WWGD?

What would Gandalf do?

Why do we have to deal with Trump?

Frodo speaks for all of us when he says in The Fellowship of the Ring, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” This is a totally normal reaction. Who would want to be alive during a time of peril for the nation? I don’t want to be. I’d much rather be alive when our democracy was secure. Maybe not perfect, but secure.

Gandalf answers Frodo, “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

In other words, tough luck folks. This is the time we’re alive. This is the time we get to deal with. No amount of fretting or laying curled up in the fetal position in a bathtub (which I’ve done a couple of times) will change it.

Here we are. What are we going to do about it? Give in to despair? Give Trump the win before the first vote has been counted? I’m already reading columns about what the post-mortem will be on Harris’s failed campaign.

Seriously? We’re less than two weeks from election day and some of these jerks already want to throw in the towel? Fuck those guys. Get out of my foxhole.

Gandalf has some words about despair, and despair it is for these people.

“It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.” – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

This is why I refuse to despair. I can’t see the future in order to know now who the winner will be when the count is over. And neither do you. And neither does Nate Silver’s gut or any of the others climbing into their sackcloth and getting the ashes ready to smear all over themselves.

It is self-indulgent hubris to proclaim a Trump victory on October 24, 2024.

And if the fight against Trumpism is ultimately hopeless?

Gandalf says, “It is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one.” – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Hopeless you say? Doesn’t matter. You fight it anyway. You get up every day, you gear up and you stand a post against it. Might it kill you? Sure, it might. But then again walking out your front door might kill you. My wife showed me a TikTok and the message was none of us get out of this life alive. We all, like John, die at the end. Why not be on the side of liberal democracy on your way out?

“He is in great fear, not knowing what might one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. That we should try to destroy the Ring itself has not yet entered into his darkest dream.” – The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

We know Trump is a malignant narcissist who projects his own perversions and malignancies onto others. He cannot fathom that the majority of Americans don’t want to be ruled by him. That’s why he says such stupid things like everybody loves that he got Roe overturned and sent back to the states or that women love him. He says he has plenty of votes to win and the only way Harris can win is if Democrats cheat. He believes it because he can’t imagine a world where most people despise him and are revulsed by him.

He’s about to get another shock after this election because Harris will win. I have reasons to believe it and am not just wishcasting.

There have been more than 17.8 million new voters registered since the 2022 midterm election. Just about half of these new registrants are Democrats, a third Republican and the remaining 17% or so unaffiliated.

Harris is winning older white people.

She is making gains among non-college educated whites.

She is nearly caught up to Trump as being seen as able to handle the economy.

She’s campaigning in North Carolina and Texas…TEXAS! You don’t campaign in Texas if you’re still worried about not being able to keep Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

She went on Fox News for what she knew would be an ambush interview.

Republicans have dumped over 80 garbage polls into the aggregates since the beginning of October.

These are not the moves a person losing a general election makes.

Gandalf also has words for those who would entice us to abandon hope less than two weeks out because they can’t bring themselves to trust what is actually happening out in the country.

“The treacherous are ever distrustful.” – The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Each of us has our part to play whether it’s making phone calls, writing postcards, knocking on doors, writing on SubStack 😉, driving someone to the polls, saying something nice to the poll workers when you vote. We don’t have to do it all, but we have to do our piece whatever it is.

“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Andrew Egger over at The Bulwark wrote that the cavalry is not coming to save us. That is not entirely true. We are the cavalry and we are coming. The leather of our saddles is creaking under our weight, the reins of our horses are jangling as they champ the bits ready to charge, the points of our lances are gleaming and waving in the air. You can start to hear the thunder of hooves as early voting has started. We don’t need the cavalry to save us, we are the cavalry and we’re coming to save the future for those that come after us.

After November 5^th when the counting is done and Trump has been put down again we will be able to say with Gandalf at the end of The Return of the King, “Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-Earth. Go in peace!”