By Margaret Renkl in the NYT (Thanks to Ed M.)
Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who reports from Nashville on flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.
I had an elaborate itinerary for Election Day that I took to calling the Panic Abatement Plan. I’d walk in the woods early because temperatures are still breaking records down here. I’d stop by Parnassus Books, which would be full of kindred souls, and pick up my special order, Rachel Carson’s “The Sense of Wonder.” I’d visit the puppy room at the Nashville Humane Association. I’d have lunch with one friend, and I’d talk on the porch with another. I’d take my new book out to the yard and read while sugar maple leaves fell in golden drifts around me in the last light of day.
There were other items in the Panic Abatement Plan that looked more like a traditional to-do list for a day away from work — writing thank-you notes, cleaning bird feeders, deadheading zinnias so they’ll make new blooms to feed the bees in this summer that will not end. Maybe I’d get to that part of the list, or maybe I wouldn’t. It didn’t matter either way.
I voted early, so the Panic Abatement Plan was really just a daylong distraction project to keep me calm while my fellow Americans decided what sort of country we will all be living in. The whole point was to spend the day in the company of beauty and friendship and something that, if you stood way back and squinted, might look a little bit like peace.
I’m so glad I gave myself that day of sweetness. By the next morning, my eyes were sandpaper and a rock was lodged in my throat. Sweetness seemed lost from the world forever.
I am 63 years old, a liberal child of the Jim Crow South. For my whole adult life, I have been fighting for a world where a man like Donald Trump would never be elected — not once, much less twice — and I am tired of fighting. A lot of us are tired of fighting. A different result last week would have been, at best, a temporary reprieve, and I knew that. I wanted the reprieve anyway. I wanted to wake up on Nov. 6 and breathe a sigh of relief.
But Donald Trump is not a blip or an aberration. That should have been clear long since. From the moment the carnival barker in chief came down a golden escalator, through his first outrageous campaign of lies, through the nightmare of his first snake-oil presidency, through his murderous silence during the assault on the Capitol, through the hearings and the trials that only shored up the support of his base, the MAGA fever dream was never even close to breaking. (Continued on Page 2)