The columnist Ted Glick.
[Future Hope column]
October 3, 2020
(Below are the first four of what will be daily entries I’ll be writing during my month-long, water-only Fast to Defeat Trump. They can be accessed at Tedglick.com)
Day One, October 3: It’s now been 14 hours as I write since I had anything to eat, at a wonderful outdoor meal with wife Jane and close friends last evening, and I’m already feeling different. One thing I’m doing differently is yawning even though I had a good night’s sleep and have only been up for a few hours. It has to be related to my not drinking any coffee. I’ve usually had half a cup by now, and in general I drink at least that much on a normal day.
I’m also feeling it a little bit in my stomach, a very slight discomfort, like it’s telling me, “time for some nourishment, what’s the problem?.” Based on past experience I expect it’ll be 3-4 or so days before this feeling and hunger pangs go away. I’m already looking forward to that next stage, the stage when the body’s craving for food has abated and I get onto a different plane, physically and psychologically. I hope, and expect, that because I ordinarily eat in a healthy way, lots of organic food, for example, I shouldn’t experience headaches or other discomfort caused by the body feeding on toxins and chemicals there because of an unhealthy diet. We’ll see.
Day of My Last Meal, October 2: This evening I’ll be gathering with several close friends and my wife Jane for an early birthday meal, a week early. This will be my last food for a month. 12 hours from when I’m writing this I’ll be on my water-only regimen.
But the really big news is that Trump and his immigrant wife Melania have tested positive for COVID-19. As I rode my bike this am, the last time I’ll be doing that for a month and a half or so, I remembered something I once talked about with Jane. I told her that although I would not mourn if Trump got the virus and died, a much better scenario would be that he get the virus bad, be put into the hospital and intubated for many days, recovers eventually after a month or more of suffering, and then, having experienced his mortality and near-death, announces that he has come to realize how evil he was before COVID laid him low. He vows to do all he can to overturn all of the destructive and inhuman policies he had formerly pushed, and he actually does it, even to the point of realizing and publicly calling for fundamental transformation in what he calls “an unjust and destructive system.”
It’s a nice dream. It would be a huge miracle if it happened. It won’t. That’s why we need to be doing everything we can to generate the biggest possible turnout of the people who understand what a threat Trump is to any hope of a decent future for us and our descendants, and to so many people right now.
Two More Days To Go, October 1: Apprehensive, nervous, glad-it’s-almost-here: that’s how I’d describe how I’m feeling as I prepare myself mentally to stop eating about 36 hours from now, Friday evening the 2nd.
I’ve done long fasts before, so that helps a lot. But I’m aware that I’m 71, not 57, my age at the time of my last water-only fast of 25 days or longer. That one was 25 days.
One thing I’m looking forward to is the feeling of knowing that literally every second from the evening of the 2nd to November 4th, when I plan to start coming off the fast, I will be doing something to oust Trump from office. I fully expect to be less nervous about that while fasting because I will know I’m doing all I can for a positive result on election day.
I hope others who get it on how scary the idea is of Trump staying in the White House after January 20 will do the same, by voting, by urging others you know to vote, by signing up with groups working to maximize a pro-Biden vote in the battleground states, by financial donations. All out to defeat Trump!
Just a Few More Days, September 30: It’s the morning after the first Presidential debate, and I’m really glad I decided to take this upcoming action, now just a few days away. I almost feel like starting it now. Trump was so, so bad, so dangerous, so kindergardnish, just a shameful display. I know there are going to be difficult days for me. I’ll have to be very conscious of how my body is doing and respond accordingly, like by drinking more water or lying down for a rest. But I know my spirit will be strong because there is no question that there is nothing else in the world right now and for the next month more important than for each of us to do all we can to defeat this monster.
It is a good thing that Biden has had a steady lead in the polls for months nationally. That’s hopeful. But polls don’t vote, people do. We need a massive voter turnout of the decent people who haven’t been sucked into the Trump disinformation and lying operation. There’s a lot more of us than them; let’s mobilize ourselves!
Ted Glick is the author of the just published Burglar for Peace: Lessons Learned in the Catholic Left’s Resistance to the Vietnam War. Past writings and other information can be found at tedglick.com, and he can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jtglick.
