OUR CHOICE IS NOW CLEAR
Democracy or Authoritarianism
Iowa’s caucuses have never in past years predicted anything important that I can recall, but this year is different. It became abundantly clear this week that Donald Trump is politically a dead man walking. If he were truly the dominant force that he and the polls claim, he would have pulled in at least 74 percent of the Republican votes. In 2020 he captured 97 percent support. Instead, he barely eked out half the total in one of the strongest MAGA states. If he becomes the Republican presidential nominee, he will be defeated. And even if he avoids any convictions before the election, he will eventually be found guilty on nearly every count and fade into history as the worst president this country has ever put into office.
Trump’s presidency was necessary in order to awaken the electorate to just how fragile our democracy really is. In his single term he managed to appoint enough radical judges to severely cripple the rule of law in this country, and to convince his followers that our government is too corrupt to continue as it is. Those actions could take generations to reverse. Trump also exposed the hypocrisy of his evangelical base as people who hold and express beliefs and behaviors that are the exact opposite of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
With the sign of the beast on their foreheads in the form of their MAGA hats, the evangelicals and the 45th president played out the biblical prediction of the coming of the Anti-Christ, as described in the books of John and Revelation. The day Trump tear-gassed peaceful protesters and marched across Lafayette Square to hold a bible upside down in front of a fire-damaged church was the day he jumped the shark and lost many of his supporters, including the generals who marched with him. That happened in the 42nd month of his term. Revelation 13:5 states that “The beast was allowed to mouth bombast and blasphemy and was given the right to reign for forty-two months.”
If Trump is not the presidential nominee this year, we face no less a threat to our democracy, our economy, and our way of life from the party he created. The November election will not be a choice between the two frontrunners for president. No, this year the choice will be far more consequential. This year the voters will determine whether the United States continues to be a free democracy based on the rule of law and a free-market economy or devolves into an authoritarian oligarchy.
The Republican party leadership has clearly stated its intent, in multiple documents and many public statements, that if it gains control of the government in November, it will close our borders, pull out of all international agreements, and end all social benefit programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. A Republican congress promises to eliminate the federal departments of education, environmental protection, housing, labor, and consumer protection. Basically, they want to eliminate any trace of modern civilization from our government.
I have faith, however, that the Republican dirty tricks machine will fail, and that the party will be resoundingly defeated this year. As a professional planner, I pay a lot of attention to statistics and demographics. Unless a whole lot of Democrats stay home on election day, I don’t think there are enough MAGA republicans to carry the vote, despite their control of a majority of state governments, their extreme gerrymandering, their voter suppression, and their highly effective propaganda operations.
The Republican party has also lost many more members since the last election than have the Democrats. Many have died of old age, and far more Republicans than Democrats died of COVID because they believed Trump’s lies about the risk. Their surviving family members now know that the pandemic was not a hoax and that vaccines actually work. The lost Republican voters are not being replaced in equal numbers by young voters, who tend to be overwhelmingly progressive.
Our challenge now is two-fold: to get people out to vote and to clearly demonstrate the positive benefits that we have experienced under the Biden administration’s programs and policies. This is the time to get active politically and stay active. Call out your local newspapers and other news sources when they equate the two parties. Demand that they set aside the old trope of being fair and balanced and report the unvarnished truth of what is happening in our government and our economy. Insist that they report the remarkable success of the Biden administration, as well as the abysmal failure of the congressional Republicans.
The Biden administration’s policy of directing massive financial benefits to hard-working people who immediately spent the money as we came out of the pandemic shutdown averted the economic recession that had been universally predicted by the experts. The United States now has the strongest economy, highest employment, lowest unemployment, and lowest inflation of any country in the world. And none of it was done at the expense of the wealthy, who are now enjoying the strongest stock market ever recorded. That message needs to be shouted from the mountain tops.