This is when I wish I had the ability to write something classy and inspirational, something to motivate you to go out on Tuesday, November 8, and save this country from the barbarians. Tragically for all of us I don’t.
There’s no sugarcoating this. By all accounts, this election figures to be a cliffhanger reminiscent of the 2020 election. If the predictions turn out to be true, it may take days, if not weeks due to various legal challenges, before we get a final result. Our democracy hangs in the balance.
So to quote a current president, here’s the deal. If you’re a woman of any age, you have fewer liberty rights than you had on the first day of 2022. Know that one political party wants to codify that loss, the other party wants to restore those lost rights through legislation.
If you’re someone burdened with an oppressive student loan, know that one party has made a tentative first step toward loan forgiveness. The other party has so far unsuccessfully challenged this forgiveness program, and has used the program as a wedge issue to divide us.
We are all caught up in a worldwide inflation. The causes of this inflation are, and this is the short list, shortages due to national and global supply chain issues, pent up post-pandemic buying, with over 50 cents of the inflationary price increases added to corporate profits. Another name for those profits is price gouging. A major driver of this inflation is the cost of gas at the pump. The genesis of this inflated cost is not the failure to build the Keystone Pipeline but, instead, the war in Ukraine (more about the war below). Putin has cut off natural gas supplies to the European NATO countries, and his witting or unwitting allies in OPEC have voted to decrease daily oil output. These are contrived shortages far beyond the control of any American president.
This inflation, like all complex problems, will take time to sort out. One party has enacted inflation reduction legislation - admittedly a small but vital step - while the other party demands an immediate remedy without offering any concrete proposals.
If you live on a fixed income, know that one party seeks to protect social security and Medicare while the other party wants to put these programs under review every five years. Such a review would threaten the economic stability of millions of Americans and their families.
Democracy is under assault throughout the world. Authoritarians are gaining power via legal means and by the use of force. Hungarian President Viktor Orban‘s party has revised the electoral laws to all but ensure one party rule and his continuance in office. Russian President Vladimir Putin has created elaborate fictions to justify his invasion of Ukraine, not only to the world but to his own people. One of our political parties has consistently supported the Ukrainian resistance to this illegal unprovoked war. The other party wants to withdraw our support for Ukraine, all but guaranteeing Russia’s victory.
To be clear, prior to Russia’s invasion, Ukraine was a democracy. Like us, Ukrainians had the ability and the protections under law to determine the direction of their individual and collective lives. They fight so they can continue to live their rights as they see fit. Their fight is our fight. To abandon them now will be a stain on our nation that no expase of time will be able to erase from our history.
As insidious as an assault on democracy is, the party siding with authoritarians prefers the Orban model to the Putin model. We know this because they are open about it, having held their international meetings in Vienna and hosting Orban as the Keynote Speaker at its national meetings in Washington. Both meetings were held this year. Make no mistake, these people are serious. They do not flirt with the notion of coalescing power in the hands of a few by establishing an authoritarian state. They are actively working to build one.
Democracy is under assault in the United States. Some say that history repeats itself. Others say that history rhymes. On October 28, the violence of the 1/6/2021 attack on our nation’s Capitol building echoed in San Fransisco when a man broke into the home of the Speaker of House and beat her husband with a hammer, causing him serious physical injury. The invader’s motive was to force the Speaker to “confess” to what he said were various “crimes.” Fortunately the Speaker, second in line to the presidency, was not at home.
It is easy to disregard this attack as nothing more than an unfortunate instance of what some describe as out-of-control crime in our cities. And that is what many members of one of out two major parties did, while other party members made sick jokes about the attack. Evidently attacking an 82 year old man in his home in the early morning hours is funny to some. Many of those who found humor in in this attack are either seeking or already do hold public office.
It would be easy to dismiss the attacker as a sad, delusional, mentally challenged man. While this description may be true, the inescapable fact is that there is a tsunami of deliberate mis/disinformation that is intended to do no more than radicalize the recipient and confirm his bias.
It would be beyond the scope of this piece to describe the breadth of mis/disinformation pouring over the air waves, some cable news outlets, and the internet. Suffice it to say that anyone that thinks that some Democratic officials drink the blood of little kids is almost beyond help.
But relevant to the next two days, if not the next two years, is the most pernicious lie that can circulate in a democracy: an election was stolen, specifically the 2020 presidential election. Bear in mind that it is untrue. Sixty-two times this question was offered for litigation in the state and federal courts. Sixty-one times claims were dismissed with only one claim upheld in an absentee ballot matter - and that was over their segregation until it could be determined if they were received within the statutory time frame.
Now if someone claims his election was stolen and lost in court over 98% of the time, you’d think he’d at least change the subject. But instead he continues to double down on the lie. And so we don’t forget, this is the lie he told over and over again that resulted in the assault on the Capitol, the first such assault since the British did so during the War of 1812. But this time it wasn’t a foreign power that attacked, it was our own citizens acting in service - not to country - to one man.
Already candidates of one major party have said that if they lose the election, that alone would be proof positive that the election was rigged. Not content to have already disenfranchised some voters, gerrymander districts to suppress the impact of some voting blocks, and having restricted some voters access to the polls, these candidates seek to disqualify any majority of voters who vote for their opponents.
Meanwhile, the standard bearer of this wannabe authoritarian party continues his lie about about the last election. He varies his message with nods to white nationalists, praise for other authoritarian leaders, and support for some of the most intellectually unfit candidates for public office while demonizing their opponents. But the basic message is always the same - he was cheated in 2020.
At a rally on Saturday in Pennsylvania for a senate candidate who lives in a neighboring state and a gubernatorial candidate who is an election denier, the loser of the 2020 presidential election, who has been described as the failed former twice impeached ex-president, told that rally that the opposing party - the Democratic Party - hates America.
Hates America. Let that sink in.
“These are not ordinary times and this is not an ordinary election.” Robert Kennedy said this in 1968, and is an example for our times of history rhyming.
The decision that millions have made during the early voting period, and that millions more will make on November 8, will not merely decide the more mundane issues of public policy such as tax policies, budget priorities, judicial appointments along with all the other myriad issues that a functioning government must address.
The fundamental question is whether after the 2022 election we will still have a functioning democracy. Only those who vote can answer that question. Those who fail to vote will leave it to others to answer that question. And if you claim to support our democracy but don’t participate in it by performing the least burdensome act of citizenship, you’ve only yourself to blame if the outcome is counter to your values.
On Tuesday, for yourselves, your families, your friends and neighbors, and for the futures of untold generations to come, VOTE!
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