At The Edge Of The Abyss

When bored, I will sometimes flip through videos on Instagram and the other social media sites, and since the algorithms will feed you more of what you have already liked, I tend to get a lot of videos of roller coasters, bunjee jumpers, skydivers, BASE jumpers, and so on.

That’s the feeling tonight. Or, as the meme my daughter shared said, “Srong night-before-Helm’s-Deep vibes today.”

Fledgeling birds learn to fly by leaping and having faith that they’ll figure out the flying thing before they get killed. I’m optomistic by nature. I want to believe that we’re not staring into THE abyss, just maybe AN abyss. Maybe this time we’ll learn to fly before we crash and burn and die.

But I remember 2016. I remember after the “grab ’em by the pussy” tape and the mocking the handicapped video and the porn star payoff and all of the THOUSANDS of other offensive, disgusting, ignorant things that TFG did, any one of which would have permaently eliminated him from the possibility of public office, and then after he left office in 2020 the top secret documents and all of the illegal activities he’s been caught doing and the coup on January 6th, my god, THE COUP! And yet he’s still here and there are ways for him to win and I never, EVER thought that he could win to begin with and now I swear I’ve got PTSD from being exposed to him for all of these years.

And just about when I’m about to have another panic attack thinking about another 4 years of him, or more likely 4 weeks of him and then who know how many years with Vance and all of the Nazis behind Project 2025 and the horrors that are lurking, I think about how incredibly ANGRY women seem to be now. And kids, the generation that are voting for President for the first time, who grew up with active shooter drills every month the same way we used to have tornado drills in Kansas City.

Back on August 18th, when the Democratic campaign was energized and reinvigorated by Harris’s entry, I went on http://www.270towin.com and created my “aggressive & hopeful” map.

If I’m in my good head, if I’m not listening to the demons of my TFG PTSD, the only thing I would change tonight is that I think Iowa will turn blue. I think it will be something like 456-82 to Harris. But I’m mentally prepared (I hope) to be more disappointed than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

Get out there and vote tomorrow if you haven’t voted early. In so many ways, this truly could be the end of the world as we know it.

I’m really not feeling so fine.