Members-Only Article
You’re probably tense. I am too. We’ve noted in our reporting the cloud of tension that appears to be resting over the whole country as we move to within 48 hours of election day. Some of this is natural. A national election is high stakes. In 2020 the stakes feel and are uncommonly high. That puts everyone on edge.
But these sources of anxiety and tension don’t really make for more than a small portion of what people are feeling. The cloud of tension and menace hanging over the country stems from the specific fact that the President and his party are making an all out press to limit voting, slow vote counting and now toss out literally hundreds of thousands of bonafide, legally cast votes. On top of this, related to this, the President has quite intentionally left open the possibility that he won’t accept defeat but will try to stay in office – likely with the connivance of the corrupt Supreme Court, but perhaps in some unknown way only he knows.
We could end up with any number of nightmare scenarios. But what it is critical to understand is that even if few votes are thrown out and even if the President doesn’t act on any of his coup threats that the entire exercise has amounted to a vast campaign of psychological warfare against the American people – one that has already deprived us of a free and fair election.
So again, elections are tense. There’s a lot on the line. That’s normal. That’s the pageant of democracy. This is different. The President has used the powers given to him to act on behalf of the American people to plot against them, to load onto the normal structure of an election a campaign of psychological warfare meant to put his opposition off-balance and at a disadvantage because we don’t know if the votes will be counted and results respected.
Do a thought experiment.
Imagine your experience of this election cycle if there weren’t a full court Republican press around the country to throw out lawful ballots and if the President made clear – as all 44 presidents before him always repeatedly did – that of course he would respect the result of the election.
You’d still probably feel on edge, yes, because the stakes are high. But I’d imagine your experience of the whole process would be dramatically different. Knowing that the votes would be counted – in the admittedly imperfect way they always have been – and knowing the result of the election – whatever it is – would count and be final you’d likely be focusing on giving money, knocking on doors, voting. You’d be doing all the stuff politically committed citizens do in an election.
But the President has layered a whole additional layer of work and tension on top of that with this campaign of psychological warfare. Will the votes be tossed out? Will the postal service be allowed to deliver them? Will the result be respected? Will Trump have to leave if he loses? How much activism and mental energy have you expended over the last six months on contesting an election and how much have you expanded on grappling with the President’s war on the election? The stress and cognitive load between the current situation and the alternative reality I sketched out is the price imposed by Trump’s campaign of psychological warfare against the American people, the republic and the state.
It is a grievous crime against the people even if he follows through with none of his threats. It’s mind-games, psychological warfare, a crime against every last one of us.