Fear is in the air.  This is the season of shadows, of dark and anxious thoughts.  Monsters lurk in every corner.  The flesh crawls, the blood runs cold, and nightmares rule the night.  I only wish I was referring to Halloween.  But I am referring, instead, to the weeks leading up to the forthcoming U.S.presidential election.

I would prefer my fear to be the old horror story chestnut of the “nameless dread,” but unfortunately it has a name, and one that I am sick to death of hearing.  A name that has become synonymous with infantilism, corruption, hatred, predation, and  would-be fascism.  Like a foul, fluorescent orange turd, his image surfaces amidst the flotsam and jetsam of each day’s news cycle.  An inescapable recurring nightmare.  I don’t want to think about him, or talk about him.  Certainly not write about him.  But the best I can manage is to refuse to name him.

I am filled with foreboding, losing sleep over what will happen on November 5th.  I want to be hopeful, I really do.  I want to believe that the most powerful nation on Earth is on the verge of finally coming to its senses, and about to turn its back on the demented MAGA extremism of recent years.  I want to believe that it will, at such long last, elect its first female President.

Unfortunately, my optimism can’t seem to manage that stretch.  The fact that the race appears to be neck-and-neck at this point is bewildering to me, and I can’t help but fear the worst.  Will the quiet voices of logic and reason be heard above the idiot howling of anger and lies? I worry that they won’t be.

And it’s not just that I have very little faith in the American electorate.  It seems to me that time and again, and all around the world, the forces of fear, greed, hatred, self-interest and intolerance hold the upper hand.  The examples, from race riots to wars, from economic enslavement to the erosion of women’s rights, are apparent nearly everywhere you look.

In Canada, for example, we readily elect provincial governments, such as those in Ontario and Alberta, that care nothing for the environment or the common good and offer no vision for the future beyond protecting the interests of the rich by slashing taxes, gutting services, dismantling health care, and hobbling any chance of environmentally progressive legislation.  Far from tackling climate change, bolstering human rights, and eradicating poverty, we seem to be moving by leaps and bounds in the wrong direction.  Perhaps these are just the inevitable symptoms of what I think of as terminal, stage four capitalism.  Maybe, when all is said and done, the status quo is beyond saving, and we should brace ourselves for the inevitable collapse of the system, dealing with whatever may arise.

There’s also, I hope, the strong possibility that my pessimism is unwarranted.  That this nightmare I have about where our future is headed is just the sound of something going bump in the night.  That we are, in fact, on the threshold of real and positive change.

At any rate, maybe sharing these fears with others is a way to lessen the grip of the night terrors, and dispel s.  After all, hasn’t that always been the purpose of the scary stories human beings have been telling each other since time began?