Can We Talk?

Our curling league is done for the season. I hope to join league play again next winter and improve on my budding but limited skills. 

I woke up this morning and reached for my phone on the nightstand to read Heather Cox Richardson's most recent update—an update that usually lands in my inbox just after drifting off to sleep for the night. It's how most of my mornings begin. In another era, it wouldn't be this way. I wouldn't have to spend even one second of my day worrying about the direction many in our country would like to lead us or force us to go. But that's no longer the country we live in. 

Read Heather's most recent update here.

It's not just the direction of our country under a Republican administration led by an authoritarian-curious kleptocrat that worries me, but that far too many people seem oblivious to what that will mean, or that some may even welcome it.

I've spent my life free from such worry, always so sure that nothing would or could ever erode the democratic freedoms I've enjoyed and have assumed will always be there for not only me but for unlimited generations to come because authoritarianism could never get a foothold here, or so I believed. I long for those worry-free days again. 

As I write this in early 2024, we're in an election year where the choice between the presidential candidates could not be clearer. This is not a typical presidential election: our constitutional republic—our form of democracy, hangs in the balance. Yes, I know that sounds hyperbolic and I would never have written such a thing just a few years ago but there's been a change. This has been a rapid and disturbing shift that has left many unaware of the growing tsunami of authoritarian rule that awaits us if Republicans prevail. Many of those who are oblivious to this growing concern are themselves unwittingly supporting the movement. 

As I said, the differences between the candidates for president could not be more clear.

One candidate has presided over a robust economic recovery through a middle-out and bottom-up approach while the other is promising more tax breaks for the wealthiest among us at the expense of programs for the neediest among us.

One candidate worked to bring recovery to our nation during and after the pandemic while the other stoked divisions with blatant lies about the virus and the threat it posed.

One of the candidates stood with striking auto workers on the picket line while the other posed the next day for photos at a nonunion facility decked out to look like he was speaking to striking union workers where he paid $20,000 to stage the fake scene.

One of the candidates implored Congress to work together to hammer out fixes for our southern border, and when they did, the other made sure those plans were never signed into law, preferring instead to keep the crisis an issue that he could use to continue to score political points with his unwitting followers.

One of the candidates is urging lawmakers to approve funding to help Ukrainians in a battle for their country from Russian aggression while the other is preventing that aid from being approved in service to Russia's dictator, Putin. 

One candidate stands strong with our NATO allies while the other tells Putin "to do whatever the hell they want" if a NATO country doesn't spend enough on their defense.  

One candidate stands firm against authoritarian leaders of the world while the other offers them only his praise.

One of the candidates understands that decisions about going forward with a pregnancy are best had without a politician in the doctor's office but left up to a woman and her doctor.

One candidate sees immigrants as an integral part of our social fabric while the other sees them as "animals"—as "vermin who are poisoning the blood of our nation."

One of the candidates owes $500,000,000 in punitive damages for his sham business practices but can't find the money to pay the fine even though he claims to be fabulously wealthy, all the while fleecing his followers for donations and diverting RNC funds intended for Republican candidates all across the country for his personal use to pay his legal bills.

I could go on but you get the idea.

I worry about young impressionable minds being corrupted by parents caught up in the ugliness of the MAGA movement. How do these children reconcile the teachings they're learning in Sunday School with the hate that flows from their parents' mouths or the hate that is written on their parents favorite "Fuck Joe Biden" T-shirts?

I'm trying to imagine myself as a child trying to make sense of parents who support this kind of man: a man who has been found civilly liable for raping a woman; a man who orchestrated a coup on our nation's Capitol in a deranged effort to remain in power; a man who speaks endlessly about hoaxes and witch hunts against him but who is deadly afraid to have his name cleared in a court of law; a man who says shoplifters should be shot; a man who called for the jailing of Biden in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election; a man who used the cruel act of separating mothers from their children, some of them infants, as a way of deterring others from seeking asylum here. Some of those children have still not and likely will not ever be reunited with their families because records weren't kept. How does such a man's approval poll above a fraction of a percent? 

Propaganda. That's how.

I could go on all afternoon and into the evening detailing examples of this flawed man. It's too late to be on the right side of history for many of you as that ship has sailed, but it's not too late to do the right thing and finally abandon support for this awful man. The off-ramps have been there all along. It's up to his supporters to wake up from their stupor and take an exit. Even Trump's most fervent supporter was finally able to do that. 

How about you? 

Extra credit reading. 

That's all I've got.