SIX MONTHS TO GO
Greetings, friends, on May 5, 2024.
The national election for a president, the House of Representatives, and a third of the Senate is set for November 5, 2024, exactly six months from today. I must confess, dear reader, that I have high anxiety about what is to come. Nothing less than American history is at stake. This is not hyperbole. We are facing the most important election in the country since the Civil War. In short, it will decide whether the U.S.A. continues to develop its democratic revolution as a multi-racial society, or overthrows its democratic revolution and gives power to a white minority controlled fascist regime. Think about this. America is at the crosswords.
Virtually every poll shows the outcome to be a tossup. On the face of it, this should not be. Biden should be way ahead and Trump way behind in the polls. Biden has done a good job as president. America is greater in nearly every measurable way now than it has ever been. The U.S. is the only super power in the world. The American economy is zooming along as never before. Trump, on the other hand was the worst president in American history. And, do not take my word for it. The American Political Science Association recently conducted a poll of hundreds of presidential scholars. Trump was their overwhelming choice for worst.
He is certainly my choice for worst. He was the only president in American history to try to overthrow the government. He incited a mob that looked to invalidate a legitimate election and along the way kill his vice president and the Speaker of the House. They barley escaped. That alone should be enough to disqualify Trump for all federal jobs for life. But wait, there is more. He was the only president to be charged for crimes, felonies. He has been charged in four courts under 88 indictments of crimes against the people of the United States.
The people of the United States know these things. Then, why is Trump running neck-and-neck with Biden? Well, here is my theory:
Trump is a demagogue who brilliantly master mined a union of Wall Street and the angry-white-working-class-man. His two major reforms in his terms were 1-- to give Wall Street the greatest tax cut in history (and a pittance to everyone else) and 2-- to give the a-w-w-c-m a super majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. The 6-3 Supremes promptly overturned settled law and crushed Roe v. Wade. States are free now to ban all abortions and dozens of conservative states (south and west) have done so. Never mind that this was the first time in history that the Court had rolled back individual freedoms that it had once granted. True believers, as Christian nationalists have come to see Trump as God's agent. They form the hard core of Trump supporters. The Wall Street gang could could care less about cultural issues. They just want more tax cuts and regulation rollbacks. The cultural crowd wants to destroy the democratic revolution that came out of the 1960's and to preserve white Christian power. What does Trump get out of all of this? The enjoyment of extreme narcissism even at the destruction of all around him.
The Heritage Foundation has given us a detailed plan of how they will go about setting up a fascist state after Trump's election. Their 920-page manifesto is a chilling view of the end of the American democratic constitution. Find it HERE . Warning: do not read this late at night.
So, I would argue that Trump has a clear-cut agenda he is offering the American people. I would argue too he has done a very good job of selling this agenda.
Electing Biden will strengthen and promote the continuing evolution of democracy in America. He is on the right side of history. Where he has failed is to convey this agenda to the American people as well as Trump has communicated his. Biden is talking too much about economics, foreign policy, infrastructure, things like that. Snooze. Most people are not moved by such talk. What Biden should be saying all day every day is his resolution to keep America evolving as a multi-racial society for everyone's good. If white working class men are afraid of others not like them, he must assure them they have nothing to fear. It is to everyone's advantage to build a truly democratic society of equal rights, equal justice, and equal opportunity. In my opinion, Biden has to do a lot better job of conveying to the average American the advantages of continuing our democratic constitutional system. I do not mean to say he has done nothing at all. His recent campaign to promote women's reproductive health rights is the right thing---but he has to connect it to the bigger picture. Abortion is just the tip of the iceberg. The tip has struck the ship of state. There is far more below the water line that the fascists plan to do to scuttle the ship once the captain is replaced.
I cannot leave without returning to the big picture which I have given repeatedly on this blog. I believe it now more than ever and I am frightened for my country. You see, I grew up in the post-Second World War era when Americans believed nothing could stop us from being the greatest country in the history of the world because our whole system was based on the ability of the common man and woman to achieve greatness. The decade of the 1960's saw both the landing on the moon and the greatest democratic revolution since the Civil War. We were on a roll. Now, nearly half the country is giving up on the American dream. They are turning to support a man who has very clearly promised, and prepared, to destroy our constitutional democracy and to shrivel American power in the world. Sometimes I just shake my head in disbelief.
I am bracing myself for the worst and at the same time thinking of experiences in the past when constitutional democracies failed and how societies coped with that. After all, the Constitution was written in 1787, for a world vastly different than our own. It may well be that it has outlived its usefulness, that it cannot go on and cannot reform itself from within. What bothers me is the thought of the chaos and anarchy that would occur while a new constitution was being drawn up.
Two nation-states come instantly to mind. France established its first republic in 1792 (in fact, the first truly democratic republic in the western world). France is now on the Fifth Republic. In other words, France has already gone through five iterations of a democratic republic. I do not have space here to replay the chaos, violence, and destruction that this process caused.
The other is Germany. In 1919 it established its first democratic republic (the Weimar Republic). This was destroyed by the effects of the Great Depression when the Nazi Party gained total power (1933) and completely destroyed every shred of democracy in the country. Germany returned to a democratic republic after the Second World War. Germany is now the leading country in Europe, but my goodness look at the unimaginable death and destruction the Nazi regime visited on the world after it destroyed its country's democracy.
We must not take anything for granted. If we want a government that serves the best interests of society, all of society, we the people must resolve ourselves to defend and preserve that government. The Better Angels of Our Nature got us through the Civil War period. They can get us through this constitutional crisis if we choose.
