Changing The Guard

"We are increasingly anxious that this country is headed toward the worst post-election crisis in a century and a half."

"Our biggest concern is that disputed presidential election -- especially if there are close contests in a few swing states, or if one candidate denounces the legitimacy of the process -- could generate violence and bloodshed."

"We do not pull this alarm lightly."

Larry Diamond, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

"The ingredients for unrest are present."

"And most importantly, President Donald Trump, whose toxic rhetoric and willingness to court conflict to advance his personal interests have no precedent in modern U.S. history."

"The country faces an unfamiliar danger. While Americans have grown used to a certain level of rancour in these quadrennial campaigns, they have not in living memory faced the realistic prospect that the incumbent may reject the outcome or that armed violence may result."

Report: The International Crisis Group

A caravan of Donald Trump supporters were seen slowing traffic in the New York City area on Sunday. A spokesperson for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority said northbound traffic on the Garden State Parkway was blocked for a time

After a Trump supporter was killed in Portland last month, the leader of a far-right-wing militia group called others to rally with him: "Civil war is here, right now". And more recently, on the very day of the Presidential election Tuesday, an Antifa activist tweeted: "The best way to stop a racist with a gun is an anti-racist with a gun. Because they're not gonna stop having guns". And that seems to sum up the suspicion, fear and hatred that is consuming America between the left and the right, each convinced the other is out to slaughter them, and each prepared to meet the challenge in a polarized nation. 

And while they detest one another, threaten and malign one another, prepare to meet in mortal combat to settle their differences, they can always find the root cause of their disaffection in the presence of the world's everlasting public enemy number one and in Grand Rapids, Michigan that enemy was placed on warning alert. A century-old Jewish cemetery in Michigan was vandalized. "Trump" and "MAGA" painted in flaming red on tombstones just before the president visited the city in his final campaign rally.

 

Residents watch a Black Lives Matter protest march through their neighborhood on election day in Portland, Ore., Nov. 3, 2020.   Rian Dundon for TIME

 

Precautions have been taken to make it as difficult as conceivably possible for rioters and those who view protests as the perfect opportunity to run amok destroying, looting, and violently confronting those in their way. Before election day dawned a "non-scalable" fence was erected about the perimeter of the White House, constructed during the night, anticipating civil unrest the following day. That day, however, voters did their electoral duty, lining up at the polls and voting as though their lives depended on it. Orderly, determined and peaceful.

In Washington, however, storefronts were boarded over and federal buildings; the Treasury Department and others were fenced in. Officers were called in by the D.C. Police along with riot equipment assembled to confront an expected reaction "regardless of who wins", the chief of police said. Students at George Washington University were cautioned to stock up on food and medication to last a week. As in battening down the hatches for an expected challenge to civil society. 

The risk is that the tension consuming the population through political polarization in which the fraught issues of racial identity and economic equality are intertwined is on the boil. The stress and anticipation of an election result that will antagonize fifty percent of the population while causing jubilation in the other fifty percent give a point or two in a highly contested and uncertain race for the White House has highlighted an aura of expectation and uncertainty that has served to vulcanize opposing positions.

A record high 64 percent of voters were found through a final pre-election poll to be fearful of what would happen should their candidate lose; an emotional uncertainty shared almost equally by supporters of both President Trump and his challenger Joe Biden. Fully 77 percent of those polled felt the stakes involved to be steeper in 2020 than any previous election. In its end-of-campaign polling, Pew Research found only half of Trump supporters expressed confidence the election would take place without skulduggery.

 

Businesses board up their windows in New York City on Nov. 3, 2020.

Malike Sidibe for TIME

 

It is clear from previous Pew studies that the animosity level in the United States between Republican voters and Democrats runs deeper and more personal than it ever has; described as mutual "loathing", where 55 percent of Republicans claimed Democrats are "more immoral" than other Americans, and conversely 47 percent of Democrats claim the same of Republicans. Results which suggest that even should the election take place absent nightmare scenarios, the jaded and partisan country will be more difficult to govern.

Racial injustice, broad public protests, amplified by social media, and the final portion of the trifecta, the deadly, ruinous pandemic all conspired to increase political and social unrest this fateful year of 2020. All these events served to exacerbate the divide, deepening it and making it more dangerous, and none of these deep, divisive concerns will evaporate with the eventual results of the election. 

Armed demonstrators attend a rally in front of the Michigan state capitol building to protest the governor’s stay-at-home order on May 14, 2020, in Lansing, Michigan.

Scott Olson/Getty Images