Waiting For the End of the World in Lord Nelson's Toilet

In the course of fending off my gnawing existential dread about the election, I found myself looking at Lord Horatio Nelson's toilet - hero of Trafalgar, icon of British naval power - wedged at a curious oblong angle into the constantly under-refurbishment hulk of the HMS Victory.

And it did make me feel a little bit better.

I had no grand plan to be looking at Lord Nelson's bathroom in Portsmouth in the lead-up to the hideously important 2024 US election. It just sort of happened, in that I was invited to speak about threats to civilians from small drones at an event in London, and I decided that it might do me some good to extend my trip by a few days. Specifically, it might do me some good to try to distract myself from the constant screaming in my head about what might happen if Trump wins by means of looking at stuff like legendarily huge beds at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a bunch of historical ships in Portsmouth.

It mostly worked, but a distraction is a distraction, and you can't fend off the inexorable passage of time. Which means that right now, right here, it's November 4th, the election is tomorrow, and I am back in Boston.

I sit here attempting to interpret how I feel about waiting these last few hours for the final reckoning, the Big Day. Unfortunately, I am absolutely terrible at figuring out how I feel about things. I guess that's why I'm writing this. It's solipsistic. Self-indulgent. Naval-gazing. But of course, isn't that what Internet newsletters are for?

So bear with me for a minute, as I jot down some of my final thoughts on the eve of what will either be one of the worst or the most relieving weeks of my life.

Scroll to the end if you just want my suggestions for making nachos.

Over the last few months, I've largely been handling the droning, impending dread of the election better than expected. Much better than I did in 2020, where the one-two punch of the election and the escalating horrors of Covid made me feel like I'd lost months of my life to a red mist of alternating rage and terror. And yet last week, even as I tried to focus my thoughts on steam-powered armoured frigates, regional Indian food, and the ancient weird history of Winchester, the twisting, nauseating, gut-centered fear began to creep back in.

I felt it when I noticed Winchester Cathedral's handsome altar dedicated to the people of Ukraine, which made my thoughts turn to what will likely happen to them if Trump wins, and if he (as he almost certainly will) decides to let Putin do whatever the hell he wants. It also did not escape my attention that no such altar existed for the civilians of Gaza, who have suffered immensely due to America's support of Israel's blood-soaked campaign, and whose suffering I very genuinely fear will grow even worse under Trump.

As I write this, I keep feeling the fear in drips and drabs, creeping in whenever I let my attention wander. Like so many of you, I'm flashed instantly back to that horrible night in 2016 when it became suddenly apparent that the next decade of so many people's lives, including my own, were going to be even more terrifying than we'd anticipated.

I remember the hangover the next day from the entire bottle of whiskey my partner and I drunk, how I didn't eat for three days after the fact, how the next four years were a relentless parade of horrible cruelty, idiot Nazis parading (and killing) in the streets, existential uncertainty, and plague. I also remember watching January 6th unfold in real time, from the out-in-the-open planning on social media to the hordes of red-hat clad freaks quite literally shitting on the rug of American democracy, and the fear becomes intermixed, as it ever is, with white-hot rage.

Mostly, I've been trying to outrun the fear, averaging a solid ten miles a day of walking in mercifully mostly-OK English weather. I log in to my social media accounts, and try to avoid looking at the polls, but of course I see them anyway. I log out again. I log in again. I get into a dumb argument, just to feel something, and then I feel guilty about getting in a dumb argument (just to feel something). I am just one among many thousands of people who subconsciously believe that the next post we see will ease our minds about how all of this is going to go. Even if we know, intellectually, that the only way out is through.

The dread nature of November 4th, 2024, has not come as a surprise to me, in this, an era in which it feels really important for one to reassure others that one is very rarely surprised about anything horrible that happens in US affairs (just really disappointed).

I've been fearing the arrival of an election which would decide if the US remained a democracy for over a decade now, one way or another. I do not say this so you'll be impressed with me. Internally, I eye-roll at the people who declare on social media that THEY saw the insidious shadow of American fascism creeping over the land EARLY (with the obvious implication that You Other People Were Too Busy at Brunch to Even Notice).

Yes, I suppose I did start worrying about a clear and present danger to the basic functionality of American democracy a while ago, back in the fall of 2013 when I started noticing the similarities between how Mitch McConnell's ever more wild-eyed GOP was actively attempting to prevent President Obama from governing, and the kleptocratic dictatorships I'd been reporting on in Southeast Asia in 2013.

And more importantly, I wasn't the first to notice this. Not by a very, very long shot.

As many have pointed out, the US only really became a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And from there, the trail of white grievance that led us to Donald Trump pretending to fellate a microphone at a political rally began to be blazed sometime around the election of Ronald Reagan, and was further hacked out of the underbrush by the grim likes of Jerry Falwell, Newt Gingrich (who I once yelled at about the fate of wild mustangs as a small child at the Atlanta Zoo in 1997), and the Supreme Court as it existed on December 12, 2000.

In other words, the seeds for all this bullshit were planted well before I was born, and I'm merely one of many, many people destined to spend their adult lives watching an enormous asteroid grow closer, ever inexorably closer, to a possibly game-ending impact in the territories of the United States. Except this metaphor is terrible, because asteroids inevitability is a product of impartial nature, while the Trump movement has been brought about by the active efforts of loathsome humans imbued with free will.

Maybe it's been more like watching the progress of an extremely slow-moving fleet of 33 or so ships of the line.

I am not proud of this exceedingly modest prescience of mine about the grand expansion of American fascist ambitions, which is why I don't quite understand those who wear Seeing It Coming like a badge of honor. Mostly, it's completely sucked shit.

Mostly, I've spent a lot of time feeling guilty, wondering if there's anything more I could have personally done to prevent the US collectively skidding right up to the brink of the Grand Canyon in an already-moldering Cybertruck and flipping a coin to decide if we jump in. Yes, I'd like to believe I've chipped away at the world getting worse in my own tiny way, in my own weird little niche that I can loosely define as "stop tech from becoming more evil than it already is." But maybe I should have run for something. Stuck with DC policy jobs. Started a mutual aid organization. Skipped the damn work trip to London entirely and knocked on doors instead.

However, to return to my incredibly shit asteroid metaphor, the good thing about the MAGA movement being brought about by the collective efforts of a bunch of repugnant human beings is that it is not inevitable. The movement can be defeated, and it can be defeated in ways that are more legible and available to the average person than, I don't know, audaciously defying your admiral's orders by breaking formation and then near-suicidally yet successfully steering your third-rate ship of the line right into the line of fire of the largest warship in the world.

For one thing, we can vote the bastards out.

I have great sympathy with the people who complain about how voting absolutely isn't enough, and that it is extremely dangerous to assume that simply strolling to the polls once every two years or so will be adequate to defend democracy and basic human rights from the worsening menace of right wing extremism. They're right about that. But voting the bastards out is a crucial element of our eventual and (I believe) inevitable victory.

The thing before the thing. A treble-shotted raking broadside smack-dab through the stern of the enemy's flagship vessel, to communicate in the naval warfare terms that I'm sure Horatio Nelson thought about a lot while sitting on his aforementioned toilet.

I do think we're going to win this. Even in the dark days of the last couple weeks before Ann Selzer released her poll, I've remained committed to this belief - which is no small feat for me, a constitutionally extremely depressing person.

I have taken immense solace in @golikehellmachine's THEY ARE NOT GOING TO BREAK US, THEY ARE GOING TO BREAK UPON US mantra on Bluesky. I do believe that the majority of the American people are tired of miserable MAGA assholes, from those with immense and totally un-deserved power like Elon Musk (a person who I loathe to an extent that I am genuinely impressed is possible), to the lower-level flavor of local MAGA asshole that owns a car dealership and bullies innocent people for wearing masks to grocery store.

I do think that while the US does contain a stunningly high percentage of rat-bastards, it also contains a stunningly high percentage of people willing to do what it takes to defend our collective freedoms from couch-fucking rich weirdos who want to deport millions of innocent people, murder women who need abortions, brutalize trans people, and kill children with food-borne listeria. I also believe that we have the resolve and the numbers to refuse to permit Donald Trump and his goons from using violence, uncertainty, and a wildly corrupt Supreme Court to steal this country from us.

I don't know what tomorrow will bring. But I am happy you're here, I'm happy you're reading this (God help you), and I believe that we can make evil men suffer for the evil that they have done. I will catch you on the other side.

Or, in the immortal words of Horatio Nelson: kiss me, Harris.

THE FASHION BY WHICH I MAKE NACHOS

I am making nachos tomorrow night, operating under the theory that there is no better balm for an uncertain heart than chips with cheese on them.

Here is how I make them.

First: acquire chips, of multiple sturdy varieties. I like a combination of Salsa Verde Tostitos, Cool Ranch or Spicy Nacho Doritos, whatever the local brand of fancy home-made tortilla chips is, and some Flamin' Hot Cheetos to remind me that no God or billionaire can tame the human spirit.

Second: Make a cheese sauce. I like this classically Tex-Mex recipe for Chile con Queso, except I make a few crucial modifications.

One: I usually don't bother with the ground meat (I usually have other leftover meat for nacho purposes).

Two, and most importantly, I throw a block of Velveeta in there along with the real cheese. Velveeta adds an essential je ne sais quoi to nachos, a meltingly trashy purity of spirit and purpose. I also like adding some chopped up chipotle peppers in adobo, the ones you can buy in cans.

If you don't want to fool with all of that making a roux business, you will get perfectly delicious results by melting a block of Velveeta and dumping a can of Ro-Tel into it. Add a little milk if you want a more liquid consistency.

Third: Get a big-ass baking sheet and cover it with foil. Don't use parchment paper, as we're sticking this under the broiler and you don't want to burn your house down. Spray the foil with cooking spray or olive oil. Lay down a layer of chips, then pour cheese sauce onto them with a ladle.

Add some chopped pickled jalapenos if you're into that (I am). Add whatever meat you'd like to add, or some beans or another vegetarian substitute.

Repeat with another layer of chips and cheese, and repeat again as needed. Sprinkle some more grated cheese over the top of the layered chips and sauce.

Fourth: Turn your broiler on to high. Stick the nachos in.

Keep a SHARP eye on them - they will burn very quickly. Pull them out, and serve on a table with the optional toppings arrayed beside them. Get everybody to grab bowls and allow them to serve themselves.

IDEAS FOR ACCOMPANIMENTS TO NACHOS

Sour cream.

Hot crema kinda (combine sour cream, lime juice, chipotle hot sauce or Sriracha, Kewpie mayo, stir).

Guacamole.

Optional Meat if you're feeding vegetarians.

Freshly made salsas (it's easier than you might think - or just grab some from your local taqueria, if you are so lucky to have one).

Good jarred salsas.

Array of hot sauces.

Chopped fresh jalapenos.

Bean dip or other warmed beans.

Lime wedges.