I am fascinated by history. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy charts, because charts depict change over time. It’s also why I enjoy maps, since those embody the relationship of land and mankind, thus I have a number of extraordinary, rare maps in my home office. History is also why I enjoy politics, because politics is one of the core building blocks of history.
With that in mind, let us start by remembering something big that happened in the political world twenty years ago.
Perhaps you remember the event. Kindly consider what happened. The U.S. was moving into the serious part of the 2004 election year, and a newcomer named Howard Dean had burst upon the scene with charisma and excitement. He seemed to be heading toward perhaps a Bill Clinton-level of political success when the unthinkable happened: he dared to let out a shout of enthusiasm.
This one harmless and innocent action, the “Dean Scream“, killed his campaign virtually instantly. His sin? He was excited about an important victory in Iowa, and he was celebrating with his supporters and, quite understandably, he let out a noise of excitement. And that’s all it took.
It seems almost unimaginable to think of how much things have changed since then.
Presently, every single day we are confronted by news which is so unhinged that we are completely numb to it. As I sit here now, everyone on the news is chattering about how Trump performed fellatio on a microphone. And that has overtaken the news that the sitting President has called half the country “garbage.” And that has overtaken the news that Trump was speaking fondly of what a huge cock the late Arnold Palmer had. The entire new cycle has shrunk to 27 minutes. I’m quite certain that the giving-a-microphone-a-blow-job is ancient news compared to whatever other outrage has happened that I haven’t even read about yet.
At this point, Trump could stand on the stage of one of his rallies, strip bare naked, smear his nipples with bright red lipstick, put on a giant crown with real jewels, and shout at the top of his lungs, “I am the pretty princess of popsicles!” and he would lose two voters, tops. OK, maybe one, and that’s just the lady who already considers herself the princess of popsicles and feels her role is being threatened.
We as a nation have collectively become the frog in the pot of water whose heat has been inched higher so slowly that we don’t realize we are being boiled alive.
I’ve been around a while, and I’ve watched every campaign since 1980 quite closely, but the entire country, red and blue alike, has now gone batshit insane. It’s reached the point where I almost don’t even care what the result is, because no matter what happens, ONE half of the country is going to despise the OTHER half, and that’s one of the saddest realities of this entire situation. There will be no winners on the morning of November 6th. If you think you’ve won, enjoy it, because you haven’t.
I’ve written many times in the past about my own political leanings, and I personally have no political party anymore. The G.O.P. of the early 1980s personified quite closely my own value set, and obviously there’s simply no such organization of the sort in existence. It’s dead and buried in a sea of red hats.
The left? Screeching harpies, mentally ill gender-obsessed weirdos, virtue signalers, and lazy bums who don’t want to work but want a handout. Not for me.
The right? A bunch of gun-crazed, faux-Christian isolationist charlatans who have embraced a savior whom they naively think will save them would instead sell every single one of them for five bucks for medical experiments if given the chance.
If Jesus could see what this mob was doing in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.
God, people are stupid.
Listen, no one is from either side is going to keep their promises. Do I support Elon’s pledge to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget? ABSOLUTELY! I mean, it would wreck the economy, but that’s right up my alley anyway. Remove the government ENTIRELY, as far as I’m concerned! The prospect of the bloated swine known as the federal government being gutted by $2 trillion would be absolutely electrifying, and I’d gladly put a statue of Elon in my front yard in celebration if he managed to do so.
I’m not checking Yelp out for any sculptors just yet.
Will it happen? Hey, who am I to judge, right? But kindly take a glance at a website whose sole purpose is to keep track of the promises that the man has made over the years and how much time has gone by since those promises have been unfulfilled. And a promise like “we’ll have a recharging cable that plugs itself in” is one whole hell of a lot easier to keep than “we’ll slash $2,000,000,000,000 from the budget of a union-protected, lumbering, court-protected monstrosity.” I mean, hey, I thought Obama would be a one-termer, and I was wrong, and I’ll be delighted to be wrong here too!
But, fine, I’ll make a prediction. He’s not going to cut dick, unless he decides to become a mohel. If anything, the government spending will increase even more, the debt will soar even faster, and it’ll all bring out the financial destruction of the United States all the quicker. Count on it.
As I type these words on the Sunday preceding the election, which is looming before us merely hours away at this point, I confess to being filled with anxiety. And I’m not really talking about this flavor of anxiety. It’s just not my style.
Instead, I’m referring to the fact that I’ve started having nuclear war dreams, and that’s a surefire sign that I’m very uneasy about something coming up. I’m a child of the Cold War, after all, so that’s how I’m wired. This anxiety stems from the fact that the result of this election, whether it takes hours, days, or weeks, will get here sooner or later, and that result is going to have tremendous consequences for the U.S. as well as the world.
I’ve stated before how, personally, I don’t think my life shifts really one way or the other no matter who wins. I don’t depend on the government for anything. They don’t send me welfare checks. I don’t sell products to them. I’ve never even known anyone who works for the government in any capacity. I’m a U.S. citizen. Thus, no matter what Trump has threatened, me being a white, Christian (an actual one), male, cisgender, married man with a home and children who pays his taxes, I’d say I’m pretty damned safe. I don’t represent a target.
My ONLY relationship to the government is that I send them an ungodly amount of cash in taxes, which they waste on the worst people and projects imaginable. The entire tax system is simply based on productive, intelligent, industrious people being threatened with prison if we don’t hand over half our income to the laziest, most inept, and most worthless individuals in the country. God Bless America.
In spite of not being a member of a targeted group, I’m still quite concerned about what’s next.
At some point, they are going to declare a winner, and I’d like to offer some easy guesses about what comes next.
Let’s start with what seems to be the very unlikely outcome of Harris winning. In no particular order, and off the top of my head, I suspect the following would follow:
- An instant and meaningful plunge in the stock market. Oddly, I feel not that confident about my prediction here, because the obvious answer – – a collapsing equity market – – isn’t necessarily a sure thing. Yet it would seem logical to assume that Harris would be seen as less positive for stocks. But, hey, I think Obama would be a disaster for the market and look how THAT turned out. My point here is that her victory strikes me as unlikely, and in turn her victory would be a negative shock to the financial markets.
- I should make ten bullet points for this one, but – – endless accusations from the other side about how the election was stolen. It’ll be 2020 times twenty. Lawsuits. Press conferences. More lawsuits. Accusations. Violence. More lawsuits. Political machinations. Basically, the entire party apparatus is going to absolutely freak out, and turning off the television for two months would be wise.
- A strong likelihood of something like January 6, but on a national scale.
- Once all the dust settled, very broadly speaking, it would be the second Biden term. More of the same. Dull. Boring. More government. More screeching about this-or-that disenfranchised group. More taxes. Government would just keep growing like a cancer.
- The freak show will continue. The transgenders. The non-binaries. The ridiculous casts they put together for advertisements, movies, and television shows. A tiny, tiny, tiny fringe element of the marginally insane will have an outsized presence in our culture.
- Finally, I believe Harris’ life would be in exceptional danger for her entire term. President Walz, anyone?
On the other hand, given what seems to be virtually a forgone conclusion based on all the predictive markets right now – – a huge Trump victory – – I’d anticipate something along these lines:
- Revenge, revenge, revenge. The man is wired for vengeance, and he’s going to follow through. He’s got a long list of enemies, and he’s going to do everything in his power to get back at them. This isn’t some zany speculation on my part. He’s said so again, and again, and again.
- The collapse of the Democratic party. It’s clear they screwed up nine ways to Sunday. They had a geezer in office. He stayed on way too long. They took an extraordinarily unpopular candidate and shoved her onto the ticket. And the groups they catered to most fervently – – mentally unhinged fringe groups obsessed with sexuality – – don’t represent a meaningful voting bloc.
- A massive attempt to shove out the “illegals” which will fail. Deport eleven million? Fifteen million? Twenty million? Those are some of the projections. In the end, I’d say probably a few thousand, tops. And that’s after a ton of court cases. That creepy, bald xenophobe Steven Miller is going to wind up very disappointed.
- The final spasm of wealth inequality. The Jared Kushners of the world will grab the little crumbs that they missed last time. Being rich will be better than ever (err, may I ask, what does Bezos even talk to that bimbo he hangs out with anymore?) Being poor will suck ass more than ever. And it’ll all lay the groundwork for something really, really ugly in the near future, because the past ten thousand years of human history shows how this sort of thing ends. There’s a reason Mark Zuckerberg has built an impenetrable bunker in Hawaii, everybody.
- Before the end of 2028, we’re going to find ourselves changing from having the oldest President in history to the youngest President in history. Oh, and the first bearded President since 1893. So that’ll be fun, right?
I learned far too late that my readers don’t think like I do, so I tend to keep my fat mouth shut. Indeed, about 95% of my most strident views I’ve never even mentioned here, since, well, I’d like to retain my audience, thank you very much. So you’re getting Tim Lite with the musings above.
All the same, I have a sense of deep, dark foreboding about the week ahead, and I feel from the bottom of my heart that the Fourth Wave that I’ve been writing about for years is about to spill over all of us. It’s going to be awful. Just awful. You are going to be deeply disappointed, sooner or later, I assure you.
No matter what happens on Tuesday night, and no matter how victorious you feel, I promise you, that feeling will be fleeting. The conquering exultation will be ephemeral.
And as the nation erodes away in 2025, irrespective of the winner, we will collectively, red and blue alike, yearn desperately for when times were better, and Americans had the tremendous blessing of a common enemy outside our nation and a common father figure within it.
I used to love this place. I really did. I only hope something worth loving will come back after we’ve all tried to strangle each other to death. With all my heart, I hope the day comes that America returns, and that we as Americans can find enough common ground to unite us once more so we can all be expunged of the collective insanity which has captured us in the present day.
I want the best for you and me both. Just know going into it that this is going to be a really rough ride ahead, no matter what happens on Tuesday night.
