In the growing ominousness of the upcoming US election, I can’t resist checking the polls at least twice a day. While Trump’s abominations have smashed through every threshold of decency, the loyalty of his supporters has grown fiercer. Still, polls suggests that Trump and Harris are in a statistical dead heat. I seize upon every straw of hope that somehow the better angels of public conscience can prevail. It is encouraging that nearly half of American voters––especially women–– despise Trump. Yet more pundits are saying that Harris’ support has stalled.

So, with the lengthening nights of October, a gloom deepens. If Trump does win––his victory may well unleash a darkness that have always lurked in the heart of America. My anxiety in that is based on hard-wired intuition:

Growing up just six miles on the Canadian side of the Maine border, the keenest excitement of summer was a swim in the lake on the American side, followed by a visit to the general store in the border hamlet. Therein were such exotic treats such as candy bacon, candy whistles or candy cigarettes that blew sugar-powder ‘smoke’… America, in my infancy, was the mecca of penny candy.

The USA was also the land of Davy Crocket, orange groves and colour TV.  The “living colour” peacock on NBC TV (received through a distant signal in fuzzy shades of grey) only reinforced the drabness of my northern homeland. Like most kids, I dreamed of visiting Disneyland. Even so, I worried that a surprise announcement of a trip to the Magic Kingdom could only mean that I was terminally ill… 

Added to these early impressions were encounters with Americans themselves. Apart from the friendly clerks with their Yankee accents who filled the bags of candy, were the visits from American relatives.

An older male cousin from southern New England was always friendly–– but I couldn’t understand why he liked to crow about how his country was in every way superior to mine. He once boasted that his president was: “way, way more powerful than your queen!” I wasn’t sure what was a president–– or even a country–– but sensed that his bluster was to be taken with a grain of salt… 

By my teens, I began to suspect that the Yankee tendency to bullshit was just a superficial reflection of deeper differences with American ‘cousins’–– in the broadest sense of the word…

In the summers of the late 1960s, that Maine border hamlet became as familiar as my New Brunswick village. Still, in nearing the US customs office, my feral friends and I typically braced as if in approach of pit bulls. In barking their questions (precisely calculated to trip up the nervous), the American border guards always angled their hips for the clearest view of their holsters…  Meanwhile, the contrast was stark between the opposing customs’ posts. In almost every return across the border–– the (then) gun-less greeters to the Dominion of Canada waved us through––sometimes with a smile.

Yet it was more fun to be on American soil. The drinking age was lower while both beer and cigarettes were cheaper.  Then there were the American girls. Those who gave us attention at the local beach seemed brighter-feathered than the ‘chicks’ from our home village. They will always feature in a handful of idyllic memories of summer in that remote corner of hardscrabble Maine.  Yet just as indelible are darker ones:

Often in walking from the customs to the beach, we passed a boathouse in front of what was locally called the DP (“dead pecker”) bench. Most of the purple-nosed geezers who sipped beer there, ignored us. That is except for one local drunk––a Korean War vet–– who loved to taunt long-haired Canuck boys.

 “Fuckin’ hippie scum,” the pig-eyed vet would growl. “Get back to yer own side of the rivah!” 

He once pulled his shirt above his fat belly to show off the pistol in his belt. That gesture was plainly aimed to ‘trigger’ us–– decades before that became a verb applied to politics…

Another memorable incident in the summer of 1967 involved a local teacher who called me over to the open door of his car, parked above the lake shore. He had earlier noticed the peace symbol pinned to my army surplus jacket.  He asked whether I’d known that in World War One, a German spy had tried to blow up the local railroad bridge.  I said I hadn’t. He then asked if I thought my peace symbol would stop a platoon of Russian soldiers “advancin’ up the St. Croix rivah.”

 He met my smirk with an angry sneer. “Someday you’re find out how far that jeezless pacifist crap’ll get ya!”  

An even less subtle reaction to that peace symbol came a little later at the local Mobil garage. I was fishing a Coke out from the cooler at the front entrance when the crew-cut manager in green overalls, came out wiping grease from his hands. He glanced at the button and shook his head.  

“You bettah be careful,” he said.  “Ya don’t want anybody to think yer like one ah them protestahs carryin’ signs and burnin’ the flag.” He spat. “Anyone try anya that shit around heah–– we’ll blow ‘em out our fuckin’ asses!”

I recall no such reactions from the hamlet’s male adolescents. They attended the Saturday night dances across the border and some dated Canadian girls. Most of them greased their hair but were not hostile to those of us who didn’t.  Sometimes we drank Narragansett together by the riverside. We laughed a lot but skirted talk of our differences.  Unlike their older brothers, they’d missed the draft by a couple of years.

I do recall chatting about ‘politics’ (in a rudimentary sense) a few times with a geeky local about my age. He stood out from other boys in being both abstemious and apparently studious. In one conversation, on the steps of an abandoned house across from the beer store, I repeated a quip heard from a history teacher.  I said that in my country’s history, George Washington and Benedict Arnold were “traitors.” He was shocked––but curious to hear more. Another time, he spoke of Barry Goldwater, about whom I knew nothing.

“My dad said that Goldwadah woulda make a great president,” he said glowingly. “He had a plan to stop the Negro riots and win in Vietnam. He woulda saved the nation!”  

It was no coincidence that his dad was one of the more ferocious pit-bulls on the border. 

In my anxieties about the 2024 election, such fragments of memory somehow seem just as relevant as the polls…

In trying to understand the cultural chasm between the Trump voter and the likely Harris supporter I have also thought of two American cousins about the same age. I have had little contact with either over the years but have no doubt that one is a Democrat and the other–– almost certainly a MAGA Republican.

The cousin on the maternal side is the same New Englander who at the age of ten bragged about the sharpness of the American eagle’s claws. His dad was a driver and a Democrat. At eighteen, my cousin volunteered for the Marines and served in Vietnam. The little I know of his history after his discharge has been recently derived from his LinkedIn profile.

He lives in a suburban town just fifty miles northeast of New York City which is 92% white (I looked up the demographics).  His painting business is listed as his primary work followed by a work history dating back to the 1970s–– mostly dispatch and delivery jobs. He is now seventy-six, but is apparently still working part-time…

The second to last time I saw him was in October 1968.  He had come north for a short visit before shipping off for Vietnam.  In our brief chat, he was amused that I was–– as he put it–– “a peacenik.”  Unforgettable was his goodbye.  Shaking my hand in the driveway, he joked: “Hey, F.–– I’ll mail ya a gook’s ear!”

Fifty-six years later, no pollster would disagree that a white male of such a background will be raring to stick it to the Brie-eating Democrat snobs in Manhattan…

The other cousin––on the paternal side–– grew up in the urban Pacific Northwest. He also volunteered during the Vietnam War but with a foot in the middle class––was posted stateside. After military service, he got a degree in business and later an MBA. He had a long career with a firm specializing in high-tech business equipment. After working in several international settings, he settled into his company’s main office not far from where he grew up. He and his wife, a naturalized American from an upper-middle class Mexican background, are very comfortably retired…

Were any pollster to see the grand piano in their artfully decorated living room––or the artisan comestibles in their fridge–– ‘probable Democrat’ would undoubtedly be ticked off.

Since Trump came down his golden escalator in 2015–– there has been unending punditry about the widening political gulf between those who adore him–– and those who abhor him. The obvious markers of socio-economic difference–– education, location, income, culture etc.–– have been hashed and rehashed. Between my elderly American cousins, such demographic differences (along with random luck) are plain…  More interesting to me are the substrata forces likely to determine whether or not the MAGA movement regains power…

Like many Canadians under the dark spell of the American behemoth, I have always been fascinated by its history. Plainly, Donald Trump is not the first demagogic conman on the political scene.  Previous peddlers of nativist xenophobia with whom Americans have flirted include Charles Lindbergh, General McArthur, George Wallace, Pat Buchanan and yes–– Barry Goldwater.  The latter was also a Republican nominee but only Trump–– the most charming manipulator of them all––won the presidency. 

Even in losing his reelection bid to Biden, he increased his percentage share of the vote. After the MAGA insurrectionist attack on the capital on January 6^th 2021, few would have predicted Trump would make a comeback. Yet cowardly Republicans, despite having been themselves caught up in the violence, feared blowback from the MAGA base. Within days, they rushed to Trump’s Mar a Lago palace to kiss the royal ring.

Traditional Republicans justify their support of Trump by claiming they are ignoring his “rhetoric” while endorsing his pro-business policies. Evangelical Christian devotees claim the foul-mouthed showman is divinely ordained–– just as King Cyrus (the Great) was ordained to free the Israelites from Babylonian captivity.

As for his Roman Catholic support––one might consider the tone of the recent Al Smith dinner in New York. In the past, the fat-cat gathering for RC ‘charity’ has had opposing presidential candidates ribbing one another in a cordial atmosphere. This year, the Archbishop of New York sat on the right side of Trump winking obscenely at his vulgar jokes. Plainly for conservative Catholics–– the Republican stance on abortion trumps any discomfort in their candidate’s moral fitness. As Pope Francis remarked a few weeks ago: Americans are faced with the choice between “the lesser of two evils.”  That not so cryptic advice from His Holiness probably nudged a sub-set of Catholic waverers to the ‘right’ side.

A generation ago, many in the MAGA core would have been John Birchers or Ku Klux Klansmen. They would welcome the prospect of a right-wing dictatorship. Before Trump, a plurality of Americans was rather uncomfortable with such extremism. No longer.

Meanwhile, Trump gives permission to his followers to be as mendacious and shameless as himself.  In mimicking the Trump style–– Republican politicians try to outdo one another in almost comic fashion. The Christian “black Nazi” Republican candidate for Governor of North Carolina is just one example…

Most of the still-living seventy-four million Americans who voted for Trump in 2020 are almost certain to vote for him again. Added to those ranks, will be newer contingents of the cynical and angry. Many will be young men, blacks and Latinos in economic distress. Through the supposed “outsider” Trump–– the disaffected can take pleasure in giving the establishment a giant middle finger… Then in the last few months, the anti-Democrat animus has been super-charged by Silicon Valley’s billionaire ‘techno-bros’ and the internet’s right-wing influencers…

As is often discussed––social media is impacting the current American election in ways unprecedented.  Political ‘tribalism’ is obviously exacerbated by a host of new technologies. Still, what is most striking is the mood of disaffection. Arguably, such a mood is similar to that which existed in Germany in the early 1930s.  Meanwhile, just as formerly dubious big-business leaders embraced Hitler in the late 1930s––in the fall of 2024, former critics of Trump in the American corporate world are staying silent.

So it seems that Germany’s 1933 could become America’s 2024: i.e. the year when an anti-democratic regime is democratically elected. Trump is the first ex-president to be called ‘a fascist’ by his former chief of staff. John Kelly could not have meant that Trump––scarcely capable of abstract thought––adheres to any ideology.  His unreflective attraction to dictatorial authority and power is likely rather borne of raw hunger…

Many (with immensely more credibility than me) have opined that America had always had an appetite for fascism. Trump seems to have an uncanny ability to tap into the existing nativist impulses. Religious zealotry, racism or xenophobia certainly did not begin with the MAGA movement. The molten magma of resentment has rather become clay in Trump’s tiny hands.

A MAGA fascism would still be uniquely American in character. Rather the brown uniforms of German Nazis one might imagine marching legions of bright red Trump caps and cowboy hats. Instead of ‘heil Hitler’ salutes, its acolytes might raise both arms and shake closed fists––like the brave leader who took a bullet in the ear for the sacred cause.  The movement’s chant could be the one already roaring though Trump rallies: “Fight, fight, fight!”

‘America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians… The evil was there, waiting…’ 

These closing days of the campaign have also brought to mind several passages from the recently reread novel, ’Naked Lunch’.  One would wonder how W.S. Burroughs’ 1958 classic of diseased imagination could possibly be relevant to the MAGA movement in 2024. Yet underlying that novel’s disturbing images is dark political satire. Through weirdly interconnected sketches, a nightmare vision of America emerges: lackadaisical on the surface–– and sinister at the core.

One sketch features banter between a small-town sheriff and a local doctor. In their deep-south dialect they talk about a lynching (“They burned the nigrah but didn’t settle up for the gasoline!”) as casually as the exchange of friendly news about neighbours. They both agree: “We must stomp out the un-American critter!”

The depiction of good ole boys from the heartland blending comical small talk with viciousness brings to mind the Trump’s ‘weave’ of cruel jokes with dark threats. Picking up the cue from his master, his former national security advisor warned that in dealing with domestic enemies–– “the gates of hell will be unleashed.” Michael Flynn, an evangelical Christian, was likely auditioning for a reappointment in the next administration.

 ‘American rottenness spurts out like breaking boils throwing out globs that… grow into some degenerate cancerous life form reproducing hideous random issues…’

The imagery of pestilence and putridity throughout ‘Naked Lunch’ emphasizes cruelty and corruption behind a puritanical façade. That creepy duality epitomizes, in many ways, America of the 1950s. MAGA supporters believe that decade was an era of ‘greatness’––when America was more righteous, more harmonious and (to be carefully phrased) more white… Yet for many marginalized Americans of that era (as was Burroughs himself)– America in the 1950s was “rotten” to the core…

Of course, Burroughs was not the first–– and was far from the last–– to write of darkness in the American heart. In the mid-1800s, Herman Melville wrote of: “the Calvinistic sense of innate depravity and original sin…”  That was a reference to the torment in the Puritan soul conflicted between righteousness and a “blackness, ten times black”.  Melville commends Nathaniel Hawthorne for his rendering of that spiritual conflict in his short stories set in the founding Puritan colony of New England. Melville expands on that theme in his own masterful novels.

The canker in the Puritan heart which manifested in witch trials has reemerged in myriad forms throughout American history. The hate and fear engendered by MAGA is, arguably, a uniquely malignant latter-day manifestation of it… In the reaction to Trump’s growled promise to expel “millions of illegal aliens” one might hear an echo of a lynch mob–– or the silence of the pious townsfolk standing behind the gallows of old Salem…

Meanwhile, there is an opposing vision for America. That alternative vision inspired the lines for which the Statue of Liberty would become emblematic: ‘Give me your tired, your poor,’ wrote Emma Lazarus in 1883, ‘your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…’   The America she evoked is a beacon of democracy in an imperfect world. Although born in the original sin of slavery–– that America is ever soul-searching. It is not ‘old and dirty” (as Burroughs had it) ––but a young nation––taking baby-steps towards “a more perfect union.”  

In January 2009, a president of mixed race whose father was born in Africa was stunningly inaugurated… It seemed the bright vision might for a few years, prevail. But within months of his taking office–– the restive right began their hounding of Barack Obama. He was mocked for having the suspiciously un-American middle name of ‘Hussein’. He was attacked in the reactionary media for such disgraces as holding a coffee cup while saluting. Tea Party Republicans claimed that his birth certificate was fake–– so he was ineligible to be president. 

The chief purveyor of that slander was none other than Donald Trump. He was insidiously effective. Before Obama ended his squeaky clean eight-year term, no less than 40% of Americans believed that Obama was “not one of us”.  

Now in 2024, Trump is making similarly dark insinuations about Kamala Harris (“Is she Indian or is she black?”). He knows that even beyond the MAGA faithful––he can raise suspicions of the alien ‘other’ in the guise of real Americans.  Whether in reference to illegal immigrants or to the leftie “enemy within”–– his message to the heartland is clear. The un-American critters must be stomped out! 

Yet most unsettling is that Trump may not be an aberration. He may rather be this era’s embodiment of the evil that has always resided in America’s core…

Perhaps the Democrats could have selected a stronger candidate. Yet the eleventh-hour entry of Kamala Harris to the race is the fault of Biden. His failure to withdrew earlier left her as a default choice rather than the winner of an open primary slugfest. Along with her pressured self-introduction, she is tainted by Biden’s failures––both real and exaggerated…  She has valiantly tried to make the best if it. In any fair assessment, she is immeasurably fitter for the presidency than a ruthless 78-year-old narcissist…

Unfortunately, as in 2016, there will likely be unpolled MAGAs (maggots?) crawling out to vote before retreating under their rocks. Then there will be angry liberals feeling taken for granted by the Harris campaign. Some bitter about Biden-Harris’ support for Israeli brutality may stay home.  Other progressives will be cynical about Harris’ bending over backwards to court more educated Republicans. Those ‘moderates’ may still hold their noses and vote for Trump. They will claim to be voting for pro-business policies but will never admit unease with the prospect of a black female president…

In these final weeks though, the focus of both parties is entirely on the handfuls of “undecideds”. Despite their frenzied bombardment with appeals, most aren’t interested in politics and may not vote at all… What hope that just enough of them wake up to the grave danger posed by Trump 2.0?

If Trump wins, the peril will likely be less from the geriatric ‘king’ than from his underlings. As the Exalted Orange One basks in sycophantic adoration–– his minions will be given freer rein.  The aim, as already plotted by MAGA insiders, will be to tear apart “the deep state”– root and branch… 

Clearly, a hard-right regime in Washington would destabilize the world order. More copy-cat Trumps? Trade war? Deadly new pandemic? Wider war spreading from the Middle East? Climate change catastrophe? These are but a few apocalyptical scenarios on a Trumpian horizon…

Yet at this critical moment, the fate of America–– and possibly that of the planet––apparently rests with the 2%-3% of Americans voters who hardly give a damn.  What could be more obscene?

While never an admirer of Hillary Clinton, I cannot overstate the devastation felt in the aftermath of her defeat in 2016… A looming Trump presidency amid the dreariness of November felt like the opening paragraphs of E. A. Poe’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’: ‘There was a coldness, a sickening of the heart in which I could discover nothing to lighten the weight I felt…’

Eight years later, I have not quite abandoned hope for Harris eking out a win. However, should CNN’s magic board turn gradually red on the evening of November 5th, I will not be watching.

Several months ago, I decided to spend the week of the American election in Mexico. The plan is to be off Wi-Fi somewhere in the Yucatan jungle on November 5^th. Only on the following day will I switch on the iPhone. I am assuming that it will be easier to take in the results in some lush tropical setting.  Yet during the news blackout––I may well be sweating like a junkie in the throes of cold turkey…

Before flying away next week, I am trying to shake the gut-level pessimism. That is difficult with the reports that Trump is edging ahead. Yet Kamala Harris could pull off an upset victory. A few polls suggest that such a poignant possibility is still within the margin of error…

I keep thinking of Herman Melville’s ‘blackness ten times black.’ In the same paragraph in his letter to Hawthorne, he wrote of the ‘Indian-summer sunlight’ opposing it. Sunlight is poignantly golden on a warm day in October. It is dim, however, compared with the blazing light of June. As with the dualistic struggle of darkness and light in the manichean cosmos––the balance, undeniably, tilts towards the former…

Whatever the outcome of the election––America will get what it deserves. One can only hope that the rest of us will not have to bear the worst consequences.

-2024, October

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