(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Midterm Terror [1] ['Greg Dworkin', 'Meteor Blades', 'Crimson Quillfeather'] Date: 2026-08-29 Lou voted in a borrowed middle school gymnasium set up with portable stand up booths for a quick, flimsy privacy. He marked black spots on a paper ballet for his choices, then he gave the paper to one of the staff who fed it into a counting machine. He used to be slightly embarrassed by the method of voting, paper versus electronic. Then he clued in. It may be primitive but that made it hard to corrupt from the internet, from anywhere in the world. Old man, he thought to himself climbing the stairs to the front of the school building, he exits the building on shaky knees, stopping at the door to catch his breath. He thinks that since the Fearless Leader continues to demonstrate his bottomless ignorance and callous disregard for the troubles of others, his rabid supporters would figure out how they were being played. The Convict in Chief had already declared any negative outcome for his sycophant candidates to be an election rigged or stolen. Only he was allowed to rig elections. Blaming others for your nefarious actions is as old as the playground, but some people still believe the guy. The old man shakes his head. Did he just waste his time? Sure doesn’t feel like the candidate crap shoot of old. It’s still early, the polls have only been open less than an hour. He sees a crowd forming; voters waiting to vote and some local vigilantes armed with an assortment of handguns legally licensed. Opposite is a group of masked men in pseudo uniforms with Glock nine millimeter pistols, not a Smith and Wesson among them. Being prior service, Lou can’t believe what he’s seeing. In his best parade ground voice, he bellow at the uniforms, “Gentlemen, if you held the courage of your convictions, you would be proud to show your faces. As you do not, you admit to being political thugs eager to find out how much you can get away with. Assault? Murder? Rape? Why not?” The leader of the group of B movie bandits takes a step towards him. “What you don’t know,” Lou continued, “is that once a dictator has crushed his political opposition, the minions that have been so useful become a threat. Every single dictator moves quickly to eliminate those who put them in power. If you put him in power, you can take him out. You must be purged.” “So I have a question. When you are against the wall in front of a firing squad, shouting Heil Trump, in the last seconds of your life, won’t you feel kind of stupid for letting yourself be made into disposable garbage?” Then comes the push, the stumble, the pavement, the shouting, the shooting, the screaming and the sirens. In the last seconds of his life, yes, the old man feels all kinds of stupid. He could have gone home, he could’ve stayed home, he could’ve stood on the sidelines and watched the massacre. But he had to open his mouth and speak truth to the delusional and got a bullet for his effort. What a way to die, in the gutter forlornly defending democracy, defending the constitution. They haven’t stolen the best years of his life or the best years of his country, they were long gone. He won’t have to watch the republic destroyed from within. He won’t have to live with the consequences. Maybe it wasn’t so stupid. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/29/800091074/community/midterm-terror/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/