Guys? Guys? Here on out, shit’s only gonna get stupider and crazier. Hold on tight, DM me on Twitter if you need anything, and I wouldn’t call it crazy to stock up on some groceries just in case shit goes sideways.

But.

I have faith. I always do, I did in 2004 and I did in 2008 (he was a black man named Barack Hussein Obama, maybe you forgot what country we are) and I did in 2016, and the times I’ve been wrong still sting. Still, I have faith.

Better to be absolutely poleaxed by reality every couple of years than be the guy going “I knew it” because you still get screwed AND you sound like a jerk. As I say to people all the time when they shove their cynical white-boy shit in my face: Why be so happy you predicted the avalanche, you’re still buried up to your neck.

Here are my predictions.

The mail-in ballots that don’t arrive by election day won’t matter. The long lines won’t matter and the weather won’t matter and whatever Joey B. Shark says to eat his own kicks in the next seven days won’t matter and whatever dumb slogan Democrats put on signs won’t matter. The shit we fight over on Twitter matters even less. A butterfly flaps its wings in Wisconsin and there’s a hurricane in Georgia and someone spelled a sign wrong on a golf cart in one senior citizen park in Florida, and all of it might make the difference, but I don’t think any of it will.

I think we are going to lift ourselves up in a way we haven’t seen in any of our livin’ lives and I think it is going to be overwhelming and I am tempting the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing but I think, I hope, I believe, that it was over after the first debate. That when those two men stood side by side, and one shouted about his opponent’s son and the other looked into the camera and said have courage and have hope and it will be all right, that it was over then.

Donald Trump is, like many of his GOP contemporaries, a small mean man who thinks everyone else is small and mean as well. The people who love him — I ain’t talking “hold your nose and vote because he’s better than the other person,” I mean his serious fans — love the excuse he gives them to chest-puff and yell. He lied to a lot of people that he cared about the things they care about, that he’d make their lives better. Yes, they should have listened when people who knew him said he was a liar, but you want to believe what you’ve always believed, you want not to have to change your heart.

No one has that excuse anymore. If you’re voting for him now, you know what you’re willing to put up with to get what you want, and you know who you’re willing to hurt to get it. And I can’t think of a less productive use of my time than talking to you about that.

All that matters now is turning out more people, more and more and more and more, until across this country it’s not like anything we’ve ever seen. Because the last four years have been like nothing we’ve ever seen, and we can’t see any more. We have to at least start seeing beyond this. We can’t fix what we can’t even focus on with all the noise.

So hold fast. Figure out who in your lives needs taking care of. Let your friends know if you have food, money, a safe place to sleep that you can offer someone, a place by the fire. If you’re well-supplied, supply someone else.

Put your time and money where it can do the most good. Pay for bail for protesters, masks and gas for organizers driving people to the polls. Give to Democratic candidates for state legislature who control the water you drink and the roads you drive on and how and when the kids go to school. Ask who has faith in the system they’re asking you to let them run. Ask who wants to govern, who wants to work and compromise and who believes in the idea that we can help one another.

That’s all there is. That’s what I believe. You don’t lose anything by believing, you don’t lose anything by working for what you care about, you don’t lose anything by loving the broken imperfect people around you so much you’ll make a fool of yourself over and over and over for them every time they ask.

One more week. Let us know what you need.

A.