What have we become? Has mass hysteria wiped every trace of common sense? Fear mongering is coming at us from both sides of the political spectrum. Each side blaming the other for destroying our democracy. I have had enough, short of hiding under my covers for the duration, I am declaring my home a freedom of information zone.
Donald Trump, the master of divergence, has said he will not leave the office of the presidency if he feels the election is fraudulent, so what! He has been saying that since before the election of 2016, sowing the seeds of doubt about the voting process. We shrugged it off then, why are we so upset about it now? Every columnist with even a slight liberal bent is screaming to high heaven that we are facing a constitutional crisis the likes of which has never been seen before. At every gate to the city are a half a dozen Cassandras warning that behind them are the barbarians ready to sack the 'shinning city on the hill'. Even the foreign press has jumped into the fray, newspapers such as the Canadian Globe and Mail, the UKs London Times, and the Australian Guardian, have daily articles on Trumps rampages and reader polls on who will win the election.
Is it because the Republican Senators are so in lock-step behind Trump that they have put politics and party before country? Is it because Trump has rid the government agencies of long serving people of honor and replaced them with sycophants? Is it because he has an Attorney General who acts as his personal lawyer and hatchet man? Is it because he will have packed the Supreme Court with his hand selected jurists? Or is it something else?
Those who take Trump as a fool, do so at their peril, a fool he is not. He was schooled to believe that he can do anything he thinks he can do; "The Power of Positive Thinking". And if anyone still doubts that saying, they should look to Trump as a prime example. Trump drives ahead, bumbling and stumbling, going forward by sheer will power. It doesn't matter how many times he fails - five bankruptcies - no problem, look at the successes. He trades on the name Trump, first his father's reputation and eventually his own. He has defrauded banks of millions, banks who would rather write off the multi-million-dollar bad debts then admit to their stupidity in trusting him. He steps in after the work is done and puts his name on the finished project, claiming supremacy. He is more bluster than brains, more show than substance.
But he does know how to work a crowd. He knows that once he gets a few people moving in one direction, more will follow and many more after that. It doesn't take much to start a stampede. One person in the crowd chanting 'lock her up', soon becomes a crescendo that shakes the walls. There is a thin line between love and hate, they are two side of the same coin. The chant of 'lock her up" morphs into 'vote him out'.
His faithful believe that the Corona Virus is a Democratic hoax, they believe Trump when he says masks are for sissies and he mocks his opponent for wearing them. He flouts convention when he holds political rallies against advice from medical experts. But he stays well above his maskless devotees. Those closest to him are carefully screened, no sense tempting fate. But those crowds move as one. Trump knows that if he tells them to go to the polls and vote they will. If he say mail-in ballots are bad they will eschews them for in person voting.
Trump also know that if he can rile up those who are against him by telling them their vote will not count, there will be enough people who believe that. And if he can get enough journalists and reporters to repeat the message over and over, more people will forgo voting, believing their vote will not count. I have heard from friends who are worried that their ballot will somehow not be counted. They are afraid to vote in person and afraid to vote absentee. That's how you work the crowd folks.
L. Frank Baum wrote of the man behind the curtain who pushed and pulled the levers that influenced our lives. Today it is a children's story much like Alice through the looking glass. That was also a commentary on the politics of the day. A queen who screams' Off with their heads' and who uses courtiers as play things to amuse herself. Who will write the fairytale of Donald Trump?
Many of the columnists in the foreign press are claiming that Americas best days are behind her. They say we have given up our supremacy to China. That nothing lasts forever and we are doomed. One can look at the other great political experiments that have failed, Greece, Rome, and Great Britain. All, at one time ruled the majority of the civilized world. The saying went that the sun never set on the British Empire. Britain is now confined to a tiny island in the north Atlantic, its influence made even smaller because of Brexit.
Fortunes come and go, but I don't think it is Americas time to go yet. We have been tried before, and we have come through to the other side stronger, if not more united. Donald Trump is still just one man, a very small man; his ideology is pervasive but erring. Everyday more and more people are seeing him for what he is, and they are turning away from the philosophy of hatred and division. I have to believe that the law will prevail, that our constitution will stand, and that our democracy is greater when men of good conscience go out and vote. All that is needed for evil to flourish, is for good men to do nothing. You can do the one thing that will defeat this threat to our nation; VOTE!
I'm just sayin'
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