I didn’t watch the debate, because I had better things to do in the middle of the night here in England, like sleep, or stare out the window at the little pots they put on chimneys here for no obvious reason.
The very idea of a debate in this election is ludicrous. I may not like Biden or have much use for him, but he’s a consummate politician. And America just stuck him in a room with a demented senile old Nazi who shouted at things incoherently and ramped up the impending American civil war until they turned off his mic. It’s like a really depressing town hall sequence from Parks & Recreation, except instead of Patton Oswalt filibustering about a Star Wars/Marvel crossover it’s the grandpa from Texas Chainsaw Massacre talking about how smart he is.
I think a lot of you are starting to really finally get how close America is to actual collapse. I am going to keep repeating this to you until you get what that means. It means America looks like the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It means militias in the streets. It means the breakdown not only of democracy, but the rule of law, period. It means nobody to deal with the increasing climate calamities, because there’s nobody competent left to do the job… but there’s still enough corporate interests to prevent non-government actors from stepping in to do grassroots crisis management.
It means Proud Boys and Atomwaffen and Promise Keepers and all the rest of those walking Viagra ads in the street, armed to the teeth and looking for leftists and queers and uppity black folks. It’s what they’ve wanted for decades, under different names and umbrellas, and now, regardless of the election results, they are going to get it. If Biden wins, it’s a conspiracy and they riot. If Trump wins, it’s a mandate and they do exactly what I said they would do four years ago: they become irregular militias for the Party. They will enforce the new Supreme Court-backed theocracy at gunpoint. Meanwhile, great swaths of America’s agricultural centers – which were never sustainable in that capacity to begin with – are burning or being shredded by weird weather. The pandemic is still raging as bad as it has ever been. A million Americans will die before it’s done, and millions more are facing job loss and homelessness. Late stage capitalism has failed thoroughly and loudly. Nobody worth treating with courtesy and respect still believes free markets can respond to this disaster.If you don’t believe me at this point, you’re simply too fucking stupid to talk to, because I’ve been warning you about this for a very long time and I’ve been right and you’ve been wrong, so kindly fuck off and let the grownups try to salvage this mess.
Democracy can’t fix this, because too many of the actors involved are not democratically elected, and anyway the American democratic model has broken under stress. It’s not democracy at all, really, and until the Electoral College is dissolved it won’t be. It’s a bunch of geriatric God-deluded hillbillies deciding the fate of everyone else. And the fact that the entire future of the nation hinged on one nonagenarian jurist’s continued survival from cancer tells you everything you need to know about just how fragile America is.
I got no good news for you. There’s no way out of this now. You’re going to have to endure it and survive it as best you can, and I hope you’re ready for it in a way you weren’t ready for the pandemic. The more you debate and argue and profess your faith in our institutions, the more time you’re wasting that you could be spending in preparation for what’s coming.
After last night’s madness, the chances of me safely returning to the US with the name of the Dreaded Enemy literally inked into my skin are slim to none. I do not trust the Border Patrol, which is full of white supremacists and fascists, not to grab me or kill me outright at the immigration line. That’s a stone-cold sober calculation, not hyperbole or hysteria. And even if I made it past the airport taxi line, I’d be a constant target of these clowns, especially as I have absolutely no plans to shut up ever. I will not keep quiet out of fear. I simply will not return, even if it means spending months or years moving around from country to country on tourist visas.
I’m tired of arguing the obvious with other Americans, and I’m tired of being a Cassandra. I told you, I warned you, I tried to educate you in what to do to prepare for the inevitable with my limited capabilities. Some of you listened, most of you didn’t, and if you didn’t, I’m sorry, but that was your choice and you have to accept the consequences now.
I love America as a landscape of vast open spaces, but I despise what she has been allowed to become. While most of us were just looking out for number one, America has been eaten away by the cancers of fascism and corporate capitalism and white supremacy and religious fundamentalism, and now it’s time to call a priest.
The rest of the world pities us and fears us, like someone who’s been bit by a zombie and is about to die… but what horror will we cause once we’re dead? We sit at the heart of the spiderweb of the world economy. We are armed to the teeth, and we are not – as a body politic or as a population – sane, by any definition of the word.
When I speak to people here in London, people from anywhere, they treat me with sympathy. They treat me like a refugee, and that is what I am, in fact if not in name.
My heart breaks and my blood boils at what has happened to my country, but I’ve done what I could do. It wasn’t much, but it was more than most, I think. I tried and I’m tired and worn out. So I’ll just look on like everyone else on Earth, from here hopefully, or a hotel in Albania or a pension in Turkey or wherever else my U.S. passport will still take me.
As William Burroughs once said: thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.
Joshua Ellis
