I have not had a “normal” Presidential election since 2000, where coming into November, I did not feel anxiety and fear in the lead up to election day. Especially since 2012, when it became apparent that some 42% of Americans were truly committed to wanton cruelty. 2016 was just sheer misery, and now in 2020? We are seeing this being proven quite true:
You see it every day – and read it on social media. News outlets like the Wall Street Journal whitewash the pandemic’s death toll solely to prove that smaller states who ignored prudent safety precautions were doing better economically. Of course, the economy will come back quicker – if you are willing to accept needless death as the “cost of doing business.” It’s still needless and avoidable death.
I actually admire the Never Trumpers who opposed this bag of puss from the start. They have endured scorn and threats – because they chose decency over party. Tom Nichols described the struggle in a recent article:
“There are some people,” Smiley said at a dinner among young recruits to the Secret Service, “who, when their past is threatened, get frightened of losing everything they thought they had, and perhaps everything they thought they were as well. Now I don’t feel that one bit. The purpose of my life was to end the time I lived in.”
With a bit more pensiveness, Smiley adds: “Or perhaps … our troubles are just beginning.”
I think of this passage often, not only because I spent the first part of my career fighting (in my own small and mostly insignificant way) the Cold War, but also because I have spent the most recent part of my career fighting the possible rise of authoritarianism in my own country. I was a founding member of the band of Republican defectors known as the Never Trumpers, and one way or another, “the times I have lived in”—the movement to protect American democracy from Donald Trump and to stop his reelection—will come to an end in November.
I am not confidently predicting victory. I am too scarred by the horrific outcome of the 2016 election to count any chickens, no matter how alive and clucking they might seem. But win or lose, our goal will become something else. When my friends—including the few I have left among the conservatives—ask what the Never Trumpers will do now, I say with all honesty that I am not sure.
I can’t entirely agree with Nichols on everything – but he and I are firmly on the same page when he repeatedly has stated that Trump is an enemy of The Constitution. Like me, he understands the duty to oppose him and wish the worst for him and those who have enabled him.
Like this guy:
Substitute any of 20 other GOP Senators, and you can get the same result.
Unfortunately, like many others, I am terrified the forces of opposition cannot hold off the Orange Monster.
And what if Trump wins? If that happens, America will become a different country, and we will all enter the first iteration of an American dictatorship. At a minimum, I will join with other civil libertarians to limit the speed and depth with which the president will take us into authoritarianism. The fight will be a rearguard action, and we will likely lose. But I didn’t run the first time Trump was elected, and I won’t run if it happens again.
I don’t know what I will do – the specter of Zionism instilled in me by frequent trips to Israel make me very aware that sometimes you have to leave to ensure your own survival. Nichols may feel safe in Trumplandia 2.0 – but I don’t. Especially with the boost, a Trump victory will give this red hat-wearing, violent, scum:
“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that’s the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.”
― Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
It’s going to be a long weekend.