US elections
A little over a week before the elections, it takes effort to focus on just about anything else. On one hand we have amazing enthusiasm in swing states, rallies like Kamala's in Texas on Friday, and Obama's amazing speeches where he distills things down so perfectly. And then we have Trump's rallies where he's openly playing Emperor Palpatine, and the horrifying things at his Nazi event in Madison Square Garden.
If you asked me my gut feeling, it would be a solid win by Kamala, and a violent response by Trump supporters. The prospect of Trump winning is just too horrifying to imagine. The chance of a close election - though hard to fathom how it's possible - brings about thoughts of chaos that could last weeks, even months.
Even if the best happens (a big win by Kamala and a relatively seamless transition) we're still faced with the fact that so many people support Trump. His rhetoric, and that of his supporters, goes beyond anything I've ever seen in my life.
The US has always had plenty of extremists, and I think you can draw a straight line from Reagan's embrace of the Sagebrush Rebellion, but things have gone far beyond that. Far beyond even Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which people found so shocking and extremist at the time. I'm not saying this undertone wasn't always there - think about George Wallace's inaugural speech:
And obviously, Trump's choice of Madison Square Garden echoes the 1939 Nazi rally at the same site. While the rhetoric coming out of that rally today is just as extreme (this is a neo-nazi rally) the difference is that Trump has the GOP behind him. Polls say he has about half the voters behind him.
It's hard to wrap your mind around something like that.