Cassandra

Erica Jong speculates on the outcome of an Obama electoral loss in terms which set the standard for the word hysteria.

Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can’t cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves.”

“My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium.”

“After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…”

“If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it’s not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.”

“Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act.”

Beer, boys, beer. It’s time to drink a beer. Even in the unlikely event that what Erica Jong predicts happens, I would rather die drunk than die insane.

Barack Obama, who is sometimes reported as so far ahead that the election is already over, was reported as uttering these portentous words on CNN:

“Don’t believe for a second this election is over. Don’t think for a minute that power concedes anything. It’s gonna get nasty, I’m sure, in the next four days,” Obama told a crowd in Columbia, Missouri, on Thursday night.

“They will throw everything at us like they’ve been doing, and we’re gonna have to work like our future depends on it in this last week. You know what? Because it does, and every single young person here tonight — I’ve gotta have every single one of you voting, and you’ve gotta grab five more, all of you, have gotta vote,” he said.

Open thread. Why are the atmospherics like this? Is this the result of extremist campaigning on the Left? On the Right? On both sides? Or is just media hype? Part of the problem may arise from the effect of self-fulfilling prophecies: The term describes the phenomenon where “a prophecy declared as truth when it is actually false may sufficiently influence people, either through fear or logical confusion, so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy. … If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”