On Election Day 2016, the whole world is Winston Churchill
Contrary to what you might have seen many times on Facebook in recent days, Winston Churchill never actually said that America "always does the right thing, but only when it has exhausted all other options."
This misattributed quote seems to have originated in the US in the 1980s. It's a myth America has enjoyed telling about itself ever since. Hey, we've done some bad stuff, but things turn out for the best in the end, right? Just like in every TV show ever. Even the great British lion of democracy said so!
But he didn't. Churchill spent nearly two years fending off the Nazi menace alone, watching Britain's cities burn in the Blitz, hoping against hope that his American cousins would come to their senses. He was too frazzled for quips.
When Pearl Harbor finally forced President Roosevelt's hand in December 1941, Churchill's reaction was simply this: "I slept the sleep of the saved and thankful."
Like many of us, he had become an anxious wreck waiting for America to do the right thing -- and he knew it was far from inevitable. The U.S.A. might easily have continued to look inward, to listen to its "America first" demagogues, until it was too late.
On Election Day 2016, the whole world is Churchill.
We see all too clearly the dark path ahead. We've seen it for more than a year. When Donald Trump proposed banning 1.2 billion humans from entering the country on the basis of religion last December, he was still seen as a joke in his home country. No way could this guy get elected! (Even I tried to convince myself of that.)
The rest of the world was not laughing.
They'd seen guys like that get elected too often. When Trump elided his past positions, confusing and gaslighting voters, they'd seen that before too. Having no real policies, other than presenting the image of a strongman, is straight out of the fascist playbook.
When the FBI director made a questionable last-minute decision to reveal the existence of more emails in the investigation of Hillary Clinton, when pro-Trump FBI agents leaked demonstrably false claims about further investigations, the world saw a common election-fixing tactic: law enforcement putting its thumb on the scales of democracy.
The lifting of the FBI's cloud of suspicion may have given many voters a false sense of security. The polls tell us that Clinton is roughly 3 points ahead of her opponent. That may give many who weren't too thrilled with her in the first place a reason to stay home. Let others wait in those long lines. America has got this, right? America always does the right thing, right?
Take it from a Brit who's been wrestling with the ramifications of Brexit since June: Wrong.
Even now, Trump's defeat is far from inevitable. There is roughly a 1 in 3 chance that he may eke out a victory in the Electoral College. That is too close for comfort.
Before the Brexit vote, millions of British millennials looked at the polls -- which confidently predicted a victory for "Remain" -- and thought "we've got this." Turnout among the under-30s was disastrously low, and the "Leave" vote scored a shock victory.
Ignore the polls. Everything depends on turnout.
If you're reading this on election day, if the polls are still open, please take the time to vote. You get to be part of history, and you get to look the rest of the world squarely in the eyes and say: I did my part.
If you don't, if you're too pure for the process, you may be elevating a wannabe-strongman to a position where he can play with nuclear weapons, trash international agreements and generally destabilize the planet.
If you disagree with some of Clinton's policies, or have a nagging sense that she's just not trustworthy, please hold your nose and go to the polling booth anyway. Because we've seen what Trump wants to do with the levers of democracy itself.
He wants to send "poll watchers" to "certain areas" -- i.e. areas with minority voters. In the past few days, he has fought in court in Ohio for the right to intimidate voters.
What do you think a man like that would do with the Department of Justice? With the Supreme Court? With the Pentagon and the whole national security apparatus? With what remains of the Voting Rights Act?
If you don't exercise your democratic right this time around, you may find it harder -- if not impossible -- to change your mind and participate in four years' time.
Churchill, who fought the rise of homegrown British fascist Oswald Mosley through the 1930s, knew there was nothing inevitable about the entire system of voting, either.
After all, there's one fitting phrase for the occasion that we can definitively attribute to the late, great British Prime Minister. "Democracy is the worst form of government -- except all those other forms that have been tried."
Related: Will America join these other nations with female heads of state?
Topics Elections
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
