O P I N I O N

NOT THAT PROFOUND

By Nate Graziano

Just get me to the airport, put me on a plane.

Hurry, hurry, hurry before I go insane.

I can’t control my fingers, I can’t control my brain.

—The Ramones, “I Wanna Be Sedated” 

Ativan, please.

Seriously. My anxiety has been through the roof in this run-off until Nov. 5. Had I been more savvy, I would’ve squirreled away all of my anxiety medication from the last two years for the next few days before the polls close in America and the ballot counting begins. 

The other day, I received one of those mass emails that sometimes elude my spam folder and slip into my inbox (that sounds dirty). It was from Senator Bernie Sanders—I’m sure the socialist folkhero was up very late composing his missive to me. The subject line contained four succinct words: “This is not normal.” 

I couldn’t agree more, and I also realize that both sides in our country’s partisan wars are experiencing abnormal levels of anxiety right now as most polling seems to indicate a dead heat in the race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Xanax? Sure. 

In the past, however, we could count on the peaceful transition of power after the election. If our candidate lost, we would be disappointed, but we also knew that in another four years we would have another election and another opportunity to put someone in office who represents our respective views. It wasn’t the end of the world, nor was it the end of democracy in the United States.

But this is not normal, as Senator Sanders wrote in his email. 

We already know Trump’s script if he loses, and his campaign and MAGA supporters have already started putting the pieces in place to claim voter fraud, and another “Stop the Steal” movement is already in motion. There is also the fact that many of his supporters are heavily armed, and if Jan. 6, 2021, taught us nothing else, it is that they’re willing to use violence to overthrow the election results, if necessary. 

Even more chilling is the prospect of Trump winning on Tuesday. 

I don’t perceive his threats to use the military against “the enemy from within”—a.k.a anyone who disagrees with him or has the temerity to call out his repugnant comments and conduct—as idle. 

I don’t believe that Trump telling a group of Christian conservatives in July that “in four years, [they] don’t have to vote again” should just be ignored as more verbal diarrhea from The King of Crap.    

I trust his former chief-of-staff General John Kelly when he tells us that Donald Trump fits the definition of a fascist. 

Can you give me a Klonopin? 

Aldous Huxley is famously quoted as saying, “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” Indeed, the rhetoric on both sides has been amplified, and any sense of decency left the political arena long ago. 

But we, liberals and conservatives alike, should never dehumanize each other. We need to keep in mind—regardless of the result on Tuesday, or Wednesday morning, or two weeks from Tuesday when all of the votes are finally counted—that ideological differences don’t make us enemies, at least not in a democracy. 

And let’s hope that eventually things will one day return to “normal” again.

In the meantime, I’ll take a Valium.  

You can find Nate Graziano via email at ngrazio5@yahoo.com.