An #ElectionDay pep talk thread: I too am scared and anxious. People are probably going to get killed. It's stupid that it could even be close and discouraging that anyone in the Country can even consider voting for Trump. Makes me feel crazy. and yet...

It's pretty clear at this point that Trump and his people can't win without cheating, which I find incredibly hopeful and exciting. America was not like this when I was a kid, when Reagan blew out the electoral college twice. A majority of Americans supported politics I hated.

The country has changed. The USA is not closely polarized. Trump's real base may be about 20%. They have lost the battle of ideas and the support of the public and are weak and scared and small. Their last gasp is to cheat and try to consolidate an apartheid regime in the US.

To me, this is not a bad problem to have. Defeating an extremist minority faction that doesn't have popular support or control of major civic institutions is much less scary than the majority of Americans actually agreeing with this garbage.

At the moment, it looks like Trump will not get the most votes. If he tries to stop vote counts or declare victory, we will all need to do everything possible to shut down the country until he gives up. It doesn't matter that he has a stolen Supreme Court to legitimate him.

In the scale of grand historical tasks, overthrowing an illegitimate government is not that hard. It's hard, but it's not hard like building a just economy or ending patriarchy. In countries all over the world people have shown us how.

They are doing it now in Iraq, Thailand, Bolivia, Chile, Nigeria, Belarus, Poland. All it takes is to get out and occupy and disrupt and shut things down and not go home.
And how great would it be if Trump was defeated by voting and mass protest combined?

How great would it be if Biden had to take office in the wake of popular struggle to defend democracy?
All of this is completely possible depending on what we do next. It could be terrifying or it could be SO EXCITING. Here's how: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/election-protests-alone-wont-stop-coup/616895/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share&fbclid=IwAR2LPeBc924cZKmjAwt4JZmpyUnejwi3ziOXToMBw6C0w62UjoYscSKH2_c