I fell into a very deep sleep one very strange night and then I awoke to find myself in a very strange, alternate universe on November 6, 2024 — the day after the US presidential election. It was a realm of existence that was completely alien to me, although one that often manifested itself before, in planes of existence foreign to my own, when one looks backward down through the long and meandering annals of world history.

What I saw was not novel to me, intellectually speaking, but experientially. I had come to this country enraptured and deeply inspired by the following words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In that dream — or, more accurately, in that nightmare — the candidate who espoused malevolent hatred of mind, who touted acerbic bitterness of soul, who exuded unrelenting fear in spirit, who stoked an ever-widening chasm of social discontent, within a torrid conflagration of meanness and violence, won that election. How he managed to be victorious? Nobody was quite sure. But, he won. And against his gaiety and that of his surrogates I saw dark, threatening storm clouds forming and moving towards us from a distance.

The disease of malcontent began to spread internationally on high octane lies, on the outstretched wings of propaganda, and on burrowing conspiracy theories that were cultivated here but which had incorporated elixirs of oppression and of death which were gleefully imported from various parts of the world where good was demonised, where truth was scandalised, where decency was scorned, and where the worth of human life was trivialised and callously brutalised. We no longer had enemies as we, as a nation, had become our own enemies.

We had become complete strangers to what we once were and to all that we had aspired to be. We had become a stranger to the nations, no longer seen as a shining city upon a hill. And I heard one among us quote the words of, perhaps, the most wretched and forlorn of characters in human literature, where now life had come to imitate art:

“They cursed us. ‘Murderer’ they called us. They cursed us, and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone.”

“We wept to be so alone. (Fish, and we only wish, so juicy sweet.) And we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind.”

And then I saw myself, like millions of others, beginning to look to our legislators for deliverance, but, sadly, no help was to be found there. Then we looked to the courts, but, there too, no redress or succour was to found there. Law enforcement had become as a large, a cold, a hardened propeller, spinning violently but separated from its axle, mutilating, bloodying, maiming and killing all in its path.

And so, in that alternate universe after November 5, the social, cultural and political landscape took on a grey, depressing, dystopian form. This was not what I had imagined, not what I had prayed and had hoped for. Where was God? Why had He forsaken us? What evil had we done?

Those of us who still held on to our principles, who still believed in decency and in the worth of the human personality, soon found ourselves as vagabonds in the Earth, described by the Good Book as ones who had to endure “trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth”.

And then, after what seemed like a very long time, one of our number was lifted from the masses, arrested, placed before teeming masses to utter the following words:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

And then, not long afterwards, another from our number was lifted from the masses, arrested, and then placed in a dock only to utter the following words:

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle…. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

And, yet again, I heard another voice shouting out as to large roiling waves of the tempestuous sea:

“Dictators and oppressors should continue to fear me because I will be here for a long time.”

And then, I looked upwards to the heavens and asked: “Who are these who speak so nobly, so courageously and so defiantly, although such words are not strange to me? Who are those embers of hope? The first sounded like one named King of America, the second sounded like one called Mandela of South Africa and the last sounded like Walesa of Poland. But, who are they?”

Then said a voice which came to me on the wind: “They are the voices of inevitability which arise in the presence of tyranny and oppression. Injustice and brutality are never allowed to go unchallenged, despite the great cost of life. Although the heartbeats of what is right and of what is good might, at times, find themselves drowned out by the din of the arrogance of their braying, their existence and their purpose are perennial.”

And then, asked I again, “But, who are they?”

Then came the following reply: “They are you, and they are every person of conscience who still believes in the values of democracy, imperfect though they be, and they are they who will stop at nothing to obtain it, to maintain it, and to regain it.”

And, as suddenly as I had fallen into that dystopian nightmare I was awakened out if it, from off the restless pillow of my distress. Someone had called via telephone to find out if I had already gone in to cast my vote. It was just a dream, it was just a dream — a nightmare! But, how it could still become so very, very real!

Polls do not vote, people do.

Reprinted from the current edition of Public Opinion, the biweekly electronic periodical that provokes thought and discussion. It can be found at publicopinion.news

Al Murray