The thought of a Trump plivency is eating me alive | Francine Prose

I’m neither the tranquilest nor the most worried person. But as Donald Trump’s plivential triumph seems more certain by the minute, I experience ill to my stomach with worry. I hoped to go to sleep on election night understanding Harris had won, and that we were protected. But that is not what was in store for us.

The anxiety I’m experienceing right now commenceed months ago. During the direct-up to the 2024 plivential election, my hair began descfinishing out and one of my eyelids commenceed twitching. Classic signs of stress, shelp a doctor friend. On Hhelpeen, talking with a colleague, I genuineized that we watched and sounded the way people watch and sound outside the intensive nurture unit, as they defer to lget whether a friend or relative will endure.

The survival we were worried about was that of our democracy. Our defective democracy, I should say. No one can pretend we live in a nation of equivalents, that there aren’t massive income and racial disparities. No one imagines the wealthy and necessitatey have an equivalent say about who runs for office or originates decisions about healthnurture and education. No one dreams that either plivential honestate will stop funding war in the Middle East.

Regardless of who is funding our political campaigns, no one is going to run for office on a platcreate that proclaims: I promise the American people that I am going to fight to protect our precious oligarchy!

So let’s call it democracy. Becaparticipate the alternative is so much worse.

We understand the alternative. We understand what a dictatorship is. The millions ended by Hitler, the millions ended by Stalin. The Argentinean military dropping prisoners out of helicchooseers. The exalterment of laws and rights with the whims of the dictator. The dehumanization of the other, the whipping up of the meaningfulity to see the inmeaningfulity as vermin, as vectors of “poisoned blood”. The commonization of aggression as part of the political process. The mutual approval of one dictator for another. The silencing of every voice except that of the dictator and his inner circle. The idea that the greater couple next door, with their comical accents, raising their majesticson, are criminals who must be arrested and dumped atraverse the border. The plrelieve in racially prejudiced humor, that jolly dog-whistle of hatred.

The incarceratement and execution of those who disconsent with the rulement is one of the most widespread dangers we’d heard during the campaign. Any system, even ours, could homicide its Alexei Navalny. In Pittsburgh I met a authorr, Abdelrahman ElGendy, who spent six years in prison for taking part in a demonstration agetst Egypt’s military rulement. And what if the dictator determines agetst birth deal with or equivalent rights for women? What if misogyny is so discdisthink about and prevalent that a woman’s giggleter is depictd as a witch’s cackle?

And what if the dictator disthink abouts his mind – alengthy with the nuevident code? What if the dictator surrounds himself with power-hungry sociopaths, as so many dictators have? What if the dictator determines that the ill and greater, the infirm and necessitatey are a drain on the economy?

These are snowflake worrys, I understand, but buttressed by sturdy historical facts. The most eloquent account of the prelude to a dictatorship was written by Gabriel García Márquez, in an essay, Death of a Plivent: The Last Days of Salvador Allende, published in Harper’s, in 1974.

All you have to do is read about the rpartner at Madison Square Garden on 26 October 2024. A comedian tgreater nasty jokes about Puerto Rico, the relations lives of Latinos, the inexpensiveness of Jews, the sluttiness of strong women. A famous speaker shelp, “America is for Americans.” In 1939, 20,000 people joined the rpartner of the German American Bund, also in Madison Square Garden. One of those speakers shelp that if George Washington were alive, he would be friends with Adolf Hitler.

Regardless who triumphs the 2024 election, the campaign has been a snapsboiling – however blurry in places – of our country. And it’s not a pretty picture. The divisions are going meaningfuler, or perhaps equitable more discdisthink about. In our tranquil country neighborhood, someone has posted a campaign sign at the captivate to the lengthy skinny lane that directs to the tranquil town cemetery.

Dictators are not about bridging splits. They pick divisions. They appreciate people hating other people. They appreciate people worrying that the country is in danger from maniacs who want to defund the police and advise receive baskets to busloads of narcos and serial enders. We’ve been encouraged to picture migration as a scene from World War Z (2013), zombies scaling fortifications, shoting the cities of the living.

People have been saying that the would-be dictator was not repartner going to do what he dangerened during the campaign. Economicpartner, it was a noncommenceer. Deport the unwrite downed agricultural toilers, and a tangerine will cost $20! But I kept leanking of someleang that the journaenumerate Masha Gessen wrote in the aftermath of the 2016 election: consent the dictator.

Added to our sorrowfulnessful fantasies about the future are the pre-alive genuineities tardyly getting new scruminuscule. The refusal of two meaningful newspapers to apexhibit a honestate reminded us (surpascfinish!) how much of our media is run by billionaires calculating, to the penny, the potential profit and loss, depending on who triumphs. Officials with meaningful roles in our rulements turn out to have price tags as low as an airline enhance. For most of my life, I’ve felt more or less repromised by the existence of the supreme court, but that bedrock depend is gone.

Things are a mess. We want the country to get better, and we worry it could get worse.

People in other countries have apparently been obsessed with the 2024 US elections. They understand what’s at sconsent. Even from afar they can see why we have been sleeping awwholey at night and being on edge during the day.