Corrosive ‘Closing Messages’
Terry H. Schwadron
Oct. 29, 2024
Much is being made of the “closing messages” of the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns, as if there is a last-minute switch possible among enough voters in enough battleground states to make a difference.
The more likely scenario is that with perhaps a third of all votes already cast in early voting, the results are largely baked in, with the outcome more dependent on who turns out to cast a ballot than on “undecided” voters.
Nevertheless, the closings are capturing the spirit — or dispirit — of a fully emerged, corrosive, split picture of voting America.
Harris is using the very site of the Jan. 6, 2021, incitement speech to appeal to an imagined future in which government, preservation of norms and traditions of fighting for individual rights are recognized for having a role in making people’s lives incrementally better amid chaotic shots from all sides. From the performance at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Trump is appealing to the baser, cruder version that might makes right from open talk of authoritarian rule in the streets to the need to bash The Other over non-white, non-Christian, non-straight identity or dissent altogether. Apart from distancing from the offensive remarks of a single comic who mocked Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”, there was plenty of identity bashing at the rally for the Trump faithful.
Both are preaching to their choirs, who only have open ears for messages that they want to hear.
If you are a Harris voter, you hear a cry to defend control over one’s body as primary, along with voter rights, more social service spending, and a need to join with the world towards defending democracies. If you are a Trump voter, you are willing to look past racism and misogyny presented as casual “humor”, promote fear and dismiss promises to unleash the military to round up Trump’s domestic enemies, to talk only of closed borders and the magic bullet that imposition of tariffs that Trump insists in the face of evidence otherwise will bring about on supermarket prices.
Apparently, We’re Upset
A psychologist friend recently described being struck by the high number of clients who are reporting personal upset over the elections and the uncertainty it all has surfaced about who we are as a society.
Is it possible that one could believe that immigration policies should be in place that are workable and effective but that do not engender acceptance that it is okay to call Puerto Rico an island of “garbage” — without even recognizing that Puerto Ricans are American citizens? Is it possible to think that we could have a disagreement among candidates in which it is possible to avoid debasing whole groups of Americans in pursuit of winning?
I’d even settle for acknowledgement by the candidates that they cannot do what they are promising without a full team in place and a Congress that has any interest in solving complicated social problems. The vote for senators and congressional seats seems weirdly divorced from the presidential horse race, and, by a scan of ads, based even more on dishonest interpretation of what should be factual matters.
We have a bigger problem at hand even than whether we let the means of democracy slip through our willing fingers in this election. We have basic values of humanity that we seem willing to put up for a majority vote — and then to twist the results through means legal or not to get the results we want to declare.
The election will not clear these divisions over valuing a sense of respect for one another or a society that hangs together only because of laws and a tradition of forgiveness. The choices are so stark as to wonder why it should be a close decision — in either direction.
That should be the closing message from both camps. Sadly, it is not.
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