Results of the election will not be certain for awhile, and surely there has been enough ranting and raving on the subject anyway. Unfortunately, the process tends to expose the truth that we may do what we will, to paraphrase Einstein, but we do not will what we will, that being driven by forces in our nature, in this case the tribal mindset.

If we live to old age, we realize the slow loss of control that attends a weakening body. With spinal problems we turn to a cane or walker. With arthritis we no longer can do many things for which we once could use our bare hands, but must reach for that most valuable of tools, a pliers. Along with such disabilities many things escape our control: the lawn, the shrubs, the trees, the stacks of books and papers, expired medications, neglected foodstuffs that draw the indomitable pantry moth. And then one day a young descendent enters the house and is heard to remark, "It's time for the bulldozers!"

Here we must observe that to lose control is a deep fear triggering, depending on the degree, the survival instinct in any living creature; and beyond anyone's control is the loss of one's peers in old age, after watching as each declines, sickens, and dies. Thus slowly with discernment and percipience we begin to feel the sense of that final loss of control, when "the angel with his darker draught draws up to thee." 

As early results from the elections trickle in, there are rays of hope that restore my faith in the American electorate, which may be awakening to the dangers of stoking the tribal instincts. Only through the freedom to vote may the will of the people be known, but today around the world we witness new maneuvers in the authoritarian playbook, even in America, to subvert that will. Surely our greatest fear should not be death, but the far greater loss of subjugation.