(The following was written on Nov. 3, 2020, in the evening.)

There is an energy about – at least here in Liberty, Missouri – perhaps too everywhere inside these boundaries called the United States. If I say this energy is palpable, this is said not entirely for cliché.

That should be qualified. I mean that I refer to this palpable energy not in service of its cliché but instead to question the structures of engagement in which it is able to become cliché.

I cannot quite place a word around this energy. It is not stable, it drifts in and out of form. I catch it in glimpses. Someone walks by wearing a sticker affirming their vote. 

There appears to be two options. “There are always third party candidates!” someone interjects. Ignoring the ironic cynicism that seems coextensive with an appeal to third parties, the two options to which I refer are these: vote or don’t. 

As with all dichotomies, there is nothing correct to be found within its terms. That is to say, neither option, to vote or to not, is correct. This is not, though, to say that either option is incorrect – that too would be a truth claim from within the terms of the dichotomy.

What I am concerned with knowing is how these became the options, how this day among days has been suspended in time, such that it is not just a day among days – it is the day we’ve been talking about, been anxiously expecting, been dreading. What I find interesting is that Nov. 3 presents itself as a dichotomy.

A news notification pops up on my screen: polls are beginning to close. The implicit message: if you haven’t voted, you better do so as soon as possible; if you have voted, clasp your hands and pray.

Perhaps this is presumptive of the Washington Post’s intentions. Nonetheless, it seems that what is sustaining the persistence of this day as an exceptional one is the normative expectation that to vote is correct. Assuming that the general narrative is that to vote is better than not, let us proceed.

The cliché, this palpable energy, finds its excessive obviousness as the dominating presumption that something big is occurring today. Namely, today is voting day, it is the day a new president is elected. This is a factual statement, but we should unpack some of the ideology.

Today is the day those who are allowed to vote may cast a ballot to choose between two white men competing to serve the title President of the United States for the coming four years.

This is, in fact, the most normal description of a presidential election day for the United States government. Still, this particular election is a return to normal after three presidential elections that exceeded the bounds of the normal description. Maybe that’s why this one is so terrifying.

Before abstracting, we should examine this at the greatest level of particularity. The vote is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. 

Biden and Trump. This reads best as a conjunction. I’m sitting in The Cage typing this, and happily I just overheard the perfect example: “it’s uh-oh either way.” Here are a few other examples: “they’re corrupt,” “they’re evil,” “they’ll ruin this country,” etc. 

“I’m voting for him to vote against him.”

The question, then, which is still my general question about the exceptional quality of this day, is why the imperative is to vote rather than not. Specifically, when given two highly objectionable options, why is the onus still to engage rather than to reject the very structure which continually produces highly objectionable candidates?

This is not to say that it is a better option not to vote. What I am asking for is that we reevaluate the ordering of our questions. The first question should not be between Trump and Biden. The first question should always be a structural one – we need to mercilessly interrogate the conception of necessity we attribute to government. What does this institution really do for us, people generally, not only well-off white cishet men?

Of course, this question should have been asked already, one should not have waited until election night to pose it. Perhaps it was not until tonight that I was impelled to write this because it was only tonight that the fear really became palpable for me.

I have not been able to shake the feeling that Donald Trump will retain the presidency, and I am terrified. Biden has just won California and has a commanding lead, but the feeling persists. My politics, my queerness, are endangered by a Trump presidency. My safety is threatened, yet I refused to vote for Biden. Perhaps I made the wrong choice, I really don’t know.

My justification appeals to something beyond my own safety: I imagine that the difference between Biden and Trump is minimal, for instance, to a Somalian under the fire of a military drone. In general, white supremacy is white supremacy, no matter how personable it looks shoving ice cream into its ghoulish face.

And I cannot shake the terror: maybe I made the wrong choice. I take comfort in knowing that, regardless, I would not have been voting in a swing state. 

To make my position clear: Donald Trump is despicable, and I find his presidency unique. Yet what I find unique about his presidency is that Trump is the most categorical manifestation of American politics we have yet seen. I will here repeat a text I just sent my friend, “Trump is America.”

American politics is akin to a casino game: pay more to play more, the house always wins. No matter who heads the thing, American power is interested only in its own maintenance and persistence. Exceptional though this day may feel, in effect it is only an evanescent moment within the history of genocidal occupation that calls itself the United States.

I am terrified that Donald Trump may win, but, for my comrades across the globe, I am terrified of Joe Biden as well. We must question the structure that leaves these as our only options and demands of us that we choose one.

For those interested in creating a brighter tomorrow, we have work to do. No matter who wins, we protect and feed one another, we protest, we occupy. Casting a ballot is not the most important political work. 

No matter who wins, we take the streets. No matter who wins, we fight for every inch of this blood soaked soil. 

Power to the people.

Stein, who is seeking the Green Party nomination, entered the world of politics in 2002 as a candidate for the governor of Massachusetts. After losing this election, she ran again in 2010 and lost, receiving 1.4 percent of votes. In the years in between her 2002 and 2010 gubernatorial candidacies, Stein ran for three other office positions: the House of Representatives in 2004, the Town Meeting Representative in 2005 and the Secretary of Commonwealth in 2006. Her only success was as the Town Meeting Representative, a title she was reelected to in 2008. In 2012, Stein became the most successful female presidential candidate when she won the Green Party nomination and received .36 percent of votes in the election. She announced her intent to run in the 2016 election Feb. 6, 2015.

Stein graduated from Harvard in 1973 with a degree in sociology, anthropology and psychology. After she received her undergraduate degree, she graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1979. Since then, Stein has worked as a physician, environmental-health advocate and teacher of internal medicine.

Stein became interested in the health education in 1998 when she learned about the toxic threats that children were exposed to and saw that politicians were not doing anything to change this. She has co-authored two books and served on many boards and committees that are working towards greater health and sustainability. One of the boards was for Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization working to protect the public from the spread of nuclear weapons, climate change and environmental toxins. She also developed her own education plan called “Healthy People, Healthy Planet,” a program that has been used at conferences across the nation to show the connection between human health, climate security and green economic revitalization.

If elected, Stein plans to focus on basic rights and freedoms. For example, she wishes to create living-wage jobs, establish tuition-free education through the college level and end destructive energy extraction.

Johnson is seeking the Libertarian Party nomination, the same position he ran for in 2012. He became active in politics in 1994 when he ran for governor of New Mexico. He was elected to this position as a member of the Republican Party in 1995 and served until 2003. During his 2012 campaign, Johnson received the most votes for a Libertarian candidate in history, placing third in the general election.

Prior to his involvement in politics, Johnson was a businessman and handyman. He founded Big J Enterprises, one of New Mexico’s largest construction companies. He started this company in 1976 as the only employee, and by the time he sold it in 1999, it was a multimillion dollar establishment with over 1,000 employees. Most recently, Johnson served as Chief Executive Officer of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. from July 2014 to the end of 2015, leaving to devote time to his presidential campaign.

Johnson wants to implement a strong government-balanced budget, a problem he has experience with from his time as governor. When he left his position in New Mexico, the state had around a one billion dollar budget surplus, and the size of the government had decreased. The budget surplus can largely be accredited to Johnson’s use of his veto power, which he used more than all 49 previous governors combined. Johnson implemented the cost-benefit approach, which allowed him to determine whether or not a project would be beneficial by comparing its cost to its expected benefits. During his time in office, taxes did not increase for six years, new road programs were established and two new private prisons were built.

Johnson plans to limit the government’s involvement in the personal lives of citizens. He believes that the government should allow individuals the freedom to make personal choices as long as no harm is done to other people. In his attempt to remove the government from personal lives, Johnson will implement a criminal justice reform that redefines which crimes should be punishable by incarceration.

Perhaps the most obscure third party candidate is Vermin Supreme, a performance artist and activist. Easily catching public attention, Supreme is known to wear a boot as a hat and carry around a large toothbrush. He recently came in fourth in the New Hampshire Democratic Primary.

This is not Supreme’s first time in the election. He has run for president seven times. His 2012 campaign platform consisted of zombie apocalypse awareness and time travel research. If elected, Supreme plans to implement a law requiring people to brush their teeth and has promised to provide every American with a pony.

Supreme describes his campaign as “joke humor,” making fun of the promises other candidates and the government make to the people. Supreme has indicated that he leads towards anarchism.