The American Aftermath
The Election is Over
How does that make you feel? Are you nervous, anxious, relieved, confused, a basket of different difficult emotions riding the waves of the news? I don’t blame you if you stopped following along already.
Politics is a bloodsport, like cockfighting or cock throwing. The world hovers around the dusty arena that is democra-…Yes, cock throwing is a real sport. In fact, one that the founding fathers of the United States of America may have played in their British youth. It is probably not what you imagine it to be either. You see the Latin word for rooster — Gallus — is coincidentally the same as the word for a French man, or a man from Gaul, the land of Britain’s perpetual enemy.
Having an enemy is part of the human experience. It is one of the strands that weave through societies. Developing a “them” helps to create an “us”. A victory for us and a defeat of them is one of the peak feelings of joy our brains can serve up. A victory for us brings a deep sense of satisfaction, but if we’re honest, the bit that really pushes us over the edge is seeing the misery and defeat draped on them.
So what were angry Britains wanting to deride or vanquish a Frenchman to do when nary a one can be found, not even a small French child? Naturally, a stupid bird bearing the same name in an ancestral language would be forced to take the stage. All interested parties stood around the rooster and took turns throwing sticks until a deadly blow was delivered and a hero was crowned. I wonder for how many years those people just threw sticks at evading chickens before they started tying them to a post. Did that evolution happen before or after they added weights to the sticks?
Much like cock throwing, the US election cycle brings out the worst in us. The us vs them mentality. The attachment of every bad deed by an individual to the collective opposition. The glorification of our own unworthy champions. The demonization of theirs. The political bloodlust. We bath in it. We search unendingly for any information that will confirm the stories in our heads, that we are right and we will win. We become absolute media junkies, wanting to watch it play out live as both our partisan togetherness and national divisiveness climax simultaneously.
Cock throwing wasn’t an everyday sport, like football or punching. It was a sport for a certain time of the year. Specifically on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, a day that is supposed to be about self-reflection and repentance. It’s about asking god for forgiveness for any wrongdoings, for help to grow into a better person, and for accuracy when launching blunt objects at a bird representing a country.
Over the course of British history, animal cruelty began to go out of style. Cock throwing was also quite dangerous for the onlookers. Sticks that missed the target would occasionally pop up and kill children. Eventually, cock throwing was outlawed. But the emotional drivers that frenzy us up, the influencers that tell us who to hate and why, and our own lust for victory don’t go away.
The secret is that if we perceive something as evil, we can do no evil in destroying it. Astonishingly immoral acts can be easily justified away by average, everyday people if they believe those acts are fighting against a greater evil. Violence against a surrogate is justified if it stirs up the kind of spirit and unity needed to topple the actual foe.
Trump Rally
As the votes were being counted and Biden began to take to the lead, the demand skyrocketed for any information that would let Trump supporters continue to hold onto their stories. Anything that could salvage their victory would be graciously digested with even less scrutiny than usual. “We didn’t lose, the other side cheated,” is a narrative that sells itself before it’s written to whichever side loses. Right-wing media quickly began to alert their followers to any suspicious activity. As happens in every election, errors and mistakes were made, discovered, and then corrected. This was never going to be a flawless vote count. These errors, along with a host of other narratives and screenshots were used to sew doubt and arouse anger among the right.
Rallies around the country were organized to ‘Count every Vote’ by the left or ‘Stop the Steal’ by the right. In a brief moment of unintended unity, both sides were using the hashtag #ProtectTheVote, sharing in a mutual goal of having all the legally cast ballots counted and a Presidential victor announced. For a second the broken shards of the country’s split narratives cast a reflection of what actually democracy should look like. In reality, American democracy isn’t good for much more than selling bumper stickers and making people angry. The biggest rallies were planned to take place in every state capital Saturday, November 7th, the first weekend after the election.
I awoke that morning to news that major media organizations on both the left and the right were calling the election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It was time to travel to Salem to witness how the right would respond to this news.
Oversized trucks with all the customary flags encircled the state capitol. People formed a gauntlet on each side of the street. They cheered and hollered as their compatriots drove by, and hurled insults at their enemies. One person hit one of the cars they were shouting at with a bat, but was immediately reprimanded with a “We’re not like them!”
Next to the gauntlet, in front of the capitol building, was a group of heavily armed men who call themselves ‘The Proud Boys’, distinguishable by their adornment of yellow. They paced nervously in and out of huddled discussions on the whereabouts of Antifa and threatened to kill arriving journalists they recognized as left-aligned. Any counter-protestors that showed up on foot were surrounded, threatened, and sometimes maced. They were just itching for someone to tie a chicken to a stick
On the other side of the road, there was a crowd of people looking for guidance, looking for hope, looking for reasons to continue to believe they are right and they will win. Fox News had just told them that morning their president lost and they weren’t ready to accept it. The dress code seemed to be camo, flannel, and flags, with one Abraham Lincoln in attendance.
A host of local figures took to the stage to soothe, inspire, or enrage them, respectively. One speaker talked about how the voting machines are owned by the Clinton Foundation and he would soon be exposing the whole cover-up. Another preached a message of high morals, that they as honorable people would accept the results if the ballots were fairly counted. A doctor took the mic telling everyone about how Covid was exaggerated by the left to help them steal the election. Several younger men announced that it was now the time to stand up and fight, to not let their country and their liberties be stolen. These were the most troubling.
Thankfully the majority of the people I spoke with did not support the kind of violence being preached by the armed militia groups. Even a young man with the semi-automatic rifle who had been hired as security for the event rolled his eyes behind his gas mask when I asked what he thought of the proud boys.
There was unity among the people that showed up for the rally in their desire for Trump to remain president and their belief that the votes were not being counted fairly. Their beliefs varied widely, however, on what should be done about it. The line of speakers ended, the rain picked up, and we moved on to the next event.
BLM/Antifascist Rally
In a park a few minutes drive away another rally was forming. This was the group of people who had been protesting against all the things that won’t go away with Biden as president. Pop-up tents were set up offering pamphlets on a wide array of far-left topics, others offered snacks and first aid supplies. There were no American flags waving here. The dress code was mostly black. Many had helmets, vests, and gas masks to protect against any impact or chemical weapons that might be employed against them by either local/federal law enforcement or right-wing groups. Covered in similar gear were teams of medics, press, and some armed security as well.
Most of the young people here had been meeting like this since the start of the summer. The deeper relationships that had been formed and the camaraderie that existed were much more apparent. Where the Trump rally felt like a collection of citizens, this rally felt more like a family picnic. There were of course outliers. One man showed up with Biden/Harris posters and unsuccessfully handed them out.
The speakers for this event preached a message of collective action. They addressed the issues of in-fighting and warned against complacency. They expressed that the fight was not over, how the election didn’t end racism or fascism. A small group of indigenous people brought everyone closer and performed a drum ceremony, afterward asking activist groups with only white leadership to consider including BIPOC members.
The little electric Antifa tank made its rounds with people of various sizes attempting to climb inside and maneuver it, hilarity ensued. Whispers of proud boys in the vicinity sporadically circled the park keeping people alert. Before any of the crowd started on their march toward the Capitol we received news that a large group of right-wing militia types was heading from across the border in Vancouver, WA, to drive around downtown Portland - the site of a Biden/Harris victory rally. So we loaded up and headed home. We were two rallies in and no one had been shot. I was feeling optimistic.
Biden/Harris Rally
When we finally arrived in downtown Portland we parked a few blocks away in an area my friends had parked many times over the past months. Each street we walked down carried its own stories, shared with me by people who had been covering the events as press from the very beginning. This was the comrade 7/11 that would allow protestors inside to escape the tear gas and police charges. These were the neighboring Apple and Louis Vuitton stores whose windows were almost immediately smashed and contents looted when things kicked off. Then we made it to the Justice Center.
This was ground zero of Portland’s protest movement this year. The building was still boarded up with a reinforced fence surrounding the property. The windows had not yet been replaced after being broken when protestors shot fireworks at the building. Those tents over there are what is now called BLM Ribs. They are a group of people that staged an armed coup and took over what used to be Riot Ribs, a 24-hour volunteer-run kitchen funded by community donations that gave out free food and medical supplies. It would be torn down by the Police every night and then rebuilt by protestors the next day. The stories that place had to share could have kept me there all night, but vehicles honking in the distance pulled us in.
We arrived at the main square as loud music echoed out from a cluster of about a hundred dancing bodies. Most of these people were ready to celebrate Biden’s victory. There were flags waving here, but astoundingly less than at the Trump rally earlier that day. In fact, there were probably an equal amount of flags waving around the dance floor as there were on the one right-wing truck repeatedly circling the block. It would stop at every corner to verbally engage with leftists who were following them on foot taunting them and ripping the flags off until they had no flags left and went home.
Even at the Biden/Harris celebration rally, there were several people carrying assault rifles. That’s just how things are here. But from what I saw, nobody was shot. That is of course not a universal truth. On November 7th, in the United States, 53 people were shot to death with a gun and another 102 injured. That’s actually quite lower than the average for this country. Those numbers will naturally be a mix of suicides, murders, assaults, and accidental discharges. There’s just a lot of guns here.
Where we go all, we go drunkenly and without grace
Each side in this election cycle wanted it to be a blowout, a massacre, a stick pelted chicken picnic where who was right and who would win would be obvious to all involved. But that is not the current situation. That isn’t what a 24-hour news cycle and social media have created in this country. There is division, and the same tools that built it will struggle to mend it.
On my good days, I like to see a visible line of improved ethics in the historical trajectory of humans on the planet. I imagine most of our souls aren’t rotten, just misinformed. I understand some people are insufferable predators, but even we noble folk without a history of domestic violence still have that bloodlust inside us. We want to stand in a victorious crowd of our peers and watch on as those we deem ‘them’ are forced to accept the pain of defeat. The US presidential elections are an overpriced shit show that turns us all into monsters and I can’t believe we do this every 4 years.
