces of communism. They praise Franco as someone who "unified all conservatives, Catholics, and anti-communists" under the banner of restoring order and defending traditional Spanish values. His campaign is even summarized as a call to "Make Spain Great Again!"

A fascist dictator who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975, Franco was known for systematic human rights abuses, including the forced labor of political prisoners, and the use of secret police to maintain control over the population. In the early years of his dictatorship, tens of thousands were executed or imprisoned in a brutal crackdown on left-wing supporters and dissidents. He executed intellectuals, homosexuals and poets like Federico Garcia Lorca. The repression lasted throughout his 35-year rule.

The authors of Unhumans also praise Augusto Pinochet, the brutal Chilean dictator who ruled from 1973 - 1990. Pinochet often killed his perceived enemies using “extrajudicial” means, like throwing them out of helicopters. Posobiec and Lisec write approvingly of these illegal executions: “Pinochet offered reciprocal punishment to the communist revolutionaries, demoralizing their cause and diminishing their ranks. All allies of anti-civilization were ruthlessly excised from Chilean society. The story of tossing communists out of helicopters hails from Pinochet’s elimination of communism during the mid to late 1970s.”

In his blurb, Vance writes: “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”

There has been a sense — a hopeful faith on the part of Democrats and liberals — over the last decade that the Republicans just like to flirt with Fascism or “cosplay” it. In a New York Times Op-Ed, Michele Goldberg writes: “Now, it is always possible that Vance recommended Unhumans without actually reading it, a practice that’s not unheard-of in book publishing. But unless and until he credibly distances himself from it, we should take him at his word that he shares the book’s analysis.” The New York Times — and other mainstream media outlets — tend to convulsively seek the middle between perceived political extremes. But this is no longer effective when one side annihilates truth and openly seeks to establish a dictatorship which may include the killing of dissidents (such as liberal NY Times columnists).

Rebecca Solnit covers this in The Guardian, “The mainstream press is failing America – and people are understandably upset.” In an interview with Prospect Magazine, she says: “We're in… an unprecedented emergency for this country, and … the public is not being told by the press with the most power to do so.” She coines the term “sane-washing” for the way the media focuses on personalities and meaningless tiffs while neglecting the fundamental issues, such as the existential threat posed by Trump and Vance to the future of America and the Earth as a whole, considering the climate issue in particular, as well as the open admiration of Fascist dictators who illegally imprisoned and executed their political opponents. 

What intensifies my current level of concern is that I doubt the Republicans have any intention of conceding a close election. They will do everything they can to force victory, through legal challenges that could give final decision to the Supreme Court. As The New York Times writes, “Trump Allies Bombard the Courts, Setting Stage for Post-Election Fight.” In the past, Democrats have not shown the same ferocity as Republicans, when push comes to shove. It is hard not to recall Al Gore conceding defeat in the 2000 election. He would have won if he hadn’t backed down. WB Yeats famously wrote, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst /Are full of passionate intensity.” I don’t consider the Democrats “the best,” but they are all we have right now. 

This is getting long. What I intend to look at — next time or soon — is what has happened to the consciousness of people in my extended network who have lost focus on the underlying issues and are confused about the meaning of this election. People seem to be suffering from brainfog, historical amnesia, and context collapse. I also hope to zoom out and consider the prophetic / archetypal dimensions, which also scare me.

I am currently looking for ways to help more directly — if you have good ideas, please leave them in the comments. Seed the Vote has been recommended: https://seedthevote.org/what-we-do/ . Through them, you can go and physically canvas in swing states. My friend Laura Dawn, formerly the cultural director of MoveOn, helped make Vigilantes, a documentary produced by Martin Sheen, on how the Right Wing plans to steal the election, free to watch here: https://saveyourvote.org/vigilantes-stream/

PS - I have loved Lorca’s Surrealist poems since high school. So tragic that his life was cut short by Fascists like Vance.

Dear fellow Unhumans, Let’s not let that happen to us!

Here is one of my favorite Lorca poems, for anyone interested:

Your Infancy in Mention

Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.* - Jorge Guillén

Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.
The train and the woman filling the sky.
Your shy solitude in the hotels
and your pure mask of another sign.
It is the sea's childhood and your silence
where the wise windows were breaking.
It is your stiff ignorance where
my torso was limited by fire.
I gave you the norm of love, man of Apollo,
the lament of a crazed nightingale,
but, pasture of ruin, you sharpened yourself
for brief, indecisive dreams.
Thought head on, light of yesterday,
indices and signs of what may be.
Your waist of restless sand
follows only trails that never rise.
But without you your warm soul
fails to understand. I must search
the corners of a halted Apollo
that I've used to break the mask you wear.
There, lion, fury of heaven,
I will let you graze on my cheeks;
there, blue horse of my madness,
pulse of nebula and minute hand,
I must search for scorpion stones
and your mother's childhood clothes,
midnight lament and torn cloth
that wiped the moon from the dead man's temple.
Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.
Strange soul of the space in my veins,
I must search for you, small and rootless.
Love of always, love of never!
Oh, yes! I want. Love. Let me be.
Don't cover my mouth, you
who search for Saturn's seed in the snow
or castrate animals in the sky,
clinic and jungle of anatomy.
Love, love. Childhood of the sea.
Without you your warm soul fails to understand you.
Love, a doe's flight
through the endless breast of whiteness.
And your childhood, love, and childhood.
The train and the woman filling the sky.
Not you, not I, not air, not leaves.
Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.