One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 22 By Laurence Lerman Even as we’ve been barraged by coverage of the election over the past few weeks, abetted by the executive branch and the Grand Old (read: senile) Party’s certifiable behavior regarding the election’s certification, the month’s second most reported story—a close second—has been on the life, career and passing of Sean Connery at the age of 90 on October 31. As a years-long fan of the actor, Reel Streaming is proud to add to that still-growing collection of tributes and appraisals! Sean Connery’s signature role as superspy James Bond in seven films produced over a 20-year period—17 hours of celluloid, in toto—proved to be the ultimate trick-or-treat for the legendary movie star who died on Halloween. Through the alchemy of his looks, talent, attitude, brio and unstoppable physicality, Connery created a wholly fictional “secret agent” persona that the whole world believed in or, at the very least, wanted to be real. If only the real-life intelligence community yielded such genuine specimens as Connery’s James Bond, the world would be a smoother, sexier and, yes, safer place. Following 1971’s Diamonds are Forever, his sixth Bond outing, Connery embarked on the trickiest decade of what was to be an active 50-year acting career. It just wasn’t happening for Sean in the Seventies—more on that later—but he definitely returned to stylish form in the early Eighties. But it took him just about a decade, a dozen hit-or-miss and often forgettable projects and Terry Gilliam’s 1981 fantasy adventure Time Bandits to get there. As the story goes, director Gilliam and co-screenwriter Michael Palin’s Time Bandits script actually states in the scene where Agamemnon defeats a Minotaur in battle that the king then pulls off his visored helmet and “reveals himself to be none other than Sean Connery or an actor of equal or cheaper stature." As the pages circulated around the filmmaking community, word of his exalted stature in the script (which Gilliam only recently claims to have been a joke) made it back to Connery’s people. And several months later, Connery was on location at the Time Bandits set in Morocco, regally crafting the role of King Agamemnon. It was the then 50-year-old Connery’s performance of the steadfast and true Greek king of antiquity--at that time and in that film—that launched the subsequent two decades of his career as a mythologized cinema statesman, which bestowed upon him the status, respect and, most importantly, acting opportunities he had worked toward since the dawn of his career in the mid-1950s. From that point on, truly, he was frequently regarded by critics and audiences as being bigger than the movies he appeared in. The Eighties yielded Connery such successes as The Name of the Rose (1986), Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989) and 1987’s The Untouchables, for which he won his sole Academy Award. The Nineties found him equally triumphant and box office-worthy in The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Russia House (1990), Rising Sun (1993), The Rock (1996) and Entrapment (1999). (An aside: Though not a box office smash, 1981’s well-regarded Outland helmed by Peter Hyams—a reworking of High Noon in outer space with Connery’s marshal getting into a showdown at a mining colony on one of Jupiter’s moon—is an integral and criminally underappreciated chapter in Connery’s post-Seventies resurgence.) For me, it was those other roles Connery wangled between Bond films during his rise to superstardom in the Sixties and immediately thereafter in the Seventies that were the most curious. Those were the ones that revealed Connery was not content to coast through middle age on 007’s fumes (at least, not until the price was right for his return as Bond in 1983’s Never Say Never Again). The 1975 John Huston-directed Rudyard Kipling adaptation The Man Who Would Be King, with Connery playing opposite Michael Caine, the middle-aged Robin Hood tale Robin and Marion (1976) co-starring Audrey Hepburn and Michael Crichton’s 1978 period heist movie The Great Train Robbery are finest of the finest of these efforts. But there are others… First, it’s worth noting that Connery had amassed a couple of dozen credits as a supporting player in the years running up to his 1962 Bond debut in Dr. No. And there were some larger parts, as well, beginning with the 1959 Irish fantasy Darby O’Gill and the Little People. That fun was followed by a couple of Shakespeare adaptations for British TV—getting fired up as Hotspur in Henry IV (1960) and then taking on Macbeth in a 1961 production of “The Scottish Play” opposite the great Zoe Caldwell. (There’s a nice symmetry to the notion of the world’s most famous Scotsman portraying the theater’s most infamous Scotsman, isn’t there?) Following his underappreciated appearance in Hitchcock’s tricky but reappraisal-worthy Marnie (1964), Connery’s strangest attempt at De-Bonding his brand was 1966’s shaggy rom-com-drama A Fine Madness. It finds Connery hitting Manhattan as Samson Shillitoe, an angry, womanizing Greenwich Village poet plagued with writer’s block who sees a psychiatrist to work out his problems, but ends up getting his relief from said shrink’s wife. (And as she’s portrayed by Jean Seberg, who could blame him?) Co-starring Joanne Woodward as Rhoda, Samson’s long-suffering spouse, and such familiar-faced character players as John Fiedler, Sorrell Booke and Jackie Coogan, it’s exuberantly directed by Irwin Kershner with an eye for good NYC location work. Connery, putting aside his brogue for a not-quite New York accent, doesn’t really click as the poet, but he acquits himself comfortably when it comes to the anger and womanizing. In the not-bad 1971 heist flick The Anderson Tapes, Connery is an ex-con (ex-Connery?) who attempts to engineer the robbery of an entire apartment complex, not knowing that his every move is under video and audio surveillance. Again, there’s a solid supporting cast on hand, including Dyan Cannon, Ralph Meeker, Alan King, Margaret Hamilton and a young Christopher Walken. The Anderson Tapes is one of five collaborations Connery had with director Sidney Lumet over a 25-year period. There was also The Hill (1965) and The Offence (1973), two tough-as-nails dramas based on plays—the first about a British military detention camp in the Libyan desert, the second concerning an embittered police inspector conducting a brutal interrogation of a rape suspect. The other two, both considerably lighter, were the glittery 1974 Agatha Christie whodunit Murder on the Orient Express and the surprisingly boring crime comedy Family Business, which starred Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick as three generations of thieves. Then there are the other other films, the ones that aren’t discussed all that often—ones like Cuba, Richard Lester’s atmospheric but pointless 1979 melodrama about the weeks leading up the 1958 Cuban revolution, with Connery sweating bullets as a British mercenary taking the cash to train Battista’s troops to resist Castro’s revolt; 1974’s cheap-looking thriller The Terrorists, which finds Connery as a Scandinavian security chief (!) combating a group of hijackers in the fictional country of “Scandinavia;” Connery playing an idealistic Saudi American diplomat (!!) who gets behind the recognition of the State of Israel in the ridiculous 1976 political thriller The Next Man (which finished third the week it opened theatrically, behind the Charlton Heston football thriller Two Minute Warning and the raucous comedy Car Wash); Ronald Neame’s godawful 1979 all-star disaster film Meteor, featuring a scene where Connery’s frustrated American scientist snarls, “Why don’t you stick a broom up my ass? I can sweep the carpet on the way out.” Oh, and then there’s Zardoz. One of the first films Connery starred in following his second “official” departure from the Bond series, John Boorman’s 1974 sci-fi fantasy is set in a dystopian world of tomorrow. The futuristic landscape is populated by a group of immortals, The Eternals, who live in splendor, while another group, the rifle-toting Brutals, violently scrape by in a barren wasteland. Travelling between the two is a flying, oversized stone god known as “Zardoz,” who prophetically makes proclamations like, “The gun is good! The penis is evil!” Zardoz is a real out-there, baffling-bordering-on-incoherent film with a kind of bizarre internal logic that’s helped to generate an impressive cult following over the years, along with Connery’s dedicated star turn as a Brutal named Zed. Clad in a blood-red loin cloth, thigh-high boots and a yard-long pony tail, Zed’s get-up has inspired plenty of fringe Halloween costumes over the years, while his coupling with sexy co-star Charlotte Rampling tapped into just as many reveries. It’s strange to think that immediately after Connery hung up his tuxedo, he leapt as far outside the box as he could, locking and loading and screwing into a futuristic diaper. Perhaps for him it marked the kind of rebirth he had been seeking when he put Bond to bed. Or maybe, like the fleeting nature of making movies or Bond itself, it was just another way of taking something totally fictional and bringing it to vivid and sometimes startling life. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Anita Saesing With Thanksgiving around the corner, I’ve been taking some time to reflect. Although, I feel grateful for my life and the experiences I’ve had in my 26 years, I carry sadness with me—particularly in the bags under my eyes. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, because my thoughts are constantly running wild in my mind. I can’t stop thinking about how so many people are going through this holiday season without something or someone. I can hear the heaviness in the phone calls; I can see people struggling via messaging; I can feel the anxiety and confusion in their one-word responses. I know they want to say more, but they can’t seem to form the words. This pandemic has ripped apart our lives. Recently, I've been reallocating my time and efforts in order to help others. For certain people that could mean I message them every other day with a funny meme or inspirational quote. For others, I schedule phone calls throughout the week for them to vent about their lives—first-time parent duties, jobs they can’t quit because the job market is so volatile, or fears about the derailment of their future plans. Then there are some people that simply want me to just be present. I sit on the phone in my own home while my loved one is in his or her home, and we simultaneously watch a movie. Sometimes, we make little remarks or laugh, but most times, we just sit there together. Empathizing with my friends and family while being bombarded with the current events of the world is exhausting. I feel guilty admitting how tiring it is to support them and find time to sort out my own life and understand the world around me. I'm grappling with accepting that sometimes, my loved ones can only "take" now. I was taught as a child that relationships are give and take, but I didn't spend my childhood in a global pandemic. I feel like all the rules of "that's how it has always been done" can be thrown out the window. As I grow older, I don't think relationships are strictly 50/50. Personally, I feel like sometimes they can be 75/25 or 40/60, or whatever fraction someone chooses, because I feel like humans should be able to lean into their relationships and depend on their loved ones to help. I don’t want my relationships to feel transactional, where each person keeps a mental scoreboard of his or her exchanges. But how much is too much in regards to allocating my time and energy on someone or something? An excess can be detrimental to my mental (and physical) health. There’s information about serving sizes and recipes with exact measurements, but there's not a one-size-fits-all for self-preservation and self-care. Also, I am consumed with guilt when I can’t help someone. That dreadful feeling actually begins before I even form the words of rejecting my loved one’s request. I’ll obsess over what to say and how to say it. So, I’ve been reading articles about empaths, people who can experience what others are feeling even though they aren’t personally involved in a specific situation. Being able to empathize and feel with such intensity can be draining, so I’ve been utilizing some of the empathetic tips in my own life in order to save my sanity. For instance, I have to remind myself that it’s okay to take care of myself first. An important analogy of prioritizing oneself is on an airplane falling from the sky. Passengers are encouraged to put on their own oxygen masks before helping others. That’s what I’ve been trying to do lately—breathe life back into me and recharge myself. One form of self-care for me is to change my surroundings periodically. I do this by driving around with Christmas music blaring on the radio. Another form is that during part of the day, I turn on the Do Not Disturb feature on my iPhone. It allows me to focus on my own tasks without interruptions. One other form of self-care is I set a Daily Reminder to alert me when I spend too much time on Instagram. A self-preservation recommendation I try to follow is to set boundaries with loved ones. I’ve been using phrases like “I don’t have the mental headspace right now” or “On a scale of 1-10, how dire is the situation? Can I call you back in an hour or so?” In the beginning, some of my friends were hurt, but I explained that they shouldn’t take it personally. It has more to do with me and my state of mind and less to do with them and our relationship. Although, 2020 has been filled with devastation, depression, anxiety and loneliness, it has also been filled with laughter, love, opportunity and growth. Despite the occasional heartaches (and headaches), I am honored to be in my loved ones’ lives. I just have to remember that it’s okay to prioritize myself first sometimes. Anita Saesing has always been nomadic.  She was born in California, but spent her teenage years in Maryland and Pennsylvania.  Before she graduated from high school, an elderly couple from her previous apartment complex invited her to live with them in Arizona.  Four days after her high school graduation, she packed her bags and joined them on their cross-country road trip.  She spent her college years working at various places including a childcare center and hospital HR office.  She was the first in her family to graduate debt-free from college. Anita graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Grand Canyon University.  One day, she desires to live in Italy and “do as the Romans do.”

By Andy Borowitz November 19, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A Florida man who hates the job he has held for nearly four years is nevertheless refusing to leave it, puzzling psychologists. While many people are reluctant to leave jobs that they enjoy, the man has shown every sign of despising his job from the day he took it. Rather than applying himself to the tasks before him, he has gone to great lengths to avoid them, watching television most of the day and frequently leaving the office to play golf. Sometimes, he has even hidden in the basement of his workplace for hours, according to reports. And yet, despite his obvious distaste for his job, he has steadfastly refused to accept the fact that he was fired from it two weeks ago. Dr. Davis Logsdon, chairman of the psychology department of the University of Minnesota, proposed a possible explanation for the man’s bizarre actions. “This is the behavior of someone who has failed at many jobs,” he said. “On some level, he is terrified that he is not employable anywhere else.” Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

By Jessie Seigel/Washington, D.C. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has just won the 2020 election for President of the United States, the end of a process that felt as slow as snails moving through molasses. When that news hit, today cars were honking outside of my window, and people were hooting in euphoria. Because of COVID-19 concerns, I didn’t venture down to the White House and join the crowds there. But I went for a walk to drink in the honking horns passing through my neighborhood. There was a steady stream of cars—not a caravan but a STREAM, a RIVER—flowing in both directions up and down Connecticut Avenue, performing a symphony: call and response, then honking together in an odd kind of harmony as they passed each other. You’d think it would sound discordant, but it was beautiful to me. Just beautiful. I don’t remember feeling anything quite like it here in D.C., not even when Barack Obama was elected or inaugurated; those were spectacular and moving events, but in a different way. This was more of a catharsis, a tremendous release of all the stress we’ve been under for four years. We’ve been relieved of a monster and, for the moment, the good guys have won. I stood on the corner and waved at all the honkers with tears in my eyes. But, even in this moment of relief and hope, I walk somewhat in fear. During the last week, Donald Trump busied himself being the quintessential tinpot despot, a thief calling his victims thieves. As expected, during this last week, he proclaimed himself the winner, regardless of how the people actually voted, cried fraud where absentee ballots were being legally counted, took challenges to lower courts that have quickly tossed out his bogus claims, and threatened to take the matter to his bought-and-delivered Supreme Court. This descent into cartoonish, surrealistic fascism bodes ill for the months ahead. Trump and his minions can be counted upon to do as much mischief as possible during the transition period before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in on January 20th. But more importantly, if the Democrats don’t get control of the Senate, democracy will be on its deathbed regardless of who is president. If Mitch McConnell continues as Senate Majority Leader, he can block anything that Biden, Senate Democrats, or a Democratic House of Representatives attempt to do for the country. After all, McConnell is the man who prevented Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, from getting any consideration whatsoever. For the four years of the Trump administration, McConnell has blocked deliberation on bills coming to the Senate from the House, forced through right-wing judgeships, made a sham of Trump’s impeachment trial by refusing to permit witnesses to testify, and embraced retaliatory investigations of candidate Biden by the Senate’s Republican-led Homeland Security Committee. In his most recent travesty, McConnell forced through the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett while simultaneously refusing to work honestly with the House on meaningful, desperately needed COVID-19 economic relief. Can anyone think that, under a Democratic president, McConnell and the Senate Republicans will suddenly take a nonpartisan approach? A Republican majority in the Senate could not only prevent action on any Biden legislation but could, by refusing to confirm Biden’s nominees, wield a veto power over all his cabinet appointments. In effect, McConnell, Dictator of the Senate, could be the one to decide who Biden’s cabinet members will be. And instead of doing the business of the country, you can bet that McConnell’s Republican Senate would conduct more bogus investigations of Biden, even though the one that they recently concluded concerning corruption allegations involving Ukraine failed to find or manufacture any evidence of wrongdoing. They will do this in part as revenge for the much-deserved impeachment of Trump, and in part to prevent Biden from resolving our country’s very real problems. So what can we who care about democracy do? Based on this election, in January 2021, the Democrats will have 48 senators (46 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with them), and the Republicans will have 50. Two Senate races in Georgia are going to a runoff election on January 5th: Jon Ossoff (D) vs. incumbent David Purdue (R) and Raphael Warnock (D) versus incumbent Kelly Loeffler (R). If the Democrats could win those two seats, it would be momentous. There would be a tie in the number of senators and, with a Democratic vice-president to break tie votes, the Democrats would control the Senate. A Democrat would become Majority Leader. We would have a real chance to correct the damage done during the past four years and perhaps make some progress on Covid-19, jobs, health care, systemic racism, immigration, climate change, and a host of other crucial concerns that have worsened or been ignored under the Republican regime. So, okay. Now that Biden has become President-Elect, take your moment to celebrate. But please, don’t get too comfortable. The battle to save democracy is just starting. Though we may be exhausted by the battle just won, we must fight on without a break until January at least. If we can get Ossoff and Warnock Senate seats, maybe then, I will feel like I can take a true breath. Jessie Seigel is a fiction writer, an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. She has twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her work. But, Seigel also had a long career as a government attorney, in which she honed her analytic skills. Of this double career, Seigel would say, “I guess my right and left brains are well balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By Merrill Lynn Hansen Sunday, November 1 Dear Campaign Diary, The presidential election is in two days, and I'm writing to you, because my kids think it will be healthier for me than yelling at the TV and calling them to talk about how much I hate Donald Trump. They've also pointed out to me that I've been posting comments on Facebook in all caps, with expletives, and multiple exclamation points. They are concerned that there are some very weird people on Facebook who might see what I am writing and find out where I live. Trump came to Michigan two days ago and told his followers that their enemies are no longer limited to people who wear masks, his political opponents, the fake news media, and every person who has mailed in their ballots. Now they should hate doctors, because according to the President, whenever a patient with COVID-19 dies from cancer, pneumonia, or some other disease, the doctors report the cause of death as COVID-19. Per Trump, doctors earn $2,000 for every COVID-19 death they report. Several hours after the rally, I read a Facebook comment by a Trump supporter who claimed that he had a friend whose cousin’s husband broke every bone in his body in a motorcycle accident, but his doctor reported the cause of death as COVID-19. The good news is that President Obama and Joe Biden campaigned in Flint and Detroit yesterday. Obama told the socially distanced crowd and the people in their cars that he thought Trump's obsession with having large super-spreader rallies might be because no one attended his birthday parties when he was young. I'm certain that every mental-health professional who heard that comment agreed. I felt a sense of relief knowing that Obama and Biden were here in Michigan. I wasn't able to listen to their entire speeches, but I felt the good vibes when they were here. Oh no! I just heard Trump is coming back to Michigan, to host two more super-spreaders. I think the only reason he's coming back here is because he knows he's going to lose Michigan, and he wants to rile up his base so they'll breathe all over us Democrats here. I'm feeling very anxious about the election. My head hurts. Merrill Monday, November 2 Dear Campaign Diary, I fell asleep with the TV on last night, and as I was waking up, I heard Joe Scarborough say he didn't think there was any way Biden could win Florida tomorrow. C'mon! I thought that if Biden wins Florida, he will be the president-elect by the time I go to sleep tomorrow night. Oh, well, I'll check back later. I tuned into the news throughout the day, and had trouble keeping track of how many times Trump said Biden and the Democrats are trying to steal the election. I found it even more difficult to keep track of how many times he said that Amy Coney Barrett (whom he refers to "the highest court in the nation") won't let that happen. Trump keeps filing lawsuits to manipulate the outcome of the election, by preventing legally cast votes from being counted. Today, he filed a lawsuit to prevent 127,000 votes in Texas from being counted. His constitutional experts (sons Don Jr. and Eric) have advised him that if no votes are counted anywhere, he automatically remains in office. I wonder if the American taxpayers are paying for his lawsuits. One of the pollsters I've watched before just mentioned Virginia and Colorado as a path to the presidency for Biden. Virginia and Colorado? He never mentioned them before. Nobody has. I forgot that Virginia and Colorado were states. Trump is publicly trashing Dr. Fauci again. I hate Trump! I think I'm getting an ulcer. Merrill Election Day/ Tuesday November 3 Dear Campaign Diary, I woke up this morning, and heard Joe Scarborough discussing Trump's texts trashing Lady Gaga and Jon Bon Jovi, who are ardent Biden supporters. Really? We're in the middle of a pandemic during the most important election in recent history, people are dying, the economy is terrible and Trump is complaining about Lady Gaga and Jon Bon Jovi? One of the thousands of reasons why I didn't vote for Trump is because he likes Ted Nugent. I'm feeling a sense of gloom and doom. I keep remembering how excited I was on election night in 2016, until I realized that Hillary had lost. I'm preparing myself for a long night (a few long nights) that might not end well. I checked in on cable news for a short while to hear various pollsters' forecasts regarding the presidential race. Today, they were in complete agreement: "Trump might win, or Biden might win.” Apparently, they haven't forgotten election night 2016 either. I took a break for a while, and then got up enough courage to turn on the TV to watch the election night coverage. But there's too much information for me to process. "One of the difficulties Trump faces is his need to win at least some states that are leaning towards Biden. A win in Arizona could indicate Trump's chances are better than the polls suggest. However, there is reason for the Trump campaign to worry that some states that backed him in 2016 will opt for Biden this year.") Steve Kornacki is trying to explain everything to me. No really--he's looking right at me. He's got his Magic Board and his calculator, and somehow he gets the number of votes that have been counted; he punches them into his calculator; then he changes his Magic Board, looks at me again, turns and writes the percentage of votes that Trump or Biden is leading by. Then, he looks into the camera, directly at me, the way my son does, when he's trying to explain something to me, and gives up and says, "Don't worry about it, Mom, I'll explain it all to you later." One Republican Senate seat flips to Democrat. Yay! One Democratic Senate seat flips to Republican. Shit! I just heard a pundit say that Trump has worked very hard at making himself repulsive to women. I don't think he had to work too hard at that. I’m not sure if it's my imagination, but I think Trump is winning every southern state where his supporters’ parents are brothers and sisters. (I know I'm being mean, Dear Diary, but I can't help it.) Oy! Michigan might not report until Friday. Steve Kornacki just said that the Trump and Biden campaigns view Florida and Texas as "going for Trump.” (BREATHE!) Thank goodness. James Carville just said that "the first thing is, every Democrat, just put the razor blades and Ambien back in the medicine cabinet. We're going to be fine." I'm going to trust him, and put the razor blades away, but I'd take the Ambien if I had any. I think I have an irregular heartbeat. Merrill Wednesday, November 4 Dear Campaign Diary, I woke up this a.m. and heard Joe Scarborough say that he thought Biden was going to win, because Wayne County, Michigan has thousands of votes that haven't been counted. His panel of guests all thought Biden would carry Arizona and Wisconsin. But as I was falling back to sleep, I heard that around 2:30 a.m., Trump told his supporters (followers) at the White House, that he wanted the counting of all votes to stop, because he had already won the election. He accused Biden of cheating because "they're finding Biden's ballots everywhere.” Where is "everywhere"? I checked under my bed and pillow to see if I could find any, but there weren't any there. I saw an official on TV this afternoon say it would take a "state trooper to get him to stop counting legal ballots,” unless he is directed to do so by the Secretary of State. I don't know who he was, or where he was from, but every attorney general in the key states Trump is illegally claiming he won have said the same thing. The Post Office has been sued because it hasn't been timely in delivering ballots to certain states that were postmarked prior to election day, Of course, these are the ballots that Trump doesn't want counted. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the mail delays in certain key states, began as soon as Trump's Republican megadonor friend, Louis DeJoy, was appointed Postmaster General by the Trump-appointed Republican Board of Governors. Rumors are flying that Trump has ordered Bill Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter and Joe Biden. I think that he wants Rudy Giuliani as special counsel.) Trump is demanding a recall if it's close in Wisconsin. Biden says he doesn't need Pennsylvania or North Carolina. Steve Kornacki says the Carolinas are trending towards Trump. (I'll never listen to James Taylor sing "Carolina" again.) TRUMP SAID HE HEREBY CLAIMS MICHIGAN!!!! I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!! WE DECIDE IF HE CAN HAVE US!! HE CAN'T JUST CLAIM US!! STEVE, TELL TRUMP HE CAN'T CLAIM US!! I just heard that the latest controversy is Sharpiegate! What the hell is Sharpiegate and what does it have to with who's winning the presidential campaign? Does the possible historic shift of Arizona from a red state to a blue state depend upon the claim of one woman who said her vote for Trump was thrown out by the Secretary of State because she voted with a Sharpie that was provided to voters by poll workers? Talk to me Steve!!!! Pennsylvania might go to Biden! Arizona might go to Trump! WHAT happened to Georgia? I think I have acid reflux. Merrill Thursday, November 5 Dear Campaign Diary, I woke up this morning, turned on the television, and learned that Donald Trump is still our President. He's never leaving. The Biden campaign is calm and steady. They said they are confident that Biden is going to win. The Trump campaign says Trump has already been reelected. I don't know why I turn the TV on. had a self-imposed news blackout this afternoon, because I had to meet with a client and be pleasant, even though I suspect that he's a Trump supporter. Whenever he comes to the office, he always says he forgot his mask in the car, and I have to give him one to wear. I know it might seem silly, but I am having a difficult time holding back tears, after having just heard some of the speech Trump gave at the White House tonight. He accused "his opponents" of "trying to steal the election" and every secretary of state, attorney general, poll worker and mail-in voter of being corrupt and conspiring to rig the election in states that he "claims" are his. It was democracy that allowed this man to become our president, and it is democracy that should decide whether he is reelected. I have never thought that he loved our country or respected the office of the presidency. To add insult to injury, he had notes, which indicated his enablers participated in the preparation of the most historic speech of Trump's presidency, and it was ugly. Sharpiegate in Arizona is over! People love filling out their ballots with Sharpies. I suspect that same day voters who fill out their ballots in person using a Sharpie are Trump voters, and designated poll watchers from the Republican Party are making sure those ballots are counted, or Trump will take the matter to the Supreme Court. All eyes are still on Pennsylvania! If Biden wins Pennsylvania, he's going to be our next President! But, I'm concerned about the Secretary of State of Pennsylvania. She's under a lot of pressure, because Trump doesn't want provisional ballots counted. Actually, he doesn't want any possible Biden votes counted, and he has been to court several times to stop the counting. When the Secretary of State was asked if she has security for the people counting the votes, she didn't say, "Oh, we don't worry about things like that. Everything is fine." I’m not saying that Trump is going to have a bad reaction if he loses Pennsylvania, but I keep remembering that during the 2016 campaign, he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and not lose any voters. If I lived in Pennsylvania, I'd be concerned that the geographic location for such a shooting hadn't changed from Fifth Avenue to somewhere in Pennsylvania. Steve Kornacki says Trump may do well with the remaining mail-in ballots in Georgia, but the outstanding votes in the "bubbles" in Pennsylvania, are likely for Biden. I've watched election results for years, and I don't remember there ever being bubbles anywhere. Supposedly, the most heavily secured location in the country is where Biden lives. Reports are that Biden is preparing for the possibility that he will win Pennsylvania. One pundit said Biden was "ready to celebrate tonight, and then get to work.” Oh no--.Steve just crunched the numbers; talked about bubbles that haven't come in yet and said it will be hours before we know anything. I'm worried about him. If he announces that Biden won Pennsylvania, Trump will probably sue him for rigging his Magic Board. I think there's something wrong with my eyes. I have double vision when I try to read the captions on the screen: BBREAKING NNEWS! TTOO CCLOSE TTO CCALL. Merrill Friday, November 5 Dear Campaign Diary. I just woke up, and I'm not going to turn on the TV. I'll get too upset if I hear that Donald Trump claimed Pennsylvania and doesn't have to give it back. I rushed home from work tonight to turn on the TV. I missed Steve and his Magic Board and calculator. For the first time since I was ten, I like math. Steve is teaching me how to calculate percentages. I'm certain Biden is going to win Pennsylvania tonight. Words I never want to hear Steve say again: "Too close to call." Finally, despite all of the Trump lawsuits, the votes are still being counted in the remaining key states. Joe Biden just spoke to the American public. He was no longer campaigning for our votes. Instead, he thanked the 74 million people who voted for him and asked us all to be patient. Steve just crunched some more numbers in his head; wrote some percentages on the Board and turned and looked directly into the camera so I could see him. He knows Biden is going to win Pennsylvania tomorrow, and now, I know. I feel calm Merrill Saturday, November 7 Dear Campaign Diary, I JUST WITNESSED HISTORY! At approximately 11:20 a.m., IT WAS ANNOUNCED THAT JOE BIDEN IS GOING TO BE THE 46TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! OF AMERICA! COVID-19 IS spiking all around the country, and that played a major part in why the President-Elect received 74 million votes; more votes than any presidential candidate in history. People trust that he and our new Vice President-Elect, Kamala Harris, our first black female vice-president, are going to do everything they can, to heal our country, physically, emotionally, and economically. I don't think Donald Trump is ever going to acknowledge and respect the will of the people, and the integrity of democracy. I have no doubt, that is why he lost. I feel great! C'mon Diary. Let's go out to my car and honk the horn! Merrill Merrill Hansen is a legal assistant, living in West Bloomfield, Michigan. She describes herself as a frustrated writer, who wishes she could be Nora Ephron (when she was alive), if only for a day. She is a news-, political- and FB-junkie, a combination that requires a constant reminder that she needs to take deep cleansing breaths when responding to people who don't agree with her.

By Marieke Slovin Lewis/Bailleul, France, 1.8 miles from the Belgian border Wednesday, November 4, 2020 Though the memory of waking up in a dark morning four years earlier to election results that had turned 180 degrees from the night before still haunts me, I somehow managed to fall asleep yesterday on election night. This morning, my husband, Richard, and I sat side by side on the couch with our coffee and toast. When I started to talk about the election, my husband said he was trying not to think about it. Instead, I asked if he could help me pick out a juicer to order on Amazon. We do not have the best track record when it comes to ordering anything in metric. We first ordered things by looking at the photo to determine the size. My husband wound up with the world’s tiniest set of food and water bowls for our American size cats (one weighs 20 pounds and never fails to astound any Europeans who meet him) and then a rug that we had to fold over to fit in our first apartment in Brussels when he thought that one yard and one meter were pretty close. He had thought that a yard was a little bit bigger than a meter, but it turned out that a meter was a bit bigger than a yard. After that, we began to use a measuring tape for everything. Measuring only goes so far, however. Just the other day, I ordered the world’s largest tub of Vaseline because the cost per kilo was the lowest of all of the options. I thought I was ordering the same size as the smaller tub just to the left of the monstrosity that arrived. We have come to attribute the metric system to anything that does not make sense in our life in a foreign country as resulting from the metric system. Likewise, while searching for baking soda after giving up on ever finding it at the grocery store, I wound up with a large box in the cart. When I asked my husband if I should go ahead and order it, he said that perhaps we should wait for the election results before ordering 2 lbs. of baking soda. After breakfast, my husband began reading the news out loud. This did not inspire confidence. The New York Times told us that Florida had gone Republican (no surprise there) and that Georgia and North Carolina were still too close to call. My husband shared reports from CNN about the president’s threats to go to the Supreme Court if he was not declared the winner since it was midnight and he was ahead. I made dry heaving sounds and threatened to start vomiting for real. For us, this election will determine not only the future forward for our home country but also whether or not we ever return to the United States. We joked as we were preparing to move to Belgium in the summer of 2016 that at least we would be in Europe if the unthinkable were to happen. Neither of us believed the unthinkable could happen, and neither of us can imagine it happening a second time. My husband and I began the year 2020 in Belgium, where we experienced a first lockdown from mid-March through the beginning of June. Our plan had been to return to the United States at the end of May, when my husband would be finishing his doctorate at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) in Brussels, Belgium. However, with the pandemic in full swing we had to change our plans. We were initially relieved when my husband’s colleague offered him a one-year post-doc at a university in Lille, France, just beyond the Belgian border. However, now we have entered into our second lockdown of the year as the virus ravages and overwhelms Europe. Our small farmhouse rental has become even smaller as we navigate living and working under one roof for another indefinite period of time. On Wednesday afternoon, while my husband attempted to meet with his colleagues via Zoom, through what his boss described to the IT department (in French) as a “catastrophic Wi-Fi connection,” I went for a long walk with our dog. I stopped at the patisserie in town where we have found the best pastries and proceeded back out toward the farm fields. At least, we were in a country that makes exceptional bread and pastries, and the sun was shining. I saw a flock of grey partridges fly in formation from one field across the road where I had just walked and toward the far corner of another field. I wondered what it would be like to be solely focused on existing without the interruption of politics and the fear that the world will end far sooner should Trump (hereafter referred to with symbols %^$&*) be reelected. The gnawing dread that “the sky is falling” feels very visceral and very real these days. While I walked, I also texted with expat and Belgian friends, sharing our shock and horror over the unfolding of the election results. A queer friend who grew up in Flanders and now lives in Brussels texted: This voting has had a huge turnout of queer, POC [people of color], excluded people trying to reclaim human rights, and it doesn't matter? I cannot deal with that message. I responded: I know. No matter how much I reflect on it or do writing to make sense of how so many people can be so bigoted and selfish and entitled, I just can't make heads or tails of it in the end. My heart and mind just don't operate that way, so it's very difficult to imagine there are that many people who do. I suggested that perhaps this is simply another step as we near the Tower Card scenario that my husband talks about so often. The Tower Card in a tarot deck indicates change and destruction on a large scale. Perhaps, we must completely destroy our country in order to make it possible to rebuild a new one, for better or worse, I wrote. What the Tower Card might mean for the planet and the future of all the species that depend on it for their continued existence makes me start dry heaving all over again. There is so much going on right now with regard to the election and the two possible futures that might prevail. It is no wonder my system is in shock. There is only one path forward that offers the possibility of a future this planet and all of the many species and that depend upon its continued existence. The fact that this planet is the only one known to support life in the galaxy is enough to send another shock wave through my system. There is also the groundless feeling that comes from knowing there are so many people who act upon values that center around fear and hatred. Truly, neither my husband nor I can understand how anyone, especially women, could vote for such a villain. I will allow for a few people here and there because there's so many under-educated, religious zealots in the country, and the continued decrease in funding for education over the decades has done nothing to counter this trend. But an entire state going Republican still boggles the mind. The knowledge that millions of people have voted for $&%*^ is beyond comprehension. In the wake of the election limbo, I have been thinking about how and why a person might vote for the current President to be reelected. It is my most fervent hope that this desire does not stem from racism, bigotry, and fear of the perceived “other,” but rather from a false sense that this politician will deliver on his very false promises. There are so many people out there who are struggling financially, and I imagine there is a desperation and desire to believe these promises, though in truth they are no more than hypnotism and manipulation. I also know there are people out there who vote for themselves alone. As the election has dragged on, I remembered a colleague I met while working as an adventure camp counselor for the Audubon during my first summer after graduating from university. This colleague told me and other staff that he was Republican because it was in his best interest as a middle-aged white male. For me, this seemed counterintuitive as he was working for an environmental organization and the Republicans do not seem to have much love for the environment, but it was also an example of an insular, myopic, entitled view of the world. I was raised to act on behalf of the greater good, but this is clearly not the case or factor for many other people. There is a dissonance between the political agenda of the Republicans and the promises they make to their constituents. There is also a dissonance in their approach to the world. Republicans vote in their own self-interest rather than thinking about the needs of the many. The dissonance appears when one considers that not voting for the planet means they are ensuring that their future bloodline will eventually die out when the planet implodes, succumbing to the abuse and overuse wrought by our species. Okay, I will acknowledge that there are many selfish, entitled people out there and that many of them reside in the United States. But in the end, don't we all want the same basic things? A better future for our children? Do we not want them to be cared for? Do we not want them to have access to healthcare, clean air and water, and hope for their children and their children's children?

I don't have the answers, so I cope however I can. I text with friends. I go for long walks around the farm fields that surround our home in northern France. I write. I attempt to put a little wall of safety around my heart with only limited success. Regardless of the final election results, I feel like my heart, mind, body and soul are grieving that so many people could vote for the version of reality this villain intends to create. It makes me feel like I don't have a country, I told my husband this morning. He reflected on this idea and suggested that this has literally become true for us. Our identity cards for Belgium expired at the end of October. Our temporary visas for France expire today. We are still waiting for our identity cards to be approved and sent from the prefecture in Dunkirk. We are confined without a country, completely in limbo, I said. In France, the French word for “lockdown” is “confinement.” Thursday and Friday, November 5-6, 2020 Thursday morning, I did my usual meditation sit before deciding whether or not to read the news. When I opened my email and saw the daily New York Times digest with the line, “Trump’s path to victory grows increasingly narrow,” I decided it might be safe to proceed. Reading the news, however, did not instill any more confidence than it had the day before. Multiple states were still in play, and votes were being counted with both candidates remaining very close in both key states and several others. I have never responded well to moments of limbo in life, and I could feel my anxiety level soaring to new heights. My entire nervous system was on high alert from living in a state of limbo and uncertainty as the election droned on, and I moved through Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in a haze of stress and anxiety. While my husband was distracted by an online conference, I did my best to maintain some level of equilibrium. At least once an hour, I Googled “nytimes election” and read the updates. I tried watching late night comedians, but it was too depressing. To stay away from the news, I taught a yoga class by Zoom. I pored over online shopping sites to keep my mind carefully neutral. Blank. My many meditation and yoga teachers over the years have said that it is important to lean into discomfort rather than engage in selective numbing, but this past week feels like an exception on a global scale. I also tried chipping away at mundane activities. I dove into the pile of clothing I had set aside nearly a year earlier for mending. I did household chores, vacuuming, dusting, doing dishes, folding laundry. These undertakings help me feel like I have some iota of control in a world that feels like it is spinning increasingly faster and wilder than I am able to grasp. Plus, cleaning shows instant accomplishment, however fleeting, and I needed a sense of achievement. With the pandemic fast closing in on a year, I have the sense that all accomplishment has come to a grinding halt. As the current president threatened lawsuits and demanded recounts, my husband and I engaged in dialogue, musing over what country might let us in for political asylum should the worst happen. Even as Biden crept slowly and steadily forward, we were nervous about what it might mean to return to a country so divided. We have been talking about the election as a watershed with regard to staying in a European country or returning to the United States. Regardless of the result, it is difficult to imagine going back to a country that invests so little in the welfare of its citizens. Reviewing exit polls as the election dragged into a third, fourth, and fifth day and seeing just how many people still support the current president, we are realizing that we have absolutely no desire to live in a country with so many people who want this future for the United States and the rest of the world. It is one thing to know there are %^$&* supporters out there and another to know concretely when you see the millions of votes coming in. It isn’t just a few votes, it is millions. MILLIONS! A friend I met at a yoga teacher training in Belgium told me how there are people in the Flanders region of Belgium who can point to houses on their street and tell you who supported the Nazis in the Second World War. They are all still living there. Just as I would never want to live on the same street as a former Nazi, I have no interest in living on the same street as a %^$&* supporter. I want to interact with people who are different and who are excited to share their cultures, languages, and traditions. I do not want to live around people who vilify people who are different and who actively participate in promoting politicians who will polarize those who are different and take away their right to live an equitable, safe, and healthy life. I want to feel safe. There is a citizen militia in the town in Arizona we left just over four years ago. Recently, they went out in full force to meet the Black Lives Matter protestors. This does not feel safe to me. The farm fields that surround our home in northern France are dotted with bunkers in various states of decay, ever-present, poignant memorials of the cost of division. We live less than two miles from the Belgian border, and we can (and do) literally travel to Belgium and back on our morning walk. Thinking about the ongoing controversy over immigration and borders, the seemingly simple act of stepping off the French pavement and onto Belgian ground feels auspicious and momentous. Saturday, November 7, 2020 When The New York Times finally declared Biden the winner late on Saturday evening, I felt the curtain of the gloom and doom and fear of returning to a divided country begin to lift. A weight was gone from my shoulders, and I realized I was completely exhausted. It is already tiring living in a foreign country where even the most basic activities require a constant interpretation and translation. A grocery store trip is like going on a scavenger hunt. Recall my earlier mention of having yet to find the baking soda after two months. The election pushed me over the brink of fatigue. Days of treading water in a swirling sea of limbo, trying to be positive but worry that the worst could happen, had taken their toll. And yet, I felt a glimmer of hope for future with the knowledge that we would have a grounded, sane president once more. January 2021 was there like the sliver of light on the horizon, reminding us that dawn will arrive, like clockwork, every morning. Without the darkness of night, the coming of the light might not feel quite so significant, symbolic of the will to overcome and carry on in even the most difficult of times. And we shall overcome. Since we have been in lockdown and we live in a quiet, farming community in northern France, we didn’t hear any loud cheering, honking, or dancing in the street. None of the fireworks my mother-in-law texted that her neighbors were setting off. But even in the quiet of the evening, we knew in our hearts that the world had just shifted away from fear and toward hope. Friends posted congratulations on my Facebook page and sent messages via messenger and text. I saw an email in my inbox with the subject line, “OMFG! We shall be delivered!” and laughed out loud. It felt so good to laugh. On our final walk of the day to take our husky out for his evening constitutional, the darkness and lingering fog lent a certain gravity to the moment. Biden has his work cut out for him, my husband said. So many fires to put out and so many yet to come, I sighed. My husband spoke of elections past when the news coverage noted the rarity of a peaceful transition of power. We shared a feeling of unease with the impending transition in January 2021. We talked about all of the rights we take for granted that have come to feel so precious and tenuous over the past four years: the right to vote, gay marriage, a woman's right to choose, and on and on. As we neared our little farmhouse and saw the glimmer of light through the window, I felt my heart expand ever so slightly. I leaned into the feeling and smiled. Marieke Slovin Lewis is a writer, musician, composer, yoga teacher, and editor. She grew up in Massachusetts and holds a Ph.D. in Sustainability Education from Prescott College. Marieke is a wandering soul and has lived all over the world. She currently finds herself in a second lockdown in northeast France with her husband, Richard Lewis, three cats and a big white husky. Marieke strives to create balance in her life through long walks around the farm fields that surround her home; practicing yoga and meditation; singing and strumming on her ukulele or banging on her bodhran; and writing, writing, writing.

By Alan Resnick Although I’d thought about it many times, I’ve never kept a journal or a diary until this past week. There was just something about this election that felt different than any I remembered. The combination of nearly 250,000 Americans dead from an ongoing pandemic, seeing people lined up in their cars at food banks because they couldn’t afford to feed their families, a thwarted kidnap attempt on Michigan’s governor, and a president who I believe has no interest in the job other than lining his own pocket, not to mention on a personal level not being able to go to a restaurant or movie in almost eight months, left me with the feeling that, whatever the results, the outcome of this election would be a momentous one. ` So I decided to give it a try. The experience and the end result left me simultaneously hopeful and fearful for the future. It also left me with an unexpected man crush. More about that later. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2 It’s the day before the election, and like millions of Americans, these past few weeks leading up to the presidential election have been an emotional roller coaster for me, and I’m not much for amusement rides. Living in a swing state like Michigan makes the ride even more tumultuous although recent polls have consistently reported Joe Biden’s lead to be greater than the statistical margin of error. I decided that a trip to Costco would help to calm my nerves. I’m not sure if my motivation was simply to get out of the house, fear of violence depending on the election outcome, impending shortages of goods as the coronavirus races through the nation, or a combination of all three, but it seemed wise to purchase toilet paper, canned goods and dried pasta. The store was busy but manageable. While hunting items on my list, I couldn’t help but notice that many shoppers’ carts were filled to the brim with staples like paper goods and bottled water. It appears that others share my apprehension. I watched the local news while having lunch, and was disturbed by a trio of stories. The first involved the police removing two poll challengers from Detroit’s largest absentee ballot processing location, both escorted out due to mask and nuisance violations. A man possessed valid credentials for being a poll watcher, but wore a mask that looked like something straight out of a Friday the 13th movie. He repeatedly kept shouting that the process was “crooked.” And a 61-year-old woman who lived outside of the city refused to pull her mask up over her nose and caused a commotion near a table where ballots were being tabulated. The second story showed a retail chain store in Westland, a nearby suburb, being boarded up in anticipation of violence on Election Day or thereafter. And the third story shared the results from a Gallup poll conducted in September, which found that only 59% of respondents were either “very or at least somewhat confident” that the votes in the presidential election will be accurately cast and counted nationwide. This confidence level was 70% just two years ago. Perhaps I’m naïve, but this subject never entered my thoughts until this year and, even, now, I’m still one of the 59%. I committed to avoiding TV news for the rest of the day, and decided to scroll through a newspaper and catch up on local events. I immediately spotted a story about a Jewish cemetery in Grand Rapids, the town where Trump was to complete his campaign this evening, discovering that “TRUMP” and “MAGA” had been spray painted in red on multiple headstones. No determination had been made if this was simple vandalism or an anti-Semitic act. I had exceeded the daily recommended allowance of news consumption, so my wife and I watched The Voice and a Law & Order rerun. ELECTION DAY: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3 I slept poorly Monday night, getting out of bed at 4:30 a.m. on Election Day. It’s unclear if that was because our comforter was being cleaned and the backup is heavier and warmer or if I was anxious about the fate of our democracy. We watched Morning Joe on MSNBC, which is our daily fare. They showed the final television advertisement from the Lincoln Project, the group of former Republicans who’ve joined forces in an attempt to help prevent Trump from being reelected. In contrast to the merciless attack ads they typically produce, this one was quiet and somber. Narrated by Martin Sheen, the ad emphasizes that today represents “one last push to get the train back on the tracks,” and “one day where the whole world is watching, like a parent in the stands peeking through their fingers.” I found it both haunting and beautiful, truly terrifying in its own way. It left me with tears in my eyes. We had breakfast and watched the local news, which showed pictures of polling locations from around metropolitan Detroit. People were lined up wearing masks and socially distancing. No reports of anything crazy. But it was only 7:30 a.m. and the day was still young. I checked email and found one from a former colleague and Trump supporter who has put me on his distribution list. His email stated that he and his wife “did our best to influence the electing (sic) by voting. Will we be investigated by Mueller?” I thought about responding and indicating that this was a feeble attempt at humor. I also thought about writing something slightly more snarky and aggressive, but decided that the best course of action was to simply let it pass. I then checked my Facebook feed to see what my friends were up to on Election Day. A few posted photos of their “go-to” snacks and libations to help them get through today. Oreo Thins and M&M’s appeared to be neck and neck as the junk food of choice, but someone posted a picture of himself holding a fifth of Jim Beam, so this race could tighten up quite a bit. I watched the local news while having lunch, and learned that the local chapter of the NAACP had set up a voter intimidation hotline. The need for such a hotline is appalling, but it makes sense given the current climate. And our weatherperson reported that there were no efforts at voter intimidation at his local polling place. He failed to mention that he lives in a lily-white Republican enclave. After dinner, my wife and I settled in on the couch to watch the election results. We started with the Morning Joe crew on the Peacock streaming service, but gave up after about 20 minutes because the feed kept buffering. We switched to MSNBC, where the main desk was being anchored by Nicole Wallace, Rachel Maddow, and Joy Reid. The program also had Steve Kornacki, MSNBC’s national political correspondent and chief number-cruncher. He is the wizard of the so-called Big Board, a giant touch screen election board, slicing and dicing results as they came in. He was breaking things down at a frenetic pace, his flying fingers flipping through one screen after another. I’m guessing he will go into hibernation after this election has been decided and will not reawaken until October, 2022. Brian Williams was also on hand. His role was to deliver results once a projection had been made. One of the three anchors would announce “We have a projection,” some rousing introductory music would play over a graphic of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City being bathed in red, white, and blue lights, results would be displayed, and Williams would then read what was being shown on the screen. We shut this off as soon as they teased with “The polls have just closed in Ohio and we have a projection.” They handed it off to Williams who announced in stentorian tones: “It’s too early to call.” Ya think? That was enough for us, so we flipped over to the fourth episode of The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. We curled up in bed about 9:45 p.m. and went back to MSNBC. The results were depressing. None of the states where a winner had been projected had been flipped; Trump won the states he had won in 2016 and Biden won the states that Hillary Clinton had won. Results were troubling in the battleground states; Biden was either just slightly ahead or slightly behind. The Senate races were not turning out as predicted. Although Democrat John Hickenlooper was projected to be the winner against incumbent Republican Cory Gardner in Colorado, both Republicans Joni Ernst of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina looked like they were on their way to re-election. Even more distressing to a Michigander like me were the early results from our U.S. senatorial race. John James was leading the incumbent, Democrat Gary Peters, by a significant percentage, even though only 15% of the returns had been counted. James must be a fan of the old Seinfeld show, because his campaign is about absolutely nothing. This morning I saw what seemed to be a new television ad for James. It had beautiful shots of the fall colors and, while the camera panned over the scenery, the narrator spoke: ‘Michigan. John James is Michigan.” I still have no idea what he stands for, but I have come to agree with his wife’s assessment in an earlier ad that he has a big smile. It didn’t look like the outcome of the presidential race or our senatorial race would be decided today, but I was experiencing a feeling of impending doom. I tried to take solace in the forecasts of possible unrest and violence across the country being overblown, although it was reported that the National Guard was on alert in Chicago and Philadelphia. Things were not going as I had hoped. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4 I slept poorly again, getting out of bed at 3:45 a.m. I opened my iPad and saw an alert from the Wall Street Journal indicating that they had called the state of Arizona for Biden. Surprisingly, Fox News had made the same call. This was the first state that either candidate had flipped from 2016, and it opened up more pathways to 270 electoral votes for Biden. This was a nice way to start another long day. But my next alert was from the Washington Post, reporting that at 2:20 a.m., Trump proclaimed victory in front of about 150 cheering supporters in the White House. The President also took this opportunity to attack the integrity of the nation’s election system, threatening to take his case to the Supreme Court. Even though there were millions of votes left to be counted, Trump had seen enough. No news agency, network or cable channel had called the results in swing states like Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but Trump felt that he was either close enough to be leading or far enough ahead to deem the election over. In other words, “I like the results right now, it’s done.” It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to claim victory when you’re behind in the electoral vote, but Trump’s never been lacking in shamelessness. I poured a cup of coffee and turned on MSNBC. The evening anchor crew had been replaced, but there was my main man, Steve Kornacki, hair disheveled and clothes rumpled, madly flipping from screen to screen. Amazingly, his fingers had not become bloody stumps. I’d encourage Red Bull or some other energy drink to reach out to the man and offer him an endorsement deal. Kornacki’s maniacal screen manipulations demonstrated a clear and consistent point: many states that were still deemed “too close to call” had yet to tabulate early mail-in or walk-in ballots from major metropolitan areas, like Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. And these cities were expected to yield huge numbers of Democratic votes for Joe Biden. This was the red or blue “mirage” that many analysts and pundits had cautioned about yesterday evening. The hypothesis was that early results would heavily be influenced by the type of votes that were tabulated first. States which tabulated early ballots first were likely to show that Biden was ahead, as more Democrats were expected to be early voters. Conversely, states that tabulated same-day votes ahead of early votes were likely to show Trump in the lead, as more Republicans were expected to vote on Election Day. Someone in the White House had apparently led them to believe that early voting was fraudulent. After promising for 45 minutes that Milwaukee would be reported any minute, Kornacki went to his magic screen, swiped, and, voilà – Biden went from 100,000 votes behind to surging ahead. A little while later, the same thing happened as early votes from Detroit began to be reported. And our senatorial race began to tighten significantly. Things were beginning to look more promising. However, MSNBC was still not yet ready to declare Biden the victor in Arizona. I got another cup of coffee as one show ended and Morning Joe began. Mika, Joe and their revolving cast of contributors discussed the red and blue mirage and opined that they would rather be in Biden’s position right now than in Trump’s. They also observed that Trump’s desire to stop tabulating ballots and premature declaration of victory effectively suppressed a large percentage of the black vote, given the large percentage of blacks in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. What a cynical view, one which I agreed with completely. I ran a few errands after breakfast. Some of my neighbors’ campaign signs have been taken down and their lawns replaced with leaves that need to be raked. I made a sandwich, sat down to eat lunch, and turned on the local news. I learned that no one had yet called the state of Michigan for either candidate, and that the Michigan Secretary of State announced that there were at least another 100,000 ballots to be tabulated. I got suckered in by the red mirage and let out an audible gasp when a graphic appeared showing Biden trailing Trump by almost nine percentage points in Pennsylvania. But then NBC’s Lester Holt called on a reporter from Philadelphia, who indicated that she had been informed that there were still millions of uncounted ballots across the state. Holt then went to a reporter in Georgia. She had been told by a local official that there were still approximately 200,000 ballots to be counted in Georgia, most of them from Fulton and DeKalb counties, both considered strongly Democratic. It was very possible that Biden could move ahead when these ballots were counted, much like what happened in Milwaukee yesterday. A relatively uneventful day began to heat up in the afternoon. The Associated Press projected Joe Biden as the winner of Wisconsin. This projection was potentially a huge development, because it flipped Wisconsin from red to blue and gave Biden more paths to the magic number of 270. However, the Trump campaign had already vowed to challenge the results, as Wisconsin law permits a candidate to request a recount if the margin of victory is less than one percent (which it appears likely to be). The Trump campaign also announced it had filed a lawsuit in Michigan, seeking to halt the counting of ballots until it was given “meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process.” Soon after, police had to be called to the largest ballot counting facility in Detroit after election officials informed dozens of challengers that they could not enter the counting room; both parties had already surpassed the law-mandated maximum of 134 challengers. At least there were kernels of good news in this disturbing incident: no one was arrested or hurt, and both Republican and Democratic challengers were denied entry. Joe Biden held a press conference. Kamala Harris was standing off to the side, wearing a maroon mask that matched her pantsuit. Choosing his words carefully, Biden stated that, while he was not proclaiming victory, he was extremely confident that after the all the votes were tabulated, he and Harris would have more than 270 electoral votes. He cited the fact that his lead was growing larger in both Michigan and Pennsylvania as more and more votes were counted. He also emphasized that it is the people who decide the election results, not the President. Soon after, NBC News projected that Joe Biden was the winner of Michigan’s 16 electoral votes. This put him at 253, with him leading in Nevada and Arizona. If he was to win those two, that’s would be the ballgame. We mutually agreed to take a night off from watching election news. However, while scrolling through the Detroit News as we were watching the fifth episode of The Queen’s Gambit, I saw that Gary Peters had been declared the winner of Michigan’s U.S. Senator race. The Democrats chances of gaining a majority in the senate remained dicey, but they would have been toast if Peters lost. I don’t have a magic board, but it was a good day by my calculation. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5 I came downstairs at 5:45 a.m. and found my wife sitting on the couch, watching Way Too Early with Kasie Hunt while catching up on her many open Words with Friends games. I’m a Scrabble guy, having given up on Words with Friends after watching opponents play unrecognizable words, looking them up in the game’s dictionary, and reading that no definition was available. How can something be a word if there is no definition? No sign of Steve Kornacki, on either the last few minutes of Way Too Early or on Morning Joe. He either left the building or keeled over from sheer exhaustion. I learned that Trump and his brain trust had filed ballot-counting lawsuits in Georgia and Pennsylvania yesterday, in addition to the one filed in Michigan. The Washington Post quoted Justin Clark, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, as having provided the following rationale for these lawsuits: “With these key actions, President Trump is telling all Americans he will do whatever it takes to ensure the integrity of this election for the good of the nation.” What a patriot our President is! Since he didn’t win the Nobel Prize, perhaps he will award himself the Presidential Medal of Freedom once the election is over. I look forward to watching him attempt to secure it around his neck. The tone of the broadcast suggested that Biden was on the verge of winning the election; there were lots of sentences beginning with: “Should Vice-President Biden win. . . “. There was as much talk about the lawsuits as about voting results, and the general consensus was that the lawsuits were ridiculous, without evidence, and contradictory. Trump was attempting to get Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to stop counting ballots while simultaneously trying to get Arizona to keep counting votes because he was behind. I’m disgusted by the lawsuits but have a grudging admiration for the sheer brazenness of being able to talk out of both sides of your mouth while maintaining a straight face. I spent part of the morning assisting my wife in measuring an office building for window treatments. Actually, she did all the measuring while my role was jotting down the numbers. That girl can sure work a tape measure. When I got home, I did a quick check to see if any of the swing states had been called for either candidate, but found that votes were still being tabulated. I saw a Huffington Post news alert that the Biden campaign had declared earlier in the day that “victory is imminent.” A Washington Post news alert reported that the United States recorded more than 100,000 new coronavirus infections in a single day for the first time yesterday. Wouldn’t it be apropos if Biden became President-Elect the day after this horrific total was achieved? I took a look at Facebook to see how my friends were coping with the election and the pandemic. One of my friends posted: “The only way that Trump gets to 270 is if he loses 50 pounds.” People tell me I’m a tough audience, but this one made me laugh out loud. After watching a Zoom lecture on what it’s like to be a prison warden, I went down to the basement, stepped onto the treadmill, turned on MSNBC, and started to read the local newspapers online. The Detroit News quoted Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens as saying: “I have no basis to find that there’s a substantial likelihood of success on the merits as it relates to this defendant, nor am I convinced that there is a clear legal duty on the part of anyone who is promptly before this court to manage this issue.” In simpler terms, she tossed Trump’s lawsuit to stop counting mail-in ballots. MSNBC reported that a judge in Georgia threw out a comparable suit. I was rather pleased with myself for being able to collect all this information while not falling off the treadmill. Even better, to tweak an old Angels 1963 hit, “Hey La, Hey La, Kornacki’s back!” There he was, shirt neatly tucked back into pants, working the giant touch screen. Thankfully for both him and his audience, there was far less flipping between screens necessary, as the both the states that are still up for grabs and the counties still reporting are dwindling. But the counties yet to report tend to be heavily Democratic, and the votes to be tabulated are write-ins, both of which bode well for Biden. I sat down to watch the local evening news and saw a story about a viral video which began surfacing in the morning. The video was shot by Kellye SoRolle, a Texas attorney and member of “Lawyers for Trump,” a group organized in July of this year to mobilize support for Trump’s reelection campaign. The group includes both the current Attorneys General of Texas and Arkansas as well as Rudy Giuliani, so I’m sure it’s on the up-and-up. For reasons unstated, Ms. SoRolle happened to be hanging around outside of Detroit’s TCF Center, the city’s largest vote counting location, at 2:00 a.m. She spotted a man transferring a long black box from a van into a red wagon. Ms. SoRolle decided that the box was a ballot lockbox being wheeled into the counting center after the November 3rd deadline, and started taping. She was heard saying on the tape: “Looks like one of those lockboxes. Wish I could tell. . . Where does that guy come from so late at night? I thought all the polling places were closed. Yet we have a box.” The video was posted by the conservative website Texas Scorecard and, according to the Washington Post, was shared online thousands of times and viewed on YouTube nearly 200,000 times in one day. There was just one teeny, tiny problem: The man on the tape was photographer for WXYZ, Detroit’s ABC affiliate, and the box contained equipment he was schlepping into the TCF Center., President Trump came out of hiding this evening for a press conference. While trashing the election process in general, he gave a special shout-out to us Michiganders and particularly Detroiters. After falsely claiming that he had won the state, he stated that Detroit has a poor reputation for voter integrity. He falsely claimed that his campaign had been barred from observing vote counting in Detroit. And, of course, he also brought up Ms. SoRolle’s video as evidence that ballots that arrived after the polls had closed on Tuesday had been counted. Ironically, the Detroit News reported that Trump got nearly 5,000 more votes in Detroit this year than in 2016. As Trump was spewing out his lies, the broadcast cut away to NBC’s Lester Holt who said: “We have to cut away here because the president has made a number of false allegations.” ABC anchor David Muir said something similar as his network stopped airing the press conference. CBS cut away from the broadcast to Nancy Cordes, their congressional correspondent, who began to fact-check Trump’s claims. Both CNN and Fox News broadcast this abomination in its entirety. When it was over, CNN anchor Jake Tapper said: “What a sad night for the United States of America, to hear their president say that. To falsely accuse people of trying to steal the election. . . . It’s frankly pathetic.” And Fox News correspondent John Roberts came on at the conclusion and stated that his network had not seen any evidence of election fraud. The anchor of the broadcast, Brett Baier, concurred. My props to all of these networks. Even though he lost the Michigan senatorial election to Gary Peters by some 85,000 votes, John James decided to borrow a page from the Trump playbook and refused to concede. He tweeted: “I have deep concerns that millions of Michiganders may have been disenfranchised by a dishonest few who cheat.” He’s protesting an awful lot for a person who announced he didn’t need the job in one of his last television ads. We watched the sixth episode of The Queen’s Gambit, and flipped to MSNBC to see if the election had been called. It hadn’t, but Biden is closing the gap in both Georgia and Pennsylvania. It may be checkmate tomorrow FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 I came downstairs, made a pot of coffee, and turned on Morning Joe. As if they knew I had just tuned in, Joe and Mika threw it over to Steve Kornacki (What can I say? I’m wacky for Kornacki.) The Big Board showed that Biden had overtaken Trump in Georgia, and was closing fast on him in Pennsylvania. Between these results and expanding his lead in Nevada, it certainly looked like Biden was going to be president-elect. I was excited, but I couldn’t figure out exactly why. Was it the prospect of Biden winning or Trump losing? I think it was more the anticipation of Trump being fired. While I liked Biden, I truly detested Trump. I doubted that I was alone in this sentiment. I’ve heard Biden’s backstory more times than I could count and respect it greatly. And I felt back during the primaries that he had the best chance of any of the Democratic contenders to carry the Midwest or rebuild the so-called “blue wall”. But I find it difficult to get fired up about him or his positions. Then again, given that the Democratic Party seemed to have underperformed in this election, maybe a moderate is all that the country can tolerate. And his years as a senator may make him more effective in dealing with Congress than either Trump or Obama. I received an alert from the Detroit News reporting that approximately 200 protesters, many without masks and some carrying pistols, rallied earlier this morning outside the TCF Center in Detroit. The protesters demanded a recount of Michigan ballots and called for an investigation into Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. The rally included Phil Robinson, a cofounder of Michigan Liberty Militia and a group which reportedly has ties with men charged in the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Needless to say, “lock her up” chants were in the air. I received another news alert just before 6:00 p.m. Police had been called to the TCF Center to investigate a bomb threat. Fortunately, no bomb was found. The morning protest hadn’t subsided and had been joined by Biden supporters. It was reported that both sides were hurling insults and spitting at one another. As my wife checked her email after dinner, I flipped over to MSNBC to catch up on things. Protests similar to the one in Detroit were happening elsewhere, primarily in states that had still been undecided. Both Georgia Senate races were headed to runoff elections in January, since there was no candidate in either race who received a majority of the votes. So, the Senate is still in play for the Democrats. Joe Biden was going to be speaking later in the evening, and the preparations being made led to speculation that he would be declaring victory. But Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania all were still too close to call, so I’m guessing that he will make another call for patience. I read an article in the Washington Post which portrayed what was happening behind the scenes as advisers have raised with Trump the prospect of an electoral defeat and how he should handle such an outcome. Very few people interviewed for the piece believe that he will ever concede in the traditional sense, but instead will continue to claim that the election was stolen. Trump’s family still apparently believes that he should keep fighting, while a larger group of advisers and Republican officials believe that the race is over, and the only real issue is how best to break the news to the president. According to one source for the story, “They know he’s lost, but no one seems willing to tell King Lear or Mad King George that they’ve lost the empire.” SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7 It was exactly 11:02 a.m. when I learned that Joe Biden had been declared President-Elect. I had just turned on the TV after getting on the treadmill, and saw a graphic with a giant checkmark next to his name. Even though I had been expecting the outcome given how results in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania had been trending, I still found myself breathing a sigh of relief. It was fitting that a Scranton boy had his state put him over the top. But I couldn’t help thinking how much sweeter it would have been if it was Arizona that would have been the state that clinched it for Biden, as a little payback for John McCain and his family. I saw a Huffington Post article indicating that Trump got the news while he was out on one of his golf courses. Perhaps he took a mulligan after he was told. He probably would have taken one anyway, as he’s been reported to cheat in golf like most of the other areas of his life. Since “gracious” is not in his vocabulary, Trump released a statement reading: “The simple fact is this election is far from over. Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly contested states headed for mandatory recounts, or state where our campaign has valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor.” The statement made me think of Bluto in Animal House: “Nothing is over until we say it’s over.” The broadcast cut to people celebrating outside of the White House and in Times Square. As I watched the dancing and singing, I kept thinking about an article I read yesterday titled “What Is Wrong with 68 Million Americans?” written by Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a psychiatrist and faculty member in the Law and Psychiatry Division of Yale School of Medicine. The article caught my interest because I’ve been struggling mightily with the fact that 48% of voters went for Donald Trump. I’m staggered and truly frightened by that number. How can so many of my fellow Americans adore someone so ethically and morally repellent? Dr. Lee posits that the results of the election must be examined through a mental health lens rather than a political one. In other words, the attraction that many of Trump’s supporters have for him is far more psychological in nature than support with his positions or policies. She labels the bond between Trump and his supporters as “pathological,” and says that the toxic combination of Trump’s narcissism and sociopathy and the psychological wounds of his followers have led them to seek a parental figure. This has made them particularly vulnerable to someone manipulative or exploitative enough to claim that he will take care of them and protect them in unrealistic ways (e.g., “build that wall”). This, in turn, has resulted in conformity, loss of personality, and alignment with Trump’s thinking. Given this strong emotional bond, Dr. Lee predicts that Trump’s supporters will experience any threat to his position as a threat to themselves. This explains why they’ve responded with denial or disavowal when presented with negative facts about Trump. And, as the relationship has intensified over time, symptoms such as delusions, paranoia, and a tendency toward violence have emerged in followers. Many have described the relationship between Trump and his supporters as an abusive one, and Dr. Lee agrees: “Abused children rather blame themselves than the parent as a survival impulse, for the parent is their lifeline, and it is easier to believe that he or she could never do wrong—and the more untrue this belief, the more insistently they cling to it.” According to Dr. Lee, Trump’s psychopathologies suggest that, should he be defeated, he is capable of doing just about anything for his psychic survival, and “many of his followers will equally experience his downfall as a life-or-death matter.” Dr. Lee’s article made perfect sense to me as I thought about yesterday’s protests in Detroit and the story about the behind-the-scenes deliberations at the White House. What we’re seeing now may be the calm before the storm. If she is correct, neither Donald J. Trump nor his 48% will go gentle into that good night. Alan Resnick is an industrial psychologist with over 40 years of professional experience. He and his wife are sheltering at home in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He is passing the time by cooking, exercising, catching up on friends’ recommendations of must-see TV and writing.

By Laurence Lerman History began Tuesday—good history, prideful history, the kind of history we want to look back on—Tuesday night, actually. Tuesday night, November 3, 2020, Election Night. And though the history that firmly took root that evening was optimistic, enthusiastic and thrilling, there wasn’t any in terms of TV viewership—according to Nielsen ratings, 56.9 million viewers tuned in to the country’s broadcast and cable networks, down approximately 20% from 2016’s viewership of 71.5 million. Is it possible that the jangled nerves of approximately half the electorate weren’t prepared to double down on more potential jangle? A poll could be taken, but they don’t appear to be all that on-target these days. Stunningly, 2020’s historical Election Night—the opening salvo for a unblushingly nutty week—offered viewers an opportunity to take in the evening as extravagantly presented by TV’s two biggest cable news networks. CNN and MSNBC had their all stars sitting at their COVID-era, socially distanced panels and all revved up at the opening bell. CNN had the deeper bench, with Anderson Cooper flanked on each side by David Axelrod, Gloria Borger, Van Jones and Republican whipping boy Rick Santorum, with Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and Abby Phillip taking another long desk and Pamela Brown sitting at a third. At MSNBC, under the aegis of ringmaster Brian Williams, the insightful trio of Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace and Joy Reid were onboard to provide their interpretation and evaluation of the evening’s events. CNN also had its correspondents sprinkled across the nation—Miguel Martinez in Detroit, Kaitlan Collins in D.C., Sara Murray in Harrisburg and so on—at the ready for city-by-city color. Meanwhile, MSNBC seemed to rely more on local press affiliates for regional updates. Most memorable for me was one point when Rachel cut to Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts grinning and wisecracking, “If you’re Martha McSally, you’re breaking out the hard liquor about now,” an hour before Arizona’s incumbent Republican Senator was ousted by Democrat Mark Kelly. But as early as an hour and change into the coverage, as so much of the commentary was of the “too early to call” and “here’s what they should be nervous about” variety (which isn’t a surprise as the sun had yet to set in the central states), the networks’ cameras panned away from the talk and focused increasingly on the nationwide visual breakdowns provided by their state-of-the-art interactive touchscreen maps. Staples on TV-news political coverage for years, they proved invaluable as ever, as were the network warriors who wielded them like samurai swords, razzle-dazzling onlookers with their high-tech pageantry. On Tuesday night, it was John King of CNN and Steve Kornacki of MSNBC, a pair that—little did we know—would dominate our screens and national consciousness for the next 72 hours. King, CNN’s 57-year-old chief national correspondent, wearing a dark suit and spotted navy tie, and Kornacki, a national political correspondent for NBC, 16 years King’s junior, and sporting a white button-down with rolled up sleeves and a striped tie, each brought their own style to their respective interactive boards. King was easier-going and more coolheaded and comfortable in describing what he pointed at, clicked on and moved across his screen, the granular nature of the county-by-county breakdowns of a state like Texas (all 254 of ’em), notwithstanding. Kornacki, meanwhile, was the more emotional of the interactive guardians, quicker to exclaim something like, “Whoa, look at this!” or to digitally scribble down some electoral vote calculations on his Magic Wall. As the evening progressed, the polls began closing, and the numbers began to trickle in with more regularity and speed, the commentators on the panel took more and more of a backseat to the boys. It became clear by midevening that the commentators were serving more as respites for King and Kornacki, who deservedly earned a breather every quarter of an hour and a sip of water before continuing their ceaseless interactivity. (Even while on break, Kornacki could be seen courtesy of MSNBC’s gently invasive “Kornacki Cam.”) After King and Kornacki, the most active onscreen player was Wolf Blitzer on CNN, who would walk across the studio floor—in front and past Pamela Brown at her strangely situated CNN “Voting Desk”—to address John King in front of his two screens (one being substantially bigger than the other). At the height of the returns, when the numbers were coming in at their most rapid clip of the evening, K & K met the numeric challenge and matched their speed. At one dizzying point, the colors on their screens—state-shaped blues and reds and pinks and grays—were expanding and shrinking and shooting about in such a psychedelic rush that I felt myself flashing back to a liquid light display at a Zappa concert at the Fillmore in ’67. If the majority of the commentators’ functions were to add color to the coverage of the proceedings, it definitely wasn’t necessary at that point, the networks’ artists having traded in their oils and paints for equally luminescent computer-generated images. As the witching hour drew nigh and the tabulations gave way to predictions and projections, it became clear that the nail-bitingly close election was coming down to Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsyl-friggin’-vania; a quintet of states in search of the answers held in their cyclone of ballots—in-person, mail-in, absentee, provisional, military and so on. Counting them up is all that remained to be done and there was no more need for commentary as the Eastern portion of the country prepared to call it a night. The lateness of the hour had no bearing on Donald J. Trump, who, at 2:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (technically, the morning after Election Night), would proudly reveal, without a note of irony, that he was his own favorite commentator. That’s right—at 2:30 a.m, whatshisname and his campaign held a press conference in the White House East Room and he feverishly spouted, “We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop!” He wants it to stop, he wants it to stop. At that moment, watching the Commander-in-Chief’s insane ramblings, an estimated half of the Election Night viewership was wishing for the same thing, just as the other half was yearnng only for the cessation of ranting from the blowhard on the screen. Perhaps it would cease the next afternoon. Or the day after. And it would be HUGE. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Andy Borowitz November 9, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Dr. Anthony Fauci is excited to have someone to talk to, Fauci has confirmed. After months of having no one to talk to, Fauci said, the idea of saying something and having another person hear it is “a real kick.” “It’s been a little lonely,” Fauci said. “I’ve been doing a lot of journaling.” “Sometimes, I’ve found myself talking to my dog,” he added. “I think my poor dog has gotten sick of hearing my voice. I’ve been driving him a little bit nutso.” Reflecting on his months without anyone to talk to, Fauci observed, “It wasn’t a walk in the park.” He added, “I don’t know how Scott Atlas is gonna deal with it.” Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

A Poem by Dr. Barry Lubetkin I cried last night. I know why I did not cry when the paparazzi destroyed Di After all, she was not my princess I did not cry when JFK. was slaughtered After all, I was young and naïve I did not cry when John Lennon was murdered. After all, I had too much work to do that day I did not cry when the wicked witch was vanquished After all, she deserved it But oh, did I cry last night! I cried for the 250,000 souls the monster abandoned I cried for the “different ones“ to whom he had been so indifferent I cried for the air and the flowers that he was so willing to choke I cried for his minions who have been so misinformed I cried for the leaders whose fear of the bully castrated them I cried for the scientists whose voices had been silenced! I cried for the women who were told they did not own their own bodies I cried for a democracy that has been on life support But at noon today I didn’t cry anymore The horror movie has ended Tears cannot last when the sun finally shines and dries them The City of Brotherly Love ended the four-year eclipse My country no longer feels alien I will draw a happy face on my mask We are saved. Barry Lubetkin, Ph.D. is the co-director and co-founder of the Institute for Behavior Therapy in New York City. He is the author of numerous academic and popular articles, as well as two popular self-help books, Bailing Out and Why Do I Need You to Love Me in Order to Like Myself. The Institute for Behavior Therapy is the oldest private cognitive behavior center in the United States.