I'm an American in Australia, and I've been looking across the Pacific for more than 17 years with a mix of emotions, but never feeling anything like roiling in my gut now.
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To put this in perspective, I badly cut my finger a few months ago and like a fool, smacked a plain bit of gauze over it. To have it properly dressed, I had to tear off that dried clot. That's where I am now emotionally, soaking the wound in a bowl of warm water, but knowing the only way to heal was through the pain of ripping off that gauze, bleeding and howling.
The US elections have finally arrived and the next few days and weeks look like a whole lot of pain. I don't know how the other side feels, but for me, it's like the soul of my nation, and the world, is at stake.
My vote was cast weeks ago. To do extra my bit, I keep watch. I'm following every experienced political hack and election analysis. I'm learning from historical precedent, following the campaigns and polls. No time in my life have I ever been so informed about the US political landscape, but I feel like I haven't done near enough to help my country change course from division and hatred toward hope.
This thing I'm experiencing, it's a kind of survivor's guilt. I look homeward from Australia, which has done exceptionally well confronting and containing COVID-19. It's a nation prioritising an ever-improving quality of care, education and employment for its population, a nation that feels unafraid to challenge its leaders, speak out against injustice and place its shortcomings under the microscope. Not perfect, but overall, a very lucky country.
So, from my comfortable spot far away from the daily fear and trepidation of my family and friends, I watch the experiment of democracy dissolving in the United States, where those founding roots are much more shallow than I might have realised. Than anybody might have realised.
Former US President Barack Obama recently said a critical issue facing America today is not just disagreement on how to tackle a problem with colleagues across the aisle, but how both sides now cannot even agree on the existence of the problem. This means there can be no bipartisan compromise or solution, which leads to only deeper divisions and distrust. It didn't happen overnight, but the current administration has been fanning these latent, divisive embers from the first month in office.
The Republican party, or the party of Trump, has staked its platform on repetition of any position taken by one individual - Donald Trump. There is no plan for the nation, only a plan to re-install the incumbent, again and again.
And now the election, with results already foretold by the sitting president, and damn any other predictions, because if it turns against him he has stated the results will be fraudulent. In effect, there is no Constitution. There is no, 'We the People, in order to form a more perfect union...". It is only about Trump's need to win.
As I write this, Trump supporters are filing preliminary challenges to the vote count, county by county, across the country. They are barricading roads into cities, enlisting teams of leagues of poll watchers, and threatening Democratic vehicles, endorsed by President Trump on Sunday as "patriots" who have done nothing wrong. Washington DC is about to wall off the White House, and buildings across my nation's capital are boarding up windows in preparation for what might occur as the election results return.
Because, there will be election-related violence. It's already happening and was anticipated. The bipartisan Transition Integrity Project mapped out the possibilities in a 2020 report, war-gaming just what might happen if Trump refuses to accept the outcome should he lose. The man wants to be king.
Without an utter landslide for Joe Biden, it's scary stuff.
How bad might it get under Trump term two? Well, layer on the already record numbers of Americans contracting the virus with the dark days of winter ahead and health services nearing capacity, US job losses in the millions, a cratered global standing, the grooming and activity of domestic terrorists aligned to separatism, heightened racial tension, climate change denial, disregard for human and environmental rights, science, history and facts, romance of foreign dictators, and disenfranchisement from former international allies. That's how bad.
The fabric of how and why the US became a land of united states is unravelling. Four more years of Trump, and American democracy is the stuff of a man's old pair of undies; hold it up to the wind and it just blows away.
This situation was foretold by experts in 2016, and even by me, a small cog in the works. Four years ago, I was editing a regional group of newspapers in North West NSW. Right beside me in the newsroom was a television tuned into US election coverage, and as the afternoon wore on, the Electoral College votes were ticking up in favour of Trump.
"Look, Michèle. Donald Trump is winning," a coworker said innocently. "You're getting The Apprentice guy as president." I had to get up and leave the room.
A week later, I wrote an editorial predicting how Trump's racism, isolationist tendencies and damaged character would affect the world as we knew it. From the small Australian town where I worked to the largest global cities, I alleged nothing would be the same and that election would dominate the next four years.
I have never been so sorry to be right.
And so here we are, on election eve. Things look good for Biden, but after 2016, nobody wants to trust the polls anymore, but hope is still alive in me. The other day, I posted to my Facebook echo chamber how glad I would be to wake up and spend a whole day, maybe more, without once thinking about the US president. An Aussie friend responded, "That's your choice" with an emoticon wink.
She meant to be kind but I inwardly roared. For many of us Americans who need to evict this disease that is Donald Trump from our brainspace, it's just not that easy.
