We will have a Presidential election unlike any other with the country completely divided and engulfed in a firestorm of lunacy brewing on neo-religious freaks sprinkled with white supremacy bullshit. Everything is legal as long as you do not get caught, we are locked up in a Stephen King pseudo reality.
Eight years ago, Donald Trump took over the Presidency not to build or improve our democracy but to destroy it. He started a full metal jacket assault on basic democratic principles we all took for granted. And he managed to turn our lives into a daily dose of hate and destruction. He mobilized fear and hate into a national political movement, a giant leap for ignorance where all lies matter. The post truth era is here. Driven by an infected ego stupidity and power can be a dangerous combination.
The fight today is not between liberal and conservative ideology but between proudly ignorant, reckless and incompetent indecency and those of us who oppose it.
I have recently purchased “100 Books to Read and Reread" by Michiko Kakutani and in it I found a section headed “American Democracy” which contained excerpts from Hamilton’s “Federalists Papers.” The Federalist Papers were written and published to urge New York State to ratify the proposed U.S. Constitution, which was drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. Here are a few excerpts that should make us all think ponder and reset our brains if necessary:
“The papers are the founders’ realistic assessment of human nature and their knowledge of the pitfalls that other democracies in history have stumbled into, and an awareness of the dangers America would likely face in the years to come. Hamilton warned that “dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the mask of zeal for the rights of people,” adding that of the despots of the past “who have overturned the liberties of many republics, the greatest number begun their career by paying obsequious court to the people: commencing as demagogues and ending as tyrants.”
He also warned that partisan groups would try to win converts through “the loudness of their declarations and the bitterness of their invectives.”
Do you really want to live in Trumpistan? Think about when you cast that vote. There is too much at stake to sit on the sidelines. Trump’s campaign is about him. Not America. Not you. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power. This is our moment. This is about the country we pass on to future generations. Democracy itself is on the ballot.
Marcus Aurelius wrote, “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
