We're all in Pins and Razors here. . .

 At the time of writing, the US election has been carrying on with agonizing slowness. Biden is just six lousy points away from victory, and has been for more than twenty-four hours now. The counting seems to be going at a snail's pace; the suspense is excruciating. 

At the time of writing, there are four states left to call. Trump needs to win all four. Biden only one. Trump is leading in three of them; Biden only in one. Biden's lead (in Nevada) is razor thin - only about 11,438 votes (according to the Toronto Star). It is not inconceivable that Trump could close that gap. 

Nor is it inconceivable that Biden could pull ahead in Georgia (behind 12, 835 votes) or North Carolina (behind 76,701 votes). 

The votes are still coming in. Is it any wonder Trump wants to stop them? 

Who knows what will happen. I am not the only one who wishes it would all just hurry up and resolve itself and get this wait over with. Just get it over with. 

In a few days time, this blog will seem hopelessly out of date. But for posterity's sake, I have to make note of where I was at this time, what I was seeing and thinking and feeling. A period of intolerable tension. 

Trump's jackboots are already swarming voting stations, demanding the counting be halted. They see no irony in their position - stopping a vote count in the name of democracy. Trump's got them all convinced these aren't even real votes. That hundreds of thousands if not millions are actually fraudulent. (None of his own of course). In Trump's America, voter fraud means voting against Trump. 

He's losing, and that's all the evidence he and his people needs. 

I wonder what will happen if any of those mobs decide to storm the counting stations, force their way past the guards and break through the doors. I can see them destroying box loads of ballots. 

The Sore-Loser in Chief is behaving exactly as predicted. Does anyone still doubt the threat he poses? 

Well, sixty million of his voters. . .

In short - Trump can still win. Even if he doesn't, he doesn't have to relinquish power 'till the new year. A lot of mischief can be done between now and then. 

Even if he loses, his ideas and his methods were not repudiated - millions and millions thought and think he was and is a perfectly great leader. 

He can run again in 2024. 

Even if he doesn't, someone else in his mold will. And he might know what he's doing. 

 So, the Amazing Randi's passed onto the great beyond. The magician-cum-skeptic-psychic hunter is, I suspect, already taunting mediums everywhere. 

I first encountered his work in high school, when our religion teacher of all people, showed us one of Randi's PBS specials. I'd never believed in all that psychic flim-flam, but I'd never seen it debunked so thoroughly before. Deep down, I think I figured that if there were anything to it, it'd be spoken of more often - maybe in places like science class, rather than dusty books my local library crammed in-between stories of UFO visitation and ghosts. In this way I explained away the occasional telepath or astrologer who apparently got it "right". The idea they were all just magicians was mind-blowing, and made so much obvious sense, I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before. 

Some true-blue believers insisted - usually through tears of rage - that Randi hadn't actually disproven anything. Just because he could duplicate these tricks didn't mean psychic powers didn't exist. Perhaps not, but he certainly made them irrelevant: even if they had powers, so what? Randi could do everything they could without those magic powers. Real or not, psychics became boring. 

Perhaps seeing that PBS documentary (or was it NOVA?), made me a little less susceptible to quack claims growing up.  Perhaps it made me that much more receptive to my third-year anthropology prof who taught us skepticism. Maybe it was the mental tools imparted there that soon turned their gaze to the more entrenched forms of "woo" doled out by certain Seperate School Boards. . .

  James Randi was no saint by any means - there were ethical questions surrounding his more intense investigations. He said some pretty unpleasant things about Social Darwinism. There were times he seemed a bit more contemptuous of certain people - victims of, if not perpetrators of nonsense - than was he needed to be. But, unless you're a Catholic theologian, I don't think you should be looking for saints. 

Almost no one takes psychics seriously anymore, and James Randi played him part in that. But health quackery is more widespread than ever, and thanks to a president who's not ashamed to spread it in a pandemic, more dangerous than ever. In politics and academia  as well as health, the very concept of reality itself seems under attack. People believe whatever pleases them, and make enemies of whatever doesn't. In some places, Democracy itself is crumbling. 

This was not a good time to lose James Randi.