Anxious in US on eve of election
AT LONG last, Americans get to decide. More than usual, most people don’t like their choices. More than usual, many Americans believe that people who don’t agree with them are not only wrong, but are best avoided.
On the eve of the election, America is afraid. People talk about buying guns to protect themselves from troubles to come. They talk about places they steer clear of, and people they don’t talk to anymore. Casual conversations have blown up into hurtful arguments. Friends vanish from Facebook feeds. People who used to put up yard signs don’t, for fear of what their neighbours might do. And people who thought things were improving, in their own lives and in their communities, wonder if they missed the real story, a darker tale of division and despair.
But America is also what it’s always been, a green field of possibility, a place where people relish rogues and truth-tellers, and a place where being appalled by politicians is part of the deal, something that can even bring people together.
Only eight years after millions of Americans poured into the streets in spontaneous, joyful celebration of the election of the nation’s first black president, optimism seems to have been sucked out of the country’s marrow, replaced by a heavy anxiety, a sense that things aren’t right and can’t easily be fixed.
The two major candidates CONTINUED
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