Nov. 3 might be only the beginning of election

 This post was published in the Wilson Times Sept. 11, 2020

If you’re closely following the 2020 presidential race and eagerly awaiting the results on Nov. 3, you may be disappointed, regardless of which candidate you’re supporting.

This year’s election will be like no other we’ve experienced. It’s not just the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not just the demonstrations against police brutality, the belated reckoning about systemic racism, the great economic divide between the wealthy (getting wealthier) and the poor (struggling to survive); it’s not just Confederate statues. It’s not just the disrespect between college-educated white-collar citizens and blue-collar citizens without college degrees. It’s not just the deep political divide among the electorate. Some have called this the most divided electorate since the Civil War. Political strategists and candidates vilify the people on the other side. Among many groups, there is genuine hatred for people who are not like them, and that applies to both ends of the political spectrum.

In the age of instantaneous political statements and accusations, voters are being spun at relentless revolutions per minute. Members of Congress would rather make a political point than achieve a bipartisan compromise. They would rather see their party win an obscure election vote than solve the nation’s most challenging problems.

All this makes the 2020 presidential election like no other in American history, a history that has included two elections (1800 and 1824) with no clear winner, sending the election to the U.S. House for resolution. The 1876 election was settled by an electoral commission that decided how to count disputed electoral votes. The Supreme Court resolved another undecided election in 2000.

Nationwide protests are being infiltrated by armed individuals with no authority. Paramilitary-style groups are eager for a fight. Gun sales have gone up again, and many people are taking advantage of a 2008 Supreme Court decision allowing firearms, including military-style, rapid-fire assault rifles, to frighten and intimidate voters who are not accustomed to seeing armed mobs in the streets of America, regardless of whose side they are on.

            The flint that could ignite this volatile mixture is the likely uncertainty of the Nov. 3 vote. Unprecedented numbers of absentee ballots and vote-by-mail ballots are flooding precincts. Many states will not begin counting absentee ballots until after the polls close, so the outcome of the election will almost certainly be in doubt until long after midnight Nov. 3. Some analysts think the presidential race might not be decided until December or January.

            Already, President Trump is raising doubts about the trustworthiness of election results. He has declined to commit to accepting the results of the election if he loses. With presidential authority still in his hands until noon Jan. 22, Trump will be able to sow doubts, rally supporters, command military actions, declare a “national emergency,” fire honest federal workers (which he has already undermined by calling them “the Deep State”). American democracy could be sacrificed.

            If you thought 2020 was bad (pandemic, economic recession, travel bans, etc.), just wait for the final two months of the year.

 

Early adopters are welcome to it.

This post was published in the Wilson Times Sept. 4, 2020

 

        I’ve never been much of an “early adopter,” the bold, techie types who see something new and “gotta have it.” I was more of a late adopter. I wanted someone else to work out all the glitches before I put my money down for the latest cell phone, computer or clothing style (this reluctance saved me from owning a Nehru jacket a month after the style became laughable). Further evidence: I was happily using a manual typewriter well into the 1980s.

            By claiming this distinction, I recognize that I’m the last to do many things. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be one of the last people in Wilson to do away with our “landline” phone.

Perhaps you remember that archaic machine, one that sits there, waiting for you to pick up “the receiver” and “dial” someone’s number (although actual dialing was long ago eliminated in favor of  “touch-tone” calling. Most households abandoned their antiquated dial or touch-tone phones as soon as cell phones became reliable enough to displace our old stationary phones. The phone-in-your –pocket surpassed even the fantasy device (a “wrist radio”) in the Dick Tracy comic strip of generations ago.

Our phones of today provide news, keep our calendars, predict the weather, alert us to hazards, show us how to get to our destinations, replace our tattered address books, allow us to take notes that we won’t lose in the laundry, keep track of time and time events, take pictures and video of events we witness, remind us where we’re supposed to be, and make veritable phonebooks pretty much obsolete.

Just a couple of years ago, a friend who is actually older than I, complained to me about the scourge of young people whose phone numbers don’t appear in the phonebook. Their numbers aren’t in the phonebook because they don’t have a copper wire landline, which is owned by the Phone Company, which also used to publish the Phonebook. My friend was talking about all those early adopters who had left behind the hopelessly retrograde older generation and couldn’t understand how we lived without a cell phone sutured to our hands or why we would ever take the time to look through a Phonebook (some of them thicker than a Tolstoy novel) to find a phone number or even a home address.

“How do they find anybody?” my exasperated and older friend complained about these young people who don’t have their names and addresses listed. “I wanted to send a sympathy card, but they’re not in the Phonebook, so I can’t find their address. What am I supposed to do? Just not send a card? That would be terrible.”

Leaving behind the landline is more about people not finding us than about our finding someone. Robocalls, which neither telephone companies nor Congress can quell, had become such a bother, disrupting meals, naps and conversations as well as being the only calls we ever got on the landline, that we had to do something.

We found some success in turning off the phone’s ringer, directing all calls to voicemail, which we would periodically check. We got through meals and all the other activities that phone calls had disrupted and were satisfied with the results.

Our subsequent decision to drop the landline entirely was prompted by Greenlight’s offer of more bandwidth if we would upgrade our TV connection. If we dropped the phone portion of our contract, our monthly bill would be essentially unchanged. Done deal. Our landline will be officially kaput in mid-September.