Within any given timeframe, events may occur of such national significance and deep impact that they generate extremely strong emotions. Then desperate behaviors are undertaken to avoid threat to survival. 

For example, the attack on America and murder of nearly 3,000 people on 9/11 seared into the public consciousness visual and auditory images which both horrified much of the population of the United States, and galvanized actions on the part of many to meet and address the carnage as well as to prevent further attacks on American territory and citizens. 

An event such as this involves an unusual scope of impact that, psychologically speaking, generates instinctually – driven reactions intended to ensure survival in the midst of terrifying risks.  Although we prefer to see ourselves as being more evolved than to be thrown about by such events, they are indeed primal, and we are all as vulnerable to them now as people were thousands of years ago.

During 2020, there have been at least three such primal events.  First the pandemic caused by the Wuhan virus, also known as coronavirus or the COVID–19 virus, can clearly be seen as having generated primal reactions. 

Plagues, known since the earliest times of recorded human history, create heightened vigilance, anxiety, and efforts to escape the risks of dying.  Since early 2020, millions of people worldwide have shown reactions of concern, and have been willing to make substantial sacrifices to mitigate the spread and mortality of the pandemic.  Beyond that, many members of American society appear to have been caught up in an increasingly fear-driven media frenzy, which has effectively provided the American public with only moderate amounts of new information and very little perspective or contextualization.

The second primal event of 2020 was the citizens’ response to the protests, then the riots, following the death of George Floyd while in police custody.  Broad swaths of Americans thought and felt similarly to others with different political convictions.  However, the riots which began in June and continued in many American cities well into September adversely and disproportionately affected Americans who had businesses, such as stores in the attacked cities.  On virtually a weekly basis, exposure to visual and auditory images of vandalism and looting, occupation of city buildings, arson and ruthless physical assault upon any person unlucky enough to be caught by the mob, was extraordinarily stressful.  

What made it even more primal was citizens’ experience of abandonment when the usual sources of protection -- police, sheriffs’ departments, and other public safety personnel -- were either prevented from responding to protect people and property, or otherwise made unable to respond by local authorities.  Incidentally, whether by design or by chance, the rioting succeeded in intimidating millions.  The message, “This is what you’ll get if we come after you!” for many more Americans, who witnessed unleashed violence on television, was clear.  As U.S. senators were harassed outside their homes, and threats made against their children without credible pushback from public safety, the thought occurs to millions, “What do I do if my family is treated like those families?”  Similarly, but more insidiously, social media platforms have introduced the frightening possibility of ordinary citizens being “cancelled,” deprived of their livelihoods, and their private lives “doxxed” if they did not conform to others’ standards of “acceptable speech.”. 

The third such primal event of 2020 is the experience of the 74 million American voters for President Trump who believe that the presidential election was neither secure nor fair.  The numerous reports of voting irregularities, as well as possible fraud, can no longer be considered inadequate evidence.  Americans have become alarmed to think that the presidential election has been manipulated to reach an intended outcome. This same segment of the population is also forced to confront the shocking realization that voting, a civic practice sanctified and protected through hundreds of years of our history, appears to have been badly managed, and is now possibly corrupted. 

Those who refute the reports of irregularities or fraud increasingly convey that speaking out about such concerns is illegitimate, disruptive, and destructive.  Almost no neutral and responsible citizens show interest in evaluating the evidence, in looking at the facts.  Whether we consider average citizens across the country, public officials, state legislators, or even Supreme Court justices, almost all have shown a wall of unwillingness to speak up.

This increasingly loud and insistent “consensus" has the effect of silencing all who disagree.  Once again, reactions of anger, rage, and fearfulness, have ensnared members of our society in unusually heightened concerns over safety and survival.

These primal 2020 events have left an indelible impression on the national psyche and soul of our country.  What do they mean for our nation today? 

It appears that a series of extraordinarily intimidating and frightening primal events during 2020 have resulted in unusually consistent refusals of otherwise objective and responsible citizens to consider and evaluate the evidence of irregularities and possible fraud in this election.  Even further, the Americans who urgently wish the evidence would be fully examined, by either the states’ legislatures or the courts, are almost certain to be disappointed – unless millions of Americans show themselves to be just as fully committed, passionately engaged, and persistent as the citizens opposed to full examination of the evidence.  Without that, they will be experienced by neutral, objective citizens as smaller and weaker than their foes, and they will be defeated. 

Everything may well depend on what they do next.

Monty Clouse holds a Ph.D.

Image credit: Fog City Midge, via Twitter video, screen shot, processed with FotoSketcher.