As election day 2020 neared, I found myself thinking about a blog post made in response to the election of four years earlier. Revisiting that post, Fear Is Very Scary, seemed a rather natural thing to do but the form of any revisit wasn’t obvious at all. In fact, I quickly decided that there wasn’t much value in even thinking about it until the results of the election were known. In 2016, I was traveling on election day, and the post I’m talking about was made a month later when I was back home and my thoughts had settled a bit. I was home for the most recent election but hit the road the very next day. A month later, I was again back home but this time my thoughts were not yet very settled. More importantly, neither was the election itself.
Some contended that the election remained unsettled even as major milestones were passed. All the vote counts — and several recounts — were completed and by December 9 all fifty states certified their totals. On December 14, members of the Electoral College met in every state and made their votes official. Either of these events should have settled things and allowed me to pick an angle to approach that four-year-old post. Neither did.
The last official milestone on the way to inauguration day was the counting of Electoral College votes by a joint meeting of the Senate and House of Representatives on January 6. It was obvious that this would not be the smooth and boring formality that it typically is, but I was confident that it would put to rest any real hopes of overturning the election, and, with that in mind, started to give some thought to how to reflect on the post from 2016 a few days ahead of the meeting. I decided against copying and updating the post. Instead, I would simply link to the post and comment on it. That 2016 post identified a number of occasions in my life that had been scary; Things like the Cuban missile crisis and Kennedy’s assassination. I ended the main part of the post with “I’ve seen the world survive some pretty deep piles of doo doo in the past. Today’s doo doo is different and may even be deeper in spots but history suggests that there’s a pretty good chance that the world will survive it too.”
I figured that the new post could point out that, yes, there had been some scares during the previous four years, but we had survived them and none were in the same class as those listed in the 2016 post. Then January 6 actually arrived. Violent insurrectionists actually breached the capitol and forced the lawmakers to evacuate. Many questions remain and numerous investigations are ongoing but among the few certainties is the fact that five people died. It is a pile of doo doo — some of it literal — that is clearly as big and as scary as any of those I listed in 2016. The mob was eventually removed and the counting completed, but even then more than half of the Republican Representatives and eight Republican Senators claimed to believe that the election was not settled. Instead of being able to express relief that the fears prompting that December 2016 post had not been entirely justified, this post must acknowledge a situation every bit as scary as the 1968 Democratic Convention.
Many arrests have been made and more are certain to follow. President Trump has been impeached and charged with “incitement of insurrection”. He will be tried by the Senate even though he is no longer in office. Conviction could prevent him from ever running for office again. A mix of rumors and credible threats of violence aimed at the inauguration of President Biden prompted numerous closures and an unprecedented number of security forces in the nation’s capital for the event which went off without a hitch.
There are still plenty of things to worry about. Things like climate change, systemic racism, domestic terrorism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic problems the pandemic has caused. Domestic terrorism includes that January 6th assault and there is still good reason to fear there might be more like it. We are hardly free of fear but the USA has managed yet another peaceful transfer of power and most people I know are both relieved and hopeful.
I don’t really know how to wrap up this post so I’m going to sort of copy from 2016. I tacked a song link onto the Fear Is Very Scary post. The song, Fear Is Never Boring, had nothing to do with the content of the post but I’d borrowed from its title. It was performed by a band, The Raisins, whose members, while no longer together, have all been — and continue to be — very active and important in Cincinnati’s music scene. As 2020 wound down, the guy who wrote Fear Is Never Boring released an album with an opening song that became a favorite of mine the instant I heard it. When I saw the official video a short time later, it too became a favorite and made me love the song even more. It’s tempting to think of it being written specifically for today but its roots go back to 2009. It is not inherently political at all but it is inherently hopeful and buoyant. Give it a look and a listen. You’ll feel better. I promise. Turn This Ship Around
Here’s hoping that all those people attacking the Capitol on January 6 are brought to justice.
The most scared I ever was about the fate of the United States took place during the Kent State Riots. They were particularly bad at Northern Illinois University where I was a freshman and living at Lincoln Hall Dormitory.
I remember looking out my dorm window at the police attacking students and thinking that this must be the end of the United States. All the while listening to Melanie’s “Lay Down (Candles in the Wind).”
That was frightening.
Curiously, even though the Kent State events made quite an impression on me, they didn’t seem as frightening as some others. That’s probably because I was no longer a student and didn’t see troops up close like you did. I flew to Chicago that day to meet with a vendor and was distracted by various travel snafus. I now find it kind of hard to believe, but the first I knew anything about it was when I walked into the vendor’s office and was asked, “What’s going on in Ohio?”