I’d say that I’ve had a bit of writer’s block recently, but it’s a bit more complicated. I hate writing indoors and it’s been raining here every day for a week. I like having a nice block of time to think, and this is my son’s busiest time of the year with 3-to-4 soccer matches a week and many more practices between his club and his high school team. But, most of all, I feel like I’ve arrived at that moment when you look up and realize that a fast train is bearing down on you and it’s too late to do anything about it. You’re stuck on the rails and no decision or reflex can save you. Â Your only chance of survival is that someone else flips the railway switch so the train jumps to another track.
For this first time since I started this blog, 19 years ago, it feels like I am at the complete mercy of others. Either they’ll save the country by electing Harris and Walz or they won’t, and there isn’t anything I can write that will alter our fate. There are a number of factors that explain this feeling of helplessness, but they all combine to describe the irreparable peril we’re in. If Donald Trump wins, there is no force remaining, not the law and courts, not the media, not the Constitution, not Congress, and certainly not Trump’s own party that can or will restrain him and hold him accountable.
This is completely different from the peril of a second term of George W. Bush, which the country barely survived and never fully recovered from. It’s different than the prospect of Mitt Romney winning and wiping away President Barack Obama’s accomplishments, which we partially saw later on with the election of Trump. It’s even different from what would have happened if Trump had been reelected in 2020, because he’s now much more clearly trying to avoid prison, more hellbent on revenge, and the Supreme Court has put the office of the presidency almost completely above the law.
He will unleash a kind of hell on the country and the world unlike anything we’ve seen since the Civil War, and more serious because of the international consequences. All our guardrails and institutions will break, and there won’t be any legal or normal nonviolent pathway back to normalcy. Our system depends too much of bipartisan consensus to survive when one party opts for dictatorship and gains the power to pursue vengeance.
I confess that this feeling isn’t rational. I never really had that much influence anyway. None of us can move the river or control the winds. And I probably still can have more influence by writing and podcasting than by simply taking a walk-sheet and knocking on doors. A better description might be the deer in the headlights that still might technically have time to evade an approaching car but freezes out of panic.
Rest easy that I am not completely panicked. I’m actually modestly optimistic, bolstered somewhat by polls that are more encouraging than not. It’s the profound sense of loss of agency in the face of stakes of unimaginable scale and permanence that has me rattled. What should I write about? What can compare to the main thing?
But I’ll soldier on as I always have, because we need all hands on deck right now. We need people using every tool and skill they have available to them, including taking those walk-sheets and talking to their neighbors. We still need bloggers and podcasters to work the media and the refs, and to educate people about Trump’s intentions.
I’m just saying, it’s never been so hard to just sit down and write.
