I know it doesn't magically solve everything, and I know that around 70 million of my countrymen voted for a sociopath, but this will at least make the next four years a little less exhausting, and hopefully a little brighter and better. Now all we have to do is survive the next 11 weeks.
I was starting to feel a little strung out and in need of fresh air from the perpetual CNN-watching here. So I walked down to the bank in between Zooms to get cash for the cleaning guy.
Passing the
newspaper stand, I noticed with relief that the headline had nothing to do with
the election, but instead was about whether the cantons or the communes should
pay for something-or-other. In
Switzerland, power and resources are generally devolved as locally as possible. To wit: around 80% of the taxes I pay go to
the canton or commune, and only 20% go the federal government. If you asked a random Swiss person on the
street who the head of the federal government is, chances are they would have
no idea. I couldn’t tell you who it is right
now either. (ed: It’s Simonetta Sommaruga from Aargau, member of the Conseil Fédéral (and educated
as a classical pianist), who is currently serving her one-year rotation as President
of the Confederation.)
On the way back
from the bank, I picked up a few things at the grocery store. I still had a little time before my next
meeting, so I took the long way home to pass by the Tour de Champel, where I planned on sitting and eating a ham and cheese croissant. The tower itself is fenced off for
renovations, and the lone park bench in the grassy area next to it was occupied
by a woman, speaking animatedly. As I
approached, I could hear that it was an American woman. “I’M SITTING THERE *CRYING,* AND YOU’RE
TELLING ME OFF!” I heard her yell to the man who stood in front of her, indicating
to her left with a straightened arm, as if she were making a left-turn signal while
riding a bicycle.
My first
instinct was to approach her and say don’t worry it will be okay the election
seems to be trending in the right direction, but I quickly discarded this idea
and diverted to the grassy area across the street from our apartment. I sat on a park bench and watched the birds
and ate. I made the tactical error of
removing the croissant from the small paper bag, so I ended up with crumbs all
down the front of my jacket.
You need to
see
it for yourself. Because just
reading the news stories about Trump’s statement at around 7pm ET on Thursday will lend it a degree of coherence and sanity, and it was anything but
coherent and sane. It was the desperate
ramblings of a supreme narcissist who, seeing his world beginning to crumble, would
rather destroy everything than submit to a reality which doesn’t fit his
narrative. We’ve moved beyond electoral politics into grotesque theater.
In around 15 minutes, the President of the United States managed to claim that the country’s election process -- the process on which his authority rests -- is corrupt. That the counting of legally cast votes should be stopped (except in Arizona, where there’s still a chance that he could chip away at Biden’s current lead). That the polls predicting a big Biden win constituted voter suppression (evidently this was no problem in 2016). That votes for his opponent are illegal. That this was all perpetrated by “big media, big money, and big tech.” That bursting pipes and nonexistent “secret counting rooms” have been engineered by a corrupt Democrat machine to steal the election. This is gaslighting taken to its more extreme and most dangerous.
Meanwhile, one by one, Trump’s enablers turn their backs on him. Fox News, whose coverage of this election has been commendably fair and critical, stuck by their decision to call Arizona for Biden, despite Jared Kushner’s frantic phone calls to Rupert Murdoch. Twitter, long the vehicle for Trump’s most specious and inflammatory rhetoric, began flagging his posts as false and misleading. GOP leadership, realizing that Trump has outlived his usefulness now that certain congressional districts have been retained, refuses to parrot his conspiracy theories. His inner circle has dwindled to a smattering of sycophants and immediate family members.
It almost makes you feel sorry for the guy. Almost.
This election could still go either way. As I write this, Trump leads in Georgia by less than 500 votes. Biden’s lead in Nevada is less than 9,000. I honestly have no idea what will happen over the next two months. Yet I am given some confidence and hope by the people, Republicans and Democrats, who are actually administering the election process. Public servants in department store clothing who are discharging their duty, capably and seriously. People like Joe Gloria in Nevada, Gabriel Sterling in Georgia, Jocelyn Benson in Michigan, Kathy Boockvar in Pennsylvania. These are the people who give me some hope that my home country might be able to pull through this in one piece. May God keep them safe.
(all times CET)
6:00am: I slept longer than I thought I would. An early glance at my phone: Trump carried Florida and Ohio easily, and a scroll down the list of the battleground states reads Trump Trump Trump, some by sizeable margins.
6:30am: Robert
Reich tweets to stay calm and “drink water.”
6:45am: Doing
rough math on my phone calculator as CNN goes county-by-county through PA. It looks to me like Biden can close the gap
there.
7:00am: Trump
misspells “polls” as “Poles” in a tweet.
7:15am:
Rick Santorum
is on CNN already talking about signatures on mail-in ballots in PA. I think we can see where this is headed.
7:30am: The
doorbell rings and it’s the pest control guy who comes to our building every
few months to pour pesticide from an enormous jug down the kitchen drain. L and I call him “Monsieur Cafard” (“Mister
Cockroach”), which we find very funny for some reason. He is polite and friendly, and before he leaves he tells
me not to use the kitchen sink for the next 2 hours.
7:48am: Trump
still up by 700K votes in PA, with 69% of the vote counted.
7:57am: So
far this is all the horror of 2016 with all the slow-drip torture of 2000.
8:14am:
Trump’s lead in GA is down to around 100K votes as he steps to the podium in a
room packed with people who are not wearing masks. Standing before a phalanx of American flags, Trump
riffs about all the states that he has won and the victory party he was planning, then pivots to the “sad group of
people” who are evidently "stealing the election." “This is a major fraud on our nation.
We want all voting to stop. We
will be going to the Supreme Court.”
Mike Pence concludes, kind of sheepishly, “We will make America great again again.”
8:39am: CNN
reacts with predictable moral outrage at Trump’s statement.
9:00am: I
get back in bed for a while. My (German)
wife asks me how it’s possible to declare a winner when the votes haven’t been
counted.
9:30am: It’s
okay to use the kitchen sink now.
10:30am: I
have a Zoom call with our General Manager in Italy. We talk about business and COVID19. He doesn’t bring up the election, and I don’t
either, and it's reassuring to know that there are people in the world with
other things on their minds.
11:00am:
Biden now leads Wisconsin by around 10,000 votes.
11:23am: My
employer’s stock price is up 3.6%.
12:30pm:
Online service for the Church of Scotland Geneva, for which I play Zoom
technical director. Today’s scripture
lesson is from Matthew 18, the parable of the unmerciful servant. The king forgives a big debt from one of his
servants, who then turns around and roughs up a few of his fellow
servants who owe him money. The king catches
wind of this and has the servant hauled off to prison to be tortured until he pays up. The metaphor
being that God is the king and we are the servant, and we should “pay forward” God’s
mercy and forgiveness to others, even (especially) those who are indebted to
us. Or else.
1:36pm: Trump’s
lead in Michigan has closed to fewer than 30,000 votes. There remain around 200,000 uncounted votes
in in Wayne County, where Biden currently leads by 36 points.
2:15pm: I
do work Zooms as primary blue and red polygons flash on CNN on the other
laptop.
2:22pm: The
gap is PA is down to ~600K votes, which might be a smaller than it was, but I’m
having trouble keeping track at this point.
My employer’s stock price is up 4.6%
2:41pm: My
home state of New Jersey has voted for legalizing recreational marijuana use.
3:12pm: Biden
now leads in Michigan by ~8,000 votes.
Tweet of the day so far: “No matter what happens today, the United
States of America is the country that made Donald Trump its President, and it
always will be.” (@Vinncent)
3:44pm: I have
a spring in my step as I go to my doctor to get the flu vaccine.
4:46pm: I
put a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, in the hopes of opening it
tonight around 11pm during my Zoom call with my college friends, thereby
guaranteeing a Biden loss.
4:51pm: On
CNN, PA is being characterized as being “very much in play.” Trump’s lead in PA is now ~540K votes. My employer’s stock price is up 6.27%.
5:16pm:
Biden leads in Wisconsin by around 21,000 votes, and in Michigan by 32,000.
6:12pm: My
employer’s stock finishes trading up 6.21% for the day.
6:37pm: The
Election Commissioner for Wisconsin, a woman named Meagan who looks around 28,
with straight blond shoulder-length hair and a northern midwestern twang, is on
CNN explaining how they officially tally votes. Election officials from several states have
been doing this over the past hours, and I find it inspiring and comforting.
8:00- 10:00pm:
We spend a couple of hours sitting on the couch watching CNN on my laptop. Watching American TV is a novel activity for
me, and generally I think the cable news stations on both sides of the spectrum
are toxic and harmful on many levels, but I can’t resist watching today. After following John King for several hours, I’m
pretty confident that I could operate the interface on the “Road to 270” screen. CNN announces that Biden will speak “soon,”
and I spend the next hour or so mentally drafting the speech I want him to give:
celebrate the voting process, calmly call for remaining votes to be counted, project
confidence in the outcome but do not claim victory. At around 10, Biden walks onto a stage in Delaware
and gives more or less that speech, and I am buoyed by the probably illusive
feeling that civility may still be possible in my home country.
11:02pm: I Zoom
with several of my friends from college who are in DC, Boston, California, NYC,
Zurich, Tokyo. I leave the champagne in
the fridge and crack open a beer instead.
Seeking
peace-of-mind on a day like today is like trying to meditate with a car alarm
going off in your living room. And knowing
that the car may explode at any moment.
The words
of Richard Rohr, OFM,
are always good, but especially today:
“We project
our anxiety elsewhere and misdiagnose the real problem (the real evil), forever
exchanging it for smaller and seemingly more manageable problems. The over-defended ego always sees, hates, and
attacks in other people its own faults – the parts of ourselves we struggle to
acknowledge. Most of us do not see
things as they are; we see things as we are.”
Over the
weekend, groups of Trump supporters stopped traffic on several bridges and
roadways in the NYC area – the Whitestone, the
GSP – parking their pickup trucks and SUVs across all lanes of traffic and
waving flags and whooping while the traffic stacked up behind them. I wonder what motivates a person to do that. I plumb the depths of my empathy stores, and I cannot see
a shred of equivalence between these people and a BLM protestor, much less your
run-of-the-mill Biden/Harris canvasser. This
is no more than trolling in real life: annoying and inconveniencing people for
the sake of, what exactly? To convince someone
to vote for Trump? I suppose one could
stretch the rationale to its thinnest and argue that this could show the
“silent” Trump supporter that they’re not alone. But let's be honest: this gesture is not about making a case
for a candidate, it’s about people giving the finger to anyone who doesn’t want what they want. It also sends a not-so-subtle
message to anyone who might be looking: we are prepared to break the law, to
put people in danger, to create problems for you and anyone else who might be
behind us, in order to show our loyalty to the Great Leader.
Seeking
succor, I consulted the Economist election poll aggregator, which
currently gives Biden a 19-in-20 chance of winning. Of course we’ve been here before, with Nate
Silver in 2016, etc. My college friends
and I are planning on Zooming Wednesday night, and I have made mental plans to
chill a bottle of champagne to open during the call if (and only if) it’s
called for Biden beforehand. I try not
to think about this too much.
In any
case, you could argue that we’ve survived the past four years, so, if the
unthinkable were to occur, we can survive another four, right? Unless of course you’re one of the 231,182
people who didn’t.
I don’t hear so much about NaNoWriMo these days, if that’s even what it’s still called. National November Writing Month. I’m not sure if that’s because its popularity has waned, or if that’s a function of the social media circles I travel in (or not) these days. In any case it came to mind a couple of weeks ago, and I toyed with the idea of trying to write something every day in November. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Last year I took a stab at this, and inspired by Flannery O'Connor, tried writing a prayer every day. I didn't get very far before concluding that I was not a good writer of prayers, but I reread them recently and a few were actually okay. Hope.
I set the alarm for 7:45 this morning, fed the cats, and drove to Gy (pronounced “zhee,” with a soft “g”), which sits at the edge of the Geneva canton on this side of the lake, around 10km ENE as the crow flies. For some reason, I’ve done most of my running to the SSW of here, so this was relatively new territory. I was unsure of how far out to go, as I needed to be back in time for online church at 11. Originally, I was planning on parking in Meinier, a couple of villages closer to town. But then I drove through Meinier and kept going to Gy, pulled by a similar desire that I suppose captures mountain climbers. One wants to keep going.
I parked on the main street in one of those 15h disc parking spaces, close to a bus stop, which I would need later to go pick up the car. I quickly oriented myself with my phone, then traversed the traffic circle and took the first left onto a chemin that was about wide enough for a tractor. I was considering tracking the route on Map My Run, but I quickly decided against it once I heard the synthetic voice start talking to me. I had my GPS watch for the distance, and anyway the whole point of runs like this is to not know exactly where you are and where you’re going.
Sometimes, there’s a significant delta between what one thinks the terrain will look like from the map and what it’s actually like when you’re trying to navigate it. What looks on the computer like a nice path along the river can turn out to be a parking lot next to the wastewater treatment center. Happily, today was not one of those times, as a mile or so after departing Gy, I managed to pick up the Seymaz River, which trickles from the border with France all the way down to the Arve, and which I was hoping to follow back home. Evidently there was some big restoration project around 10 years ago, and the trails along the entire way are well-tended. Near Corsinge they have laid down a narrow boardwalk to span a marshy area.
Around halfway home I encountered the Prison de Champ-Dollon, which sits right along the path near Puplinge. The contrast between the gentle stream and fall colors on the one hand, and concrete, barbed wire, and grated windows on the other, made my heart ache. The walls of the prison have reliefed arches, which reminded me of the Reformers’ Wall in town, except these walls have prisoners behind them.
