It’s not even noon here in Florida but I’m starting to get an alarming feeling in my gut about the midterm congressional elections. Not that Ive heard anything about the early vote count/exit polls but I’m starting to catch a slightly rancid smell in the salty Sarasota air. Even my rescue black lab Harmony seems to sniff something amiss when I took her out to pee for the tenth time. She kept lifting her grey streaked snout skyward in various directions but especially towards certain swing states and gerrymandered voting districts here in Florida. These are places for the most part where broad based knowledge, critical thinking and higher education means college football, Fox News and maybe a Tucker Carlson seminar on “Feminism and Falling Sperm Count”. Perhaps Harmony is just smelling a dead seagull washed up on Casey Key near Steve Bannon’s fake primary residence or maybe it’s the latest El Nino climate change related storm front (Nicole?) about to finish off whats left of South Florida’s already eroded coastline and crumbling infrastructure…but I dont think so. In fact I really wish that was all my old incontinent hound dog and I were spidey-sensing.

Honestly I fear I’m vibing some kind of Tolkien-esque smoke signals on the far horizon of Middle-earth. Call it intuition or delusional paranoia but I believe I may be picking up on an almost imperceptible quantum shudder in the astral plane, a seemingly subtle yet real Jeff Goldblum Jurassic Park seismic shift in the fabric of space-time. This time not just one lousy genetically cloned Tyrannosaurus Rex or a couple extra clever Velociraptors but a dark omen and blinking neon sign portending the return of the True Evil One, Lord Trumpasaurus to Mordor along with his mentor Roy Cohn’s Orc army of grotesque looking MAGA zombies, flag-waving felons, and bought off ministers, minstrels and disbarred magistrates including Rudy Giuliani of “melting mascara fame” not to mention Marjorie Taylor Greene who actually resembles an Orc Crossfit queen in drag. That said I’m genuinely most afraid of the bloated Orange Comb-over Man..the demon called Donald. He cant be killed and like a honey badger he never gives up.

Even without the explicit Hobbit imagery such as Sauron’s disembodied flaming eye as am archetypical symbol of impending doom there is a dark brooding sense growing within me about the midterm elections going on right now as well as the Final Fantasy meets Final Destination winner-take-all Presidential election in 2024.

Maybe it’s just my never-ending frustration with the never working properly electronic perimeter security gates and key fob door locks to my way overpriced Sarasota condo complex but this election cycle seems like a planned takeover by the Trump wing of the Republican Party, one that could have/should have been avoided if Sleepy Joe would have just woken up. It’s as if Old King Biden in his castle keep (White House) along with many other Democratic leaders hobbled by age-related arthritis, Alzheimers and a plethora of family issues left the normally impenetrable front doors to the congressional elections unlocked, completely unguarded and essentially wide open. Like the DC police on Jan 6 who were the government’s “premier” security force they too were wholly unprepared, undersupplied, understaffed, fully compromised and personally conflicted about their solemn duty to use deadly force to secure the nation’s Capitol Building. As a result they looked in some cases like Paul Blart shopping mall cops on Segways unable to turn away what was not only a deadly serious national security threat but a wild mob of unruly Q-anon weirdos, village idiots and brainless Trump lovers wearing football jerseys, buffalo horn helmets and screaming for public executions and blood sacrifices.

So too these elections are occurring smack dab in the middle of an unprecedented time of political, psychological and behavioral craziness. A Covid crises, social media misinformation, and rapid technological and political change has resulted in extreme fear, distrust, polarized thinking, social isolation, increasing violence, economic insecurity and bad music. In other words, nothing is really feeling “secure” at the moment including my Florida apartment complex and it’s glitch prone 24/7 security system. Instead the Kingdom of USA itself is divided almost to the point it was when President Abraham Lincoln warned “A house divided cannot stand”. Weakened, polarized and in continual crisis…distracted by economic and financial woes and a wily Coyote recurring plague like virus that has already dispatched a million vulnerable Americans and compromised the physical and mental health of millions more. So yeah, the gates of individual and collective sanity, mental health, compassion, morality, understanding and common civility were left wide open and a mutant horde of brain-dead zombies, election deniers and QAnon rabble rousers are now likely to breach the ramparts and possibly gain control of the House of Representatives and many important state and general elections.

THEN, even worse, they (the newly elected politicians) might then just do the absolutely unthinkable and “release the Kracken”, the MAGA monster and return the Mad King to his gold toilet presidential throne along with his assorted racist violent vengeance-seeking gun-toting fringe followers. I’m REALLY hoping my physical nausea and this rambling reflection is nothing more than exaggerated anxiety, political paranoia or the leftover cognitive fog resulting from a flu bug or emerging strain of Covid yet to be identified. However, sometimes its the little things like past behavior that turns out to be the best predictor of future outcomes… including the predictable behavior of the lunatic MAGA sycophants who will probably end up running Congress when the Democratic party gives up the ghost. To wit: the complete absence of any publicly stated compassion, empathy, concern or common respect shown by so many Republican party leaders and Congressmen in regards to Nancy Pelosi’s elderly husband getting his skull caved in by a demented deranged politically motivated intruder gives me a slight shiver and the same kind of dark foreshadowing feeling reminiscent of Jeff Goldblum’s classic quote in Jurassic Park, “God I hate being right all the time”.