A nightmare about the 2024 US presidential election

One very strange night, I fell into a very deep sleep and then woke up to find myself in a very strange, alternate universe on November 6, 2024 – the day after the US presidential election. It was a realm of existence that was completely foreign to me, even though it had manifested itself many times before, in realms of existence that were foreign to my own, as you look back through the long and winding annals of world history.

What I saw was not new to me intellectually, but experientially. I came to this country delighted and deeply inspired by the following words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

In that dream – or, rather, in that nightmare – the candidate who harbored malicious hatred of the spirit, who praised the bitterness of the soul, who radiated implacable fear, who fomented a widening gulf of social discontent, within a scorching conflagration of viciousness and violence, won that election. How he managed to achieve victory? No one was quite sure. But he won. And against his cheerfulness and that of his surrogates, I saw dark, menacing storm clouds forming and moving toward us from a distance.

The disease of the disaffected began to spread internationally thanks to high-octane lies, on the outstretched wings of propaganda and on burrowing conspiracy theories cultivated here, but incorporating elixirs of oppression and death gleefully imported from various parts of the world where good was demonized, where truth was scandalized, where decency was scorned, and where the value of human life was trivialized and treated harshly. We no longer had enemies, because as a nation we had become our own enemies.

We had become complete strangers to what we once were and to everything we had wanted to be. We had become a stranger to the nations and were no longer seen as a shining city upon a hill. And I heard one among us quoting the words of perhaps the most wretched and desolate characters in human literature, where life had now come to imitate art:

‘They cursed us. They called us ‘murderer’. They cursed us and drove us away. And we cried, Honey, we cried because we were so alone.’

‘We cried because we were so alone. (Fish, and we only want, so juicy sweet.) And we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind.

And then I saw myself, like millions of others, beginning to look to our legislators for deliverance, but unfortunately, no help was to be found there. We then looked to the court, but there was no recourse or help to be found there either. Law enforcement had become a big, cold, hardened propeller, spinning violently but coming off its axis, maiming, bleeding, mutilating, and killing everyone in its path.

And so, in that alternate universe, after November 5, the social, cultural and political landscape took on a gray, depressing, dystopian form. This was not what I had imagined, not what I had prayed for, not what I had hoped for. Where was God? Why had He forsaken us? What evil had we done?

Those of us who still held fast to our principles, who still believed in decency and in the value of human personality, soon found ourselves as wanderers on earth, described by the Good Book as those who suffered “trials of cruel mocking.” had to endure. and scourgings, yea, moreover of chains and captivity: they were stoned, they were sawn in pieces, they were seduced, they were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, and tormented (who was not worthy of the world); they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”

And then, after what seemed like a very long time, one of us was taken out of the crowd, arrested and placed before the massive crowd to utter the following words:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise and live out the true meaning of its faith: we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

And then, not long after, another one of us was taken out of the crowd, arrested and then put in the dock, just to utter these words:

“During my life I have dedicated myself to this struggle…. I’ve fought against white supremacy, and I’ve fought against black supremacy. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all people live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal that I hope to live for and achieve. But if necessary, it is an ideal for which I am willing to die.”

And again I heard another voice shouting against the great swirling waves of the tempestuous sea:

“Dictators and oppressors must continue to fear me, because I will be here for a long time.”

And then I looked up to heaven and asked, “Who are these who speak so nobly, so courageously, and so defiantly, though such words are not foreign to me? Who are these glimmers of hope? The first sounded like someone called King of America, the second sounded like Mandela of South Africa and the last sounded like Walesa of Poland. But who are they?”

Then a voice coming towards me on the wind said, “They are the voices of inevitability that rise in the presence of tyranny and oppression. Injustice and cruelty should never go unchallenged, despite the high cost of lives. Even though the heartbeats of what is right and good are sometimes drowned out by the din of the arrogance of their braying, yet their existence and their purpose are everlasting.”

And then I asked again, “But who are they?”

Then came the following answer: “That is you, and that is all the people of conscience who still believe in the values ​​of democracy, however imperfect they may be, and they are the ones who will stop at nothing to obtain them, to preserve them and to preserve. to get it back.”

And just as suddenly as I had fallen into that dystopian nightmare, I was roused from the restless pillow of my distress. Someone had called by phone to ask if I had already gone in to cast my vote. It was just a dream, it was just a dream – a nightmare! But how could it become so very, very real!

Polls don’t vote, people do.

Reprinted from the current edition of Public Opinion, the biweekly electronic magazine that provokes thought and discussion. It can be found at publicopinion.news