Vote for the Other Side...

... and be personally responsible for Tyranny in America™

Have we ever been in this particular political predicament (say it ten times, fast) before? Hard for me to say, given my almost-religious aversion to history as a youngster, but if I judge by what I’ve experienced as a voting adult — and that would be 10 elections — I cannot ever remember an election in which both sides literally believe that the other candidate will usher in TYRANNY.

Think about that for a moment.

Perhaps, as I do, you remember these kinds of spoken sentiments:

• “I’m voting for Thing One because his policies make more sense,” or

• “I’m voting against Thing Two because I don’t like Thing One’s stance on [fill in the blank],” or

• “I always vote for This Party’s candidate because I identify as a [fill in the blank] and This Party is the party of [ditto previous] voters.”

Or even:

• “I’m voting for Thing Three because I hate One and Two.”

How cute! How quaint! How Mayberry-esque!

Here are a few recent quotes from both sides to make you long for those halcyon days:

• “For decades, reporters have been taught not to make Hitler analogies in stories about American politics. Adolf Hitler was so uniquely evil that any comparison of an American politician with the Nazi leader was considered unfair and out of bounds. And then came Donald Trump.” (The Intercept, October 25, 2024)

• “Former Vatican ambassador to US calls Harris ‘an infernal monster who obeys Satan’” (New York Post, October 25, 2024)

• “Donald Trump is plotting to overthrow American democracy. It is not a secret, and he is not subtle. The only question is whether enough people will care enough to stop it.” (Democracy Docket, December 6, 2023)

• “‘She [Kamala Harris] owes my parents and everybody else who was murdered by Hitler an apology,’ the Auschwitz survivor says” (Fox News, October 25, 2024)

What’s the theme? THE END OF DEMOCRACY AS WE KNOW IT. If you vote for either candidate, says the other side, you will be personally responsible for Tyranny in America™.

As we hurtle toward November 5th, I’m more and convinced that both sides are wrong — and both sides are right. Here’s what I mean by that koan.

I’m not a journalist or a political commentator. I’m a theatre artist. Acting, directing, and playwriting have been my milieu, and within those disciplines I’ve had to hone an ability to identify three major components of human drama: desires, (which lead to) conflict, (in service of) overarching goals.

All good theatre employs all three, but let’s talk about the first two first.

To be successful — and by that I mean to hold the audience’s attention throughout — a playwright has to set up a situation in which Character P (the protagonist) wants something very, very badly, and Character A (the antagonist) wants something just as badly that stands in opposition to what P wants. Voila: conflict.

In his book Hate Inc.,

Matt Taibbi

describes how media has transformed politics in the U.S. into a version of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). It’s a perfect fit: all elections and all sporting events are already theatrical because conflict conveniently tussles at the center of them. “A Versus P: The Smackdown!” is always baked into elections: both sides want to win, and they fight tooth and nail to do so.

Unlike American political contests, however, WWE plainly states that their matches are not true contests; they are performance theatre events that incorporate storylines and choreography, designed solely to entertain. (Thus the word “entertainment” that became part of its name in 2002.)

In WWE, just as in reality tv, there are scriptwriters and other orchestrators (let’s call them The Producers) who create this performance theatre to keep us glued.

I know I’m not the first to point out that politics is a grand spectacle — I think you’d have to be either comatose or… well, comatose to not be aware of that. But this year’s presidential election spectacle has mushroomed into exponential, doomsday proportions, the likes of which I’ve never seen.

Which brings me to my central question: why? Why the over-the-top, beyond cataclysmic language?

Some might argue that it’s inevitable. As the populace becomes more and more inured to shock, the voltage must increase to influence voters to vote. Okay, I can get behind that… but what else is going on? What is the goal — beyond winning the election?

Let’s return for a moment to my earlier description of the three major components of human drama. We’ve seen desires and conflict in action; what about the third aspect? What about the overarching goal? For a play to ultimately succeed, there has to be an end goal to the conflict, something greater that drives the whole story — a purpose to the whole endeavor.

The spectacle has to have a central message.

Quick aside: this is where I intersect with those — like

Visceral Adventure

— who suggest that it doesn’t actually matter which side wins the election.

A Pox on Both Your Political Houses

The Producers are going to work with the election’s outcome to their advantage, as they always do. Obama’s former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was not the first to express this idea when he said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

The central message of this particular “crisis” — The Producers’ overarching goal in this production — has nothing to do with truth, liberty, or justice. I submit that it actually has nothing to do with either side winning, either — even though so many, many people believe it does, including the candidates themselves.

We are at the proverbial Spinal Tap “eleven,” the very pinnacle of maniacal, existential catastrophism, because their central purpose in this eschatological spectacle is this: division.

Dividing us along every line imaginable has been the intentional goal for a long time now. I wrote about it in State of the Reunion:

“At a much higher level than the one each of us stands upon, sit those who profit from our dis-union. They are not just fomenting our radicalism, our disconnection, our hatred… they are banking on it.

…we’re being told that we do not want the same things. That we are fundamentally different, and that the other side actively wants our destruction. We are constantly backed into corners and told the only way out is to fight.”

The Producers have amped up this election to be THE ELECTION TO END ALL ELECTIONS, and “the amp” is the whole point.

If they can push us all beyond our limits, to eleven, then maybe we’ll turn on each other if when our candidate loses.

I find it interesting that two recent major motion pictures about a new civil war in the U.S. came out within seven months of each other. This one was produced by the Obamas, and while it doesn’t overtly reference a civil war, the inference is there:

(What the eff? Why would a former President of the United States produce a dystopian movie like THIS? Aren’t former Presidents supposed to spend the rest of their days building libraries with their names on them? Or pretending to involve themselves in humanitarian projects? Or at the very least, giving speeches for gobs of money??)

And this one was produced by A24 and DNA Films:

Vee, in a comment on

Jenna McCarthy

’s recent Substack, said this:

"Oh my! That is soo crazy!! Did you see what the bougey millionaire American traitor called the other bougey millionaire American traitor on America's Top President 90210?" -Drama Loving Americans

It's as if they are making a big deal out of nothing or rather something that they've already made a big deal about before. Put Hillary in jail, drain the swamp, domestic terrorists, blah blah blah.

Is it possible they the establishment is still trying to divide all of us by having us see each other as literal enemies of the state instead of brothers and sisters enduring the same scam?

Yes, Vee, that’s entirely possible.

The danger, the very real danger of this crescendo of divisiveness is that it legitimizes othering. I felt this in a very personal way during covid, and I felt it again last weekend as I was spending time in NYS with some loved ones, one of whom felt free to characterize Southerners as backwater, football-obsessed troglodytes who eat barbeque, can’t appreciate the finer things in life, and whose ignorance about the importance of universal healthcare is a big reason why we don’t have it.

To be clear: this person is possibly the kindest, most compassionate, dearest human being and I love her/him. But the imitation of good ole boys was downright cruel.

I’ve tried to imagine this person dishing out stereotypes of other categories of Americans with the same vitriol — Black people, Hispanic people, Asians, Jews, Muslims, gays, etc. — and I cannot. He/she simply wouldn’t do that.

I don’t think it dawned on her/him that I’ve chosen to live in the South, or that my husband likes football and barbeque. In that moment as I witnessed this take-down of people I have grown to care deeply for in my short time south of the Mason-Dixon, it was so very tempting to shut down my heart. I could feel it beating faster and faster in a very human, protective/defensive response, but I chose to just keep filling my heart with love.

That’s not what The Producers want.

The Producers of “Election 2024: The Battle for Freedom!” want me to vilify those with alternative viewpoints, to hate the other side. They want all of us, by the time the curtain falls — or the election is called — to be filled with such an unquestioning blind fury that we view the other side as “less than:” less informed than ourselves, less intelligent, less than worth a conversation, less than less than less than… which ultimately, at its most frightening, ends in “less than human.”

Once we’ve all arrived at that parched place, violence is just a lit match away.

You may have heard that the Department of Defense recently reissued DoD Directive 5240.01, which repealed previous versions.

This article by GreenMedInfo has what I consider to be the best analysis of the new verbiage added to the directive. Their conclusion:

“The introduction of lethal force provisions in what was originally a counter-intelligence focused directive, and the ability to act without immediate oversight for 72 hours, demand closer attention and policy refinement to ensure a balance between national security and the protection of civil liberties.”

The reason I say, “If you vote for either candidate, says the other side, you will be personally responsible for Tyranny in America™” is that tyranny, like cancer, cannot survive in a high-vibration environment.

Tyranny thrives on misanthropy; those who would practice it stir up a thick stew of fear, negativity, hatred, depression, and othering, and then tyranny devours it, gulping it down to grow stronger and stronger.

What happens after November 5th, 2024 will depend entirely on how we treat one another. Succumbing to the temptation of othering, of ostracism, of hating one another: that’s what will usher in tyranny.

I heard an anecdote recently that resonated: any time a guy forgot to feed his cats, by the end of the day the cats would turn on one another and get into a big brawl. When we get hungry enough, we’re not much different. And I don’t mean just physically hungry.

Kathleen Devanney writes about the energetic disconnection from our power source — “the Source of Life itself” — in her brilliant essay, and encourages us to reconnect to and protect that most sacred part of us.

Weird and Wild

It is that disconnection that The Producers encourage, facilitate, and depend upon, because it leaves us hangry, and willing to blame others for what we perceive as the ruination of the world.

Our job is to feed ourselves daily, with whatever nurtures and amps up the love and light at the core of our beings… and then pick up our collective pens. We really no longer need The Producers to provide a storyboard to conclude this bizarre reality show.

Vote, don’t vote, as you see fit. But remember that voting is only the tiniest mote of sovereignty you were born with; you arrived here with the power to dream this work of art that is human existence into existence. We all did.

So go ahead: write the most satisfying Act Three of this tragicomic performance you can possibly imagine, with the most heart-expanding overarching goal; then, if you’re feeling adventuresome, share it with someone from “the other side.”

Who knows? Perhaps their version will not be too far off from your own. And the best part? Together, your high notes will have shattered the fragile glass of tyranny before it could fully form.

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Thank you for being here. What’s your vision of how this is all going to roll?

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As always, keep your light shining bright.

xox
M