Ending the Angst

Photo by J. E. Hargate — July 4, 2019 — Anchorage, Alaska — 92 degrees F

I imagine many of us have never quite felt this way before. Alternately mad, sad, afraid, anxious, powerless, untethered, worried sick; in cyclical stages and in waves approaching panic, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced feelings just like these. The first time I can think of was when I was 12.

My family had moved from Toledo, Ohio to Westchester County, New York in the summer of 1963. That’s the TV equivalent of switching channels from “Leave it to Beaver” to “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

We were not of that social stratum at all and my Dad was a minister, so I always thought of us as hired help there, like the gardener, the maid or the butler. People that lived in that part of Westchester often had all three on staff. To say I felt like a fish out of water is an understatement. More like Gomer Pile on Wall Street maybe.

Just the anticipation angst of moving to a new place and new school with no friends at age 11 about to be 12 had given me a stomach ulcer. It turned out the angst was well founded. The new school was a big middle school attached to a massive regional high school with a lot of ethnic diversity and strongly ritualized cliques unforgiving of some geeky rube from the Midwest.

We came from a middle-class suburban community in Toledo with a pretty strong Jewish contingent, and that was all the diversity I had ever experienced. Just turning 12 in a new, unfamiliar school environment that also housed 19 years olds was pretty intimidating. I didn’t exactly thrive at this school, socially or academically.

Not long after the school year began, I had my first less than productive encounter with one of the major school cliques. My locker had been jimmied and my lunch stolen, and I was pretty sure I knew who did it. So I confronted the felon and told him not to do it again. Big mistake. The next day I was jumped by his enforcers; twin brothers, much bigger, older and infinitely more muscular than I.

They knocked me to the floor and kicked me around the hallway a bit. I remember thinking as I covered up my vitals in the fetal position that now I understood what the boots were for. Also, I remember distinctly that they both had recently shaved and smelled great. Funny what you think about when you’re being mugged. I also wondered if they had wives and children. Quite possibly.

So, I was home “sick” the next day watching TV and nursing my psychological wounds when the world just continued to unravel for me in a way I could never have imagined as a preteen. The date was November 22, 1963. I watched in shock as the news broke that our President John F. Kennedy had been shot. Then he died, we had a new President and Kennedy’s assassin was murdered on live TV.

So flash forward to a few days ago. I was stepping into the shower where my best story ideas usually reveal themselves, feeling cataclysmically distraught. It had become strikingly clear to me that the President of the United States had malevolently wired up a popular cable news channel, a talk radio network, the Attorney General of the United States, a Republican Senate, Republican Governors and of all things the United States Postal Service; all in the service of his Machiavellian power grab to steal an election in the midst of a pandemic that he had grotesquely mismanaged.

And it suddenly struck me that I felt exactly the same degree of trepidation and powerlessness I felt that autumn in New York in a new place, in a school that was rejecting me and in a country where the President had been assassinated by who knows whom? What was coming next? The conspiracy theories were swirling around.

So, I started ruminating about other periods in our history when I felt this unhinged. The horrible year 1968 to be sure. The Nixon years and Watergate. The onslaught of climate crisis related natural disasters. Republicans stealing two Electoral College presidencies. And now this. An authoritarian criminal in the White House setting out to steal an election, aided and abetted by a sycophantic zombie cult political party and his hand picked, mind-controlled lemmings running executive branch departments and agencies.

Note: this is the point in a piece like this where I reflexively pivot to the good news. Ready? I’m really struggling to find the silver lining here, folks, because the maniacal fascist in the White House has so perfectly constructed the trap into which we have all been lured. But here is the good news, to the extent I can realistically deliver it.

We survived 1968 and the Nixon years, ended the war in Viet Nam and had our share of progressive Presidents that did good things for the people. We elected the first black person President who served with distinction for eight years. My parents pulled me from the big middle school, had me repeat 7th grade in a different place and I ultimately became a pretty good student. So ugly, painful experiences do end and better times do come.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris give me great hope. We are so starved for leadership in this country; their first public appearance had me in tears. The 2020 Democratic Party Convention is incredibly energizing and repeatedly tear worthy. There’s a lot of integrity, character and energy there, and I am hopeful that this ticket will lead the Blue Tsunami we need in November, despite all the roadblocks, monkey wrenches and illegal dirty tricks being thrown at us.

Just maybe a ton of new voters will surface. Maybe all the mail-in votes will be early and timely. Maybe USPS employees will just go to the wall in incredible ways for the voters. Maybe voters will risk COVID-19 for their country in droves and stand in endless lines to have their voice heard. Maybe responsible Republicans in the Senate will finally have had enough of this charlatan fake President and vocally break rank. Maybe, and that’s what remains so scary for me. That’s a lot of maybes.

Because four more years of this anti-American insanity is unthinkable. Maybe that’s the doomsday scenario that lurks like a demon ready to pounce that has all of us so utterly freaked out: four more years of feckless incompetence, chaos, cruelty, corruption and breathtaking criminality at the highest levels of our government. It would certainly mean the end of our democracy, as we understand it today. And it would be intolerable.

The optimist in me says that won’t happen. Americans are resilient, determined and mobilized. The 65% of the population that gets it won’t let this happen to us. Demographics are on our side. There are just not enough angry white racists to push this megalomaniacal, narcissistic ogre over the top again if the 65% votes en masse and votes as early as possible by mail and in person. We the People do have the Power. We are just really going to have our act together to wield it effectively the very minute early voting begins.

Because nothing is more important than this. We must all vote to end this intolerable angst. We all need to stop feeling this way. Soon.