Indefinite Shore

Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln had a recurring dream.  He was in a boat in the night, out in the water.  He was moving forward towards “…a dark indefinite shore”.  He didn’t know what was on the shore, and he always awoke before the boat arrived.  But, as Lincoln told his Cabinet on April 14^th 1865, that dream always foretold some great event, perhaps a great battle.  And since on that day a week after Appomattox, there was only one major Confederate Army left in the field, Lincoln thought that it must means their final surrender.

It would be two weeks before Confederate General Johnson surrendered to Sherman in North Carolina.  But, of course, there was an even more important major event in the meantime.  After the Cabinet meeting that night, April 14^th, Lincoln was shot and killed in Ford’s Theatre.

Slow Motion

COVID has changed our world.  Instead of the Election Night celebration or nightmare that we knew from the past four elections, we watched a slow motion count.  More like the “dimpled chad” election of 2000, or the slow “Blue Wave” of 2018, the path to Biden’s potential victory is incredibly drawn out.  We went to bed on Tuesday (for those who could) convinced that Americans turned back to Trump once again.  But Wednesday, it was Arizona that oddly gave us emotional hope.  And then we began to see the pattern of our new world of early and mail-in voting.  What used to be voting day became voting month, and what used to be a one-night count, Election Night, has stretched into ninety-six hours.  

This morning Biden edged into the lead in Georgia.  As I literally write this paragraph, the load of votes in Philadelphia were just added to the totals.  The results show Biden in the lead for Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral Votes.  There is only one conclusion.  In spite of Trumpian anguish, the gnashing of teeth, tearing of cloth and inevitable Court battles, Joe Biden will be the 46^th President of the United States.

At least he better be.  Trumpians have warned of us a “civil war” when Trump was re-elected, of “Antifa” inspired mobs attacking the cities.  It was convincing enough that prudent merchants in urban areas began to board up their windows.  So now what?

Pick-‘Em-Up Truck War

Should we expect a reverse war now?  Will gun toting, flag flying pick-‘em-up trucks mass on the interstate highways, shutting down commerce to support their President?  Here in Pataskala, should we start boarding up our windows to keep “Trump” rioters from tearing up the suburbs?

They’ve been “conditioned” (brainwashed) to believe that all the “mail-in” ballots are “fake votes”.  Trump himself led the charge for months, and now right-wing media is screaming it on the broadest bandwidth.  Their analogy:  “I watched the game end, saw the score, and knew we won.  Now they are changing the score, cheating to win!”.  The car that drove by our “Biden sign” house last night knew it well – they screamed “Cheaters!!” into the darkness.  But of course that analogy doesn’t work – we all watched the game, and NO ONE knew the score.  We are more like those poor smiling figure skaters, sitting with flowers and stuffed animals, waiting for the judges to reach their calculations. We have waited this long ninety-six hours to find out the actual results.

But figure skating “ain’t” popular “out here”.  And I’m sure there will be more protests, more “Trump Trucker Rallies”, more “long rifles” appearing on the streets. And probably more than just “cheaters” yelled from speeding cars on our road.  Here in ex-urban Ohio, it will grow tense.

Hugh Scott

In 1974 the Supreme Court in the United States v Nixon, ordered the President to release “the tapes”.  Nixon recorded most conversations in the White House.  He hated reporters, and wanted to have direct evidence of what was said and done when it came time to write the “history” of the Nixon years.  

He “bugged” himself.  All the conversations and plans of covering up the Watergate break-in were on long reels of audiotape.  When the world found out about the tapes, the Watergate Special Prosecutor moved to seize them.  Nixon refused, claiming “executive privilege”.  

When the Supreme Court issued their decision, some of Nixon’s staff argued that they should just destroy the tapes, perhaps in a bonfire on the White House lawn.  But the Republican leaders of Congress, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, House Minority Leader John Rhodes and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, went to the White House.  They told Nixon that he no longer had the support of the Republicans in Congress, that impeachment and conviction were now inevitable.

Nixon resigned two days later.

Out of Darkness

America is headed towards a “dark, indefinite shore”.  We cannot expect Donald Trump to concede, to gracefully leave the stage.  It’s not in his nature, and it’s also not in his own personal interest.  His financial future is tied to the “Trumpian cult” he has created.  Based on his own “victimhood”, Trump must play out the role of the aggrieved leader, illegitimately removed from office.  It’s going to drive subscriptions for “Trump TV”, coming soon to a cable network near you.  They’ll place it between CNN and MSNBC on your schedule.

We can fight this out.  I do not expect a “civil war”, and I don’t expect marauding bands of pick-‘em-up trucks to tear through my neighborhood.  But our nation will remain so severely divided that we will have to wait a whole generation to recover.

Or, like Scott, Rhodes and Goldwater, the leaders of the Republican Party, absent for so long, can finally stand-up.  They can take the walk to the White House, and support the  Constitution and the American model of government.  While not every Trump acolyte will follow, enough will to avoid the inevitable alternative.

They can steer our boat from the “dark indefinite shore”.  It’s their last best chance for legitimacy.  And it’s our best chance to move forward as a nation.