We're in the home stretch now. Eight days until the election.
It's been a wild ride. Just in the last week, we've seen the following:
- A Senator accusing the FBI Director of withholding evidence that the Republican candidate is a tool of the Russians, and accusing the FBI Director of violating the Hatch Act
- The FBI Director going against Justice Department and FBI policy to notify Congress that there are new emails of interest relating to Hillary Clinton--emails he had not seen and did not yet have a warrant for
- The acquittal of armed white men who occupied a federal facility, in spite of clear evidence of guilt
- The use of armed force to disperse Native Americans protesting on their treaty lands
- Renewed calls from Donald Trump to imprison Hillary Clinton
- Reports that FBI agents in four offices have been digging to find dirt on the Clinton Foundation in a way calculated not to require Justice Department approval
And that's just a small slice.
Meanwhile, the polls appear to be narrowing, as is usual in the final days of a Presidential campaign. There's a good possibility that FBI Director James Comey may have tipped the balance with his ill-timed and likely illegal letter to Congress.
And there lies what's currently troubling me. When you take all of this together, it looks very much like the security establishment is actively working to favor one side--which has come to include the white-supremacist far right--over the other.
The word usually used to describe this situation is "coup."
Meanwhile, Trump doubles down on the lying, because why not? He says Hillary will let 650 million people into the country in a week (in a country that only has about 319 million to begin with), and people cheer.
This is troubling. It's becoming crystal-clear that facts no longer matter to a significant portion of the population--perhaps even to a majority. What matters to them is feeling good, hearing what they want to hear, believing what they want to believe, and dismissing anything that doesn't fit into their worldview, a worldview that's been formed by twenty years of lies on right-wing talk radio and a news network that makes no bones about being partisan.
And thanks to the spinelessness and moral flexibility of the leaders of the religious right, whose Christian witness has been eclipsed by their lust for power in this world, at least 70% of evangelical Christians intend to vote for a man who cheated on his first wife with his second wife, cheated on his second wife with his third wife, faces a trial date in November on racketeering charges, and faces one in December on charges of child rape. A thin-skinned egomaniac who threatens lawsuits at the drop of a hat. This is the man to whom they want to give the nuclear launch codes.
So much for their Christian morality.
If, as now seems possible, the people of this country elect Donald Trump as President next week, it will put paid to the myth of American exceptionalism, the lie that "it can't happen here."
And Americans will also find out, the hard way, what happens when you elect someone to office who does not respect the Constitution, who is quite possibly beholden to a foreign power, who appears to have no moral scruples whatsoever, and who is backed by the men with guns.
God help us all.