U.S. presidential election may reveal if the clock strikes 13

HALIFAX—Tomorrow’s American presidential election may reveal if the clock strikes 13, the way it does in the opening line of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984. Things have moved well beyond bizarre in the lunatic villa of U.S. politics. Americans may well elect a convicted felon who wants to suspend the Constitution, round up millions of people for deportation, and unleash the military on what he calls “the enemy within.” In other words, Americans who don’t view the world through Trump-tinted glasses. That, by the way, includes not just his perceived political opponents like Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, and Adam Schiff. It also applies to journalists, newspapers, and TV networks who dared to tell the truth about this third-rate huckster who wants to be a dictator. There is only one commandment in the Trump political Bible: no opposition. Faced with Trump’s tyrannical bullying, serious people are sadly chickening out. Jeff Bezos just set a new low in media ownership malfeasance by pulling The Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the election. If any newspaper has the right to endorse Trump’s opponent, it is the Post. The paper’s professional, fact-checked, talented, and courageous coverage helped to reveal who Trump actually is. And that has been very important at a time when Fox News is lying its brains out every night. And who is Trump? A man convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide a payment to a porn-star playmate. A man found civilly responsible for sexual assault. A man charged with an attempted coup after losing a free and fair election in 2020. And a man repudiated by his own vice president, chief of staff, and secretary of defence. And not just repudiated, but called out as a fascist. Bezos speciously claimed that the decision to pull the Harris endorsement was an act of independence. Hogwash. It was a cowardly betrayal of one of the world's best newsrooms. It turned the triumph of a free press into a travesty of journalism directed by commerce. Perhaps that’s why 200,000 subscribers checked out of "The Bezos Post." The owner’s decision had nothing to do with the Post’s independence, and everything to do with Trump’s threat to punish other businesses owned by Bezos if the Orange One regains the presidency. As his own personally selected staff from his one-term presidency have claimed, Trump isn’t fit to be president. Bezos has shown that he isn’t fit to own The Washington Post. He is the man who turned Watergate into watered-down. So what is on the table not just for America, but for the world? Harris offers authenticity, inclusion, and the rule of law. Trump offers tawdriness, racism, and lawless flim-flam. A small, but telling example: Harris indeed worked at McDonald’s as a student. Trump faked working there as a politician—in a store that was closed to get a photo op. His specialty was quarter-pounders with a side of lies. But here is the most telling thing about this battle between Harris and Trump, this binary choice between the authentic and the dangerously undemocratic. Americans are in a quandary. If the polls have it right—they didn’t in 2016—half the country is interested in integrity and truthfulness, while character doesn’t matter in the least to the other half. It is the very definition of Abraham Lincoln’s house divided against itself. How can a guy who falsely claims to having more indictments against him than Al Capone be competitive? The answer is profoundly disturbing. No matter what happens tomorrow, something fundamental has already changed in America. Who in the modern era has ever seen a racist spectacle posing as a political rally like last week's debacle at Madison Square Gardens? Where did Trump get 20,000 people to fill the place, to hear that Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage? The only way that qualifies as comedy is if we define a joke as the epigram we make on the death of a feeling. Who has ever seen the threat levels against election workers so high? High enough to post snipers on the roofs of the buildings where some of them work, to install bullet-proof glass in their offices, and employ metal detectors to check out people coming to vote? Who has ever seen the spectacle of a billionaire putting a price on votes, as Elon Musk is doing in Pennsylvania? No wonder he wants to retire on Mars. And no wonder Philadelphia's district attorney, Larry Krasner, is suing this tech toady and his pro-Trump group America PAC. Offering million-dollar prizes to people who make a political pledge is a fake lottery, exactly as Krasner has charged. It is a brazen attempt to buy support for Trump that he may not be able to earn in a critical swing state with critical electoral college votes. It is election interference at its worst. And who ever saw someone like Tucker Carlson get a national platform to tell people that daddy is home, and bad girl is going to get spanked? Never mind the misogynistic and racist bile he spouted about Harris herself. How telling that the same Carlson—who used to make rational arguments for his positions on the CNN show Crossfire—has morphed into a bloviating, cockalorum, out-Trumping Trump in his ludicrous excesses. Tomorrow is ultimately not about either Harris or Trump. It is about Americans, and whether or not they still believe that their country is a shining light on a hill—or something else. In his poem the Second Coming, William Butler Yeats gets the last word on the most consequential election in American history: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times

U.S. presidential election may reveal if the clock strikes 13

Ultimately, this election is not about either Harris or Trump. It's about Americans, and whether they still believe their country is a shining light on a hill, or something else.

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U.S. presidential election may reveal if the clock strikes 13

Ultimately, this election is not about either Harris or Trump. It's about Americans, and whether they still believe their country is a shining light on a hill, or something else.

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