One thing we know for sure, a new America will be born on Tuesday.
Here's a comment I've written with some selections for reading on the historic election; in the words of my favourite Canadian songwriter, the land where people say the heart has got to open in a fundamental way.
If there's one thing we've learned from this election, it's the importance of fact-based journalism.
Please subscribe if you haven't yet to National Observer and keep reading, because I've selected three great stories for you to ease your way toward the U.S. presidential election from our recent work and a couple of essential stories from other publications, as well.
Hillary Clinton laughs last by Sandy Garossino on FBI, Wikileads, Guiliani and the weird stuff that happens to the woman who dares to run for U.S. president.
How will Homer Simpson vote? by David Minkow, a complete run down on how your fave Simpson characters will vote, with a link to Samantha Bea interviews with Russian trolls proud of subverting U.S. election.
If you care about the planet, vote for Hillary Clinton by Mark Leiren-Young who provides sharp commentary on the climate instability of Trump and the smarts of Clinton.
You know, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed the presidency to Bush back in the 2000 election, shadows crept over the land.
After 9/11, the shadows lengthened. The rhetoric from the right got louder and meaner: Howard Stern, Glenn Beck, Fox News. Now, we've got Breitbart, and, soon, maybe, Trump TV. Yup, it's scary. It really is.
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
Have you seen those words written on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty? Taken from a sonnet by Emma Lazarus,'The New Colossus', they greeted over 12 million immigrants who came to the U.S. from 1892 to 1954 alone.
"The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Those beautiful words seem quaint in an America that has hoisted a fascist so close to the White House he can see in its windows. With Trump, it's like the golden door of compassion slammed shut.
And yet, to me, those words on the Statue of Liberty are still what America really IS, the America I know and love, one nation formed from complexity, the country I grew up in. And maybe they're what American can still be.
But as Andrew Sullivan writes in New York Magazine this week,
'Fascism has never been on the ballot in America before. No candidate this close to power has signaled more clearly than Trump that he is a white-nationalist candidate determined to fight back against the browning of America...Trump offers an electrifying hope of revenge and revanchism. The fire he has lit will not be easily doused.'
In my opinion, the Republican nominee is probably treasonous, his minions seditious.
Yes, on the eve of grossest election in my lifetime, democracy is being openly subverted.
But as a rapper in a powerful video circulating on Facebook and based on Hamilton sings, "every election is an act of creation.'
'My Vote'
Watch and share with any American millennial you know who may be considering throwing away her or his vote.
Democracies are under threat by powerful, dark forces generating hateful propaganda. Journalism plays such an important role in counteracting those forces, in shining light where shadows hide the truth. So, please subscribe and support factual reporting in Canada, the work National Observer does best.
On that note, we have more U.S. election reports from a Canadian view point coming this week, along with powerful reporting from Mike De Souza, Elizabeth McSheffrey, Jenny Uechi and Sandy Garossino. And an essay by Amanda Robb.
But for now, I'll leave you with a link to Robert Reich's commentary on what will happen in the renaissance following the historic election of the first female president of the United States: THE FIRST HUNDRED DAYS AFTER NOVEMBER 8.
May the golden door open again.
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