Dear Friends and Blog Followers:
For more than a decade I’ve kept most controversial essays away from A Napper’s Companion. Nobody visits this site to learn my thoughts on politics and societal upheaval. But now we have a problem. We’re in the all-hands-on-deck phase of what I take to be our American crisis. In addition to information included in the full post available on my Matters of Conscience blog, consider what MAGA pillar Steve Bannon has to say about the 2026 midterm election: “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.” (That Bannon lacks official White House credentials doesn’t seem to matter.)
So, are you prepared to arrive at your polling places in November surrounded by pissed off masked men with weapons drawn? If you depend on nothing other than Fox News and Facebook for your information, you might think I’m being an overly dramatic libtard here. First, I’m neither a Democrat nor what you could consider a run-of-the-mill liberal. Second, when MAGA folks employ their favorite slur, they’re often unwittingly punching above their weight.
The blog post I’m letting you know about (link provided above) is still fairly fresh, and yet yesterday two public figures of note have weighed in on my side.
Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize laureate in economics, issued this warning: “So it’s just being realistic to say that MAGA will try, somehow, to prevent voters from having their say. Will ICE try to prevent blue districts from voting? If that fails, will they reject the results, in a midterm version of Jan. 6? Call me alarmist, but remember: The alarmists have been right, and the people telling us to calm down have been wrong, every step of the way.”
And Fresh Air Terry Gross shared this heads-up from Atlantic Writer Robert Kagan: “I think we’re already well into a dictatorship. It’s just a question of whether [Trump] will go ahead and basically disrupt the ’26 elections, which I think he’s made it clear he has every intention of doing now. So I think that this should be a five-alarm fire for everybody.”
My prediction: Donald Trump will invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to postpone or cancel the elections scheduled for November 3, 2026. He’ll accept no court decision prohibiting this action, nor will any mechanism short of the Republicans ushering their President and his administration out the White House door avert chaos. I know of no convincing, coordinated preventive response being planned or even contemplated at present. We shouldn’t kid ourselves, especially the elected officials with the power to act, if only they would summon the necessary courage and selflessness. Time grows short.
Thoughtful citizens may find themselves faced with choices I briefly suggest at the end of my blog post, “Plain Notes to Self Under Authoritarianism.” May this not be so.
Love,
John
A Napper's Companion 