Skip to main content

The Election: a Referendum on the End of the World

A few more hours, that all the time we've got!

 That, of course, is almost what Lerner and Lowe wrote for Alfred P. Doolittle, in My Fair Lady.  Alfred P. was facing his own end time--that is to say:  marriage.

We, three hundred million of us, are at election day, and it is clear to many a religious pundit that having to choose between Alfred P. Trump and Eliza Clinton. . . .   ("No!", I am saying to myself, "Stop!", but I cannot.  I am mesmerized by this deep understanding of what an election is.)

People like Michael Brendon Dougherty say that this election is God's way of pronouncing judgment upon us .  I do not know who Michael Brendon Dougherty is, but he seems to represent a Band of Believers who say that when God wants to condemn a nation, he gives them a Presidential election, or something like that, and Boom!  Kawhop!  The end of the world is upon them!  Armageddon!  Judgment Day!  Orange Hair!  Ticks and fleas!  Pants suits!  Uppity women!  Higher taxes!  A single-payer health care system!  A big man with small, groping hands!  Endless e-mails!  Everything evil!  The end of The New York Times!

A few more hours!  That's all the time we've got!

Now, I am an ordinary man, resting easy with Doomsday predictions, having already cast my mail-in ballot, but I did that before I understood that God was just setting me up for the end of time; for judgment; for a final ballot count.

Sneaky!, is what I think.  All I was doing was choosing between the best that the Republican and Democratic Parties could give us, for which I will be held eternally responsible, which is like being condemned to hell for choosing between charred hamburgers off a runaway grill, on the one hand, and mom's meat and potatoes, on the other.

But I can tell you this:  the ways of God are mysterious.  I voted, fearing the results, I will admit, but not knowing that it was some kind of cosmic, end-time affair.  I thought that maybe the Republican Party had lost its mind, but, oh well, it had given evidence of that, anyway, in Congress, where it had not voted anything but "Nay" for eight years, except maybe to send Obama back to Kenya, and Hillary to jail, and to repeal health care to be replaced by something they would think of later, when they got back to thinking again.

I shall not go easy into that good night.  We are going to join friends tonight, to watch how the election goes, how the end of the world happens, but I am bringing a magic potion to soften the blow.  Maybe it won't be the end of the world:  maybe it will just be the end of a long, dark day in America.


Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 8, 2016 at 1:10 PM

    No matter the outcome, when these two are the "best" our nation can offer, America is in sad shape. Only my opinion--not speaking for the masses. Conrad, I do enjoy, though usually disagree, with you. I admire you as a person who loves baseball, and as a person with a different filter by which you see the world. Keep writing!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Under the Football Stands

There are times and places when and where the Milky Way really is a milky way; a ragged band of light stretching across the horizon.  I still recall--all this time later--catching sight of something much fainter than what you see here--asking my mother what the Milky Way was.  I do not recall her precise answer, probably because it was not precise.  I am not sure that there were many people--seventy or more years ago--who would have said, plainly, that it was what we see when we look toward the center of our galaxy; that our sun--our star--was one of an uncountable number of stars circling about what is undoubtedly a huge black hole, something like a swarm of bees caught in a cosmic maelstrom.   It is to look across the center of a monstrous swarm of stars.  It is brighter in that direction, quite naturally. Just as we had to get used to recognizing that our sun was a star, pretty much like most of the other stars we see, we had to remind ...
Post a Comment
Read more