Storm Surge Alert

"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it."

"But in my mind, it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace -- a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity ..."

"And how stands the city on this winter night?"

President Ronald Reagan, farewell address to Washington

 

"Our local lumberyard asked what's going on, why such a big order [of plywood]?"

"I said, 'We think all hell is going to break loose'. That's why we are stocking up [with a two-year supply for retailers who ask their stores be boarded up as a precaution]."

Colorado contractor

 

"[The U.S. Marshals Service stands] ready to respond to violent acts of civil disobedience [should the occasion arise out of the potential of election unrest]."

U.S. Marshals Service

 

"There have been no requests from other agencies to support at this time, but we’re always available to support whether it’s [a metropolitan police department] or ther federal agencies."

"We support law enforcement, whether that is at the federal or state and local levels."

"We don’t police American streets."

U.S.Army’s top civilian, Ryan McCarthy

Voters waiting in line to cast their ballots at the Metropolitan Multi-Services Center in Houston on Tuesday.  Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

"[I see] no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election. Zero."

"This isn't the first time that someone has suggested that there might be a contested election. And if there is, it'll be handled appropriately by the courts and by the U.S. Congress."

"The Constitution and laws of the U.S. and the states establish procedures for carrying out elections, and for resolving disputes over the outcome of elections ... I do not see the US military as part of this process."

"In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. Military."

"I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military."

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley 

A helicopter passes over the White House, seen behind a fence and protest posters, the day before the U.S. presidential election. (Erin Scott/Reuters)

President Trump at it again, right, stirring up consequential questions over his presidential authority, calling on the military to do his bidding, right? Perhaps not. Although there is little doubt that what the president said spurred the thought that it might be useful to involve the military, when he caviled over whether he would willingly accept the outcome of the presidential election if it just so happened that his challenger won, and not he. "I have to see, look, I have to see, I'm not just going to say yes, I'm not going to say no, and I didn't last time either", he responded to an interviewer's question. 

 

He has, in fact, evaded questions probing whether or not  he would accept an election's verdict on his presidency by choosing not to re-elect him for another four-year term. And it was former Vice-President Joe Biden who speculated when asked what the outcome might be if he won the election and Mr. Trump refused to step down: "I promise you, I'm absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch," Biden said, in reference to the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

 

This is, indisputably, an election like none other preceding it in the United States. There have been previous elections that have been highly polarized in the past, that have brought dissenters out into the streets causing riots, looting, violence responded to by local police and by the national guard. Passions run high when the electorate has been so fractured; it does everywhere and anywhere in the world. But contesting election results generally occurs in developing countries, in countries run by dictatorships, not in the oldest, most influential and powerful democracy in the world.

 

Workers board up a store on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles in preparation for election day. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Like fearful and desperate geographic areas with a forewarning of a powerful hurricane reacting by boarding up vulnerable places of business against the threat of a natural force devastating its target, fences and hoarding have gone up around critical government buildings, in front of shops and businesses in anticipation of raging mobs running berserk with rage through the streets of the capital and many other cities across the nation. Neighbours whose political views fail to sync eye one another with contempt.

 

Polarized political groups arm themselves with insults and threats and when those run out the nation with the world's reputation as the most gun-available can bring out their weapons and 'protect' themselves and their partisan interests by shooting those they fear mean them ill, before they are themselves the victims of a campaign that has hardened positions and threatened the balance of tolerance and acceptance of differences in a free and democratic society.

 

Craftsmen attach wooden boards to the shop windows of the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. Photo: Christina Horsten/picture alliance via Getty Images

Back in June of this year when rioters and looters smashed and grabbed whatever they could to placate their rage and purported grief over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, their 'cause' in Black Lives Matter was taken up in sympathetic chorus and imitation protests that turned into riots all over the United States, and they didn't stop there. Protests, riots and looting took place in international venues as well. A trial run, a dress rehearsal, some in the intelligence field believe, for what may be yet to come, post-election.

 

In New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, progressive U.S. liberals boarded their storefronts and condo lobbies, along with public buildings in fear of violent eruptions of raging mobs comprised of the far left. Just as Black and other racialized store owners in depressed communities confronted Black Lives Matter rioters as they ransacked and looted their shops, begging them to stop, and sometimes paying for it with beatings, the compassionate wealthy liberal-minded business owners anticipate their businesses falling to violent vandalism.

 

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have made their final pitches to the American people in the race for the White House. (Carlos Barria/Reuters, Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

 

As for Washington, well the capital is in a kind of lock-down. A protective, unscalable fence has gone up around the White House, government buildings have been boarded and fenced off. Plywood, Plexiglas and private security along with pit bulls are in place and on alert in this divided America where if the Republicans are returned to power their Democratic supporters will foam and fulminate, and if the Democrats take the White House, Republican voters will shrill their anger and post their threats.