The Ripening

“Everybody's restless and they got no place to go / Someone's always trying to tell them something they already know / So their anger and resentment flow.” —Warren Zevon, Mohammed’s Radio In the stark October light, events and personalities skulk in the shadows like scavengers in an orchard of poison fruit. The dread builds as the dooryards get populated with the motorized effigies of blood-beasts, werewolves, phantoms, and ghouls. Halloween and Election Day have become the conflated celebration of a national death trip. How has it come down to our country, in a crucial election, seriously entertaining the antics of...