The Danger Facing Us

it isn’t just Trump, it’s the people who believe him

Donald Trump, in even more expansive terms than usual, has threatened to jail his political opponents. That should be chilling for all of us. What is even more frightening is how many of our co-citizens are comfortable with this, even support it.

These individuals represent an aggregation of racists, xenophobes and conspiracy theorists. A host of these were to be found at the Capitol on January 6th, and comprise a growing number of frightening QAnon, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers adherents. They represent an existential threat to the republic itself, one the Republican party leadership is unwilling to do anything about.

         These crazies deserve special attention. Racism, xenophobia, anti-government beliefs and adherence to insane conspiracy theories were the mother’s milk of most of these people, and they became the loudest pro-Trump voices during his term in office. As events later showed, they have also become the face of the Republican party.

    These groups can rightly be called the successors of the more fringe elements of the Tea Party crowd. Even before Trump won, many of them espoused wackadoodle theories that accused the Clintons and other prominent Democrats of being part of a satanic cult that practiced the killing of babies and pedophilia. Threats to Democratic members of Congress and others have become a staple of daily life in Washington as these groups have gained momentum. They appear as rapidly as DOJ can put them away.

While conspiracists have always been among us, this strain far exceeds in its danger anything we have seen before. Donald Trump is responsible for providing a flag around which they could rally, as they did on January 6th to terrifying effect.

We can call most of these people low information voters. But it really doesn’t matter what we call them. They are deeply entrenched and they aren’t going away.

We are in a dangerous place. We have a system the framers of which failed to prevent a convicted felon and insurrectionist from running for and serving as president. Such a person holds the role of commander in chief, has control of the nuclear launch codes and has complete access to briefings and to materials of the highest level of secrecy classification. Materials he has already stolen and probably shown to adversaries. Nearly half of this country is comfortable with all of this. We have a corrupt Supreme Court majority that is willing to gut the Constitution in their fealty to radicalism.

This election is about many things. One of them is the battle between sanity and insanity. We face a crossroads. We can either vote for hope and a positive vision of the future, or we can vote for a man who wants to jail anybody who disagrees with him. This isn’t a plea to the people discussed here. Rather, it is addressed to the soft Trump voters, those who believe he is a better steward of the economy. Remember the mismanagement of COVID and the hundreds of thousands of needless, tragic deaths. Remember the rampant unemployment. Remember the ruinous deficit and ensuing inflation that many of you blamed on Joe Biden. Remember the lying, the unhinged rants and the daily threats. Remember the 34 convictions and 50 some indictments. Remember the slavish devotion to dictators such as the execrable Vladimir Putin.

There is no earthly reason to vote for this man. On November 5th, please choose hope, progress, empathy and sanity. Your country, your democracy depend on it.