Sacramento County's one of a handful experimentally using all mail-in ballots. Got mine about three weeks ago. While I mailed the spring primary ballot, I find I miss the civic ritual of voting--that was, I think, the first time I'd missed voting in my life, all previously when it required a physical presence. So I walked a couple of miles over to McKinley Public Library last week, where there's a newfangled "voting center". Arrived when the doors opened, spotted the dropbox right away, and heard the librarian announce to the throng "you drop your ballots where that gentleman is depositing his". So I got to help out this year at a polling place!

I have a pretty good feeling about this election, in large part because women are pissed as hell, and we know what can happen (like Prohibition, but you win some, you lose some). One woman I've taken some inspiration from is Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, you might remember her, the wannabe Presidential assassin who tried to take a shot at Jerry Ford in 1975? That one, the Manson Girl. Turns out I accidentally moved into her place in January, which gives one pause. Not her specific apartment, but across the courtyard of the property, from where I can see her third-story garret windows.

Don't be alarmed, the lessons to take from Squeaky aren't utilitarian, even in the age of Trump. It's not about remembering to chamber a round in your Colt M1911 .45 pistol, so you're not squeaking comically to the TV cameras "it didn't go off!". I suppose there's the obvious lesson: Don't let a monster eat your brain. As true today of Trump as it was then of Manson.

But the insight I get from Squeaky is that she made the mistake of solipsism. Something like the Unabomber, she thought she had special knowledge of a problem, in this case air pollution damaging California's redwoods (nothing personal about Jerry, he was just supposed to be a violent symbol, a la Helter Skelter). People who think like that think of themselves as an extreme type of Paul Revere, compelled to bring the world to its senses with a violent shaking, with a bomb or with a gun.

But Squeaky and Kaczinski cut themselves off from humanity, and forgot the power of mass action. The first Earth Day was five years earlier, and the environmental movement was off to a solid start by 1975. The problem was solved through political pressure and resultant legislation; California's redwoods still stand. The extreme solipsist tends to think of David and Goliath solutions to perceived problems, the actions it's possible for the lone gunman, or lone bomber, to take. And picks up the asymmetrical weapon with the biggest bang.

I think that in 2018, mass political action is going to start kicking the ass of Donald Trump and his disgusting movement. The job won't be done Wednesday morning, but it'll be damn good and started. I'd call us at, fittingly, the Midway point fighting back after America was attacked at Pearl Harbor.

Is it time? Yes, I think it's finally time.

Japanese Admiral Yamamoto wrote in his diary after Pearl Harbor, "I fear all we have done is to awaken the sleeping giant, and to fill him with a terrible resolve."

"A terrible resolve". I think Wednesday we'll see that America's fighting back, once again, against a fascist attacker.