Tuesday August 11, 2020
82 Days until the election on November 3rd
162 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
My birthday is August 10th and my grade school friend Charlie has his on August 11th.
My mom says I was born about 10:30 at night.
My draft number was 21 and Charlie’s was 324. What a difference 90 minutes makes.
Now? Who remembers all that?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Now, we are facing new threats and fears.
The corona virus, the worst economic collapse in history of our country is looming, a president with authoritarian, not tendencies, but actions. Authoritarian actions. That is something I hope we can all understand and do what we can to protect this democracy, this unique “experiment,” as historians call it.
Historians also call democracies as transitional times in history that don’t last very long, maybe 200 years at best. Our time is up.
Unless.
Unless, we do something.
The thing with Trump is that he is doing things right in front of our face and some folks don’t believe it. Others say there’s nothing we can do and others complain. Others fight.
The death of democracy is complacency. It’s interesting to me that some have been posting quotes from Frank Zappa about the Constitution and how schools used to teach civics and replaced it with social studies. Frank asked how are you going to stand up for something if we were never taught about it? Kind of like the people who post things about putting shop or home ec or music back in schools. All good things.
I have learned more about civics and the Constitution in the last three and a half years than in the rest of my life. Why? Because I had to.
You don’t have to, but then I’ll point out two data points from history. One was the end of the Roman Republic. What caused it to end? The simple fact that those who were alive during its demise didn’t believe it could happen because it had always been there for them. Until it wasn’t.
The other parallel is Hitler’s rise to power. I remember reading about it while in middle school. What I remember most was that Hitler used the levers of power and means of government to take more and more control. Once he was in charge he abolished those means. Or as my friend Martin said about his grandparents who grew up in Germany in the 1930s. “We all knew he was crazy, but when we decided to act, it was too late.”
Don’t be too late this time.
With Trump’s numbers slumping in the polls the only way he can win is to cheat. Fortunately, for him, he’s in a party where cheating has become, like himself, a way of life. He has taken it to new heights, and I wonder if or when some in his party are going to say, “Hey, wait a minute.” Trump has made frontal assaults on every government institution we have. The last bastion is the intelligence community, which he has been busy decapitating. He has already done it to the Justice Department and has attacked the scientific community. He has been using Federal agents to incite riots in our streets and tested throwing people in cages or unmarked vans for no reason. He is busy trying to make sure the Census undercounts people whom he believes won’t vote for him. Likewise, he has installed a person to head the Post Office to slow down the mail system so that we won’t be sure if our mail-in ballots are counted. It’s a stunning all out assault on our institutions and way of life.
Don’t be complacent. Don’t be fooled. Do what you can to protect our values, our commonly held democratic values of this republic.
82 Days until the election on November 3rd
162 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
PS Ready to make some salsa?
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