One Week Out

One week out.

One week out from one of the most consequential elections the country has ever had.

We get to choose whether democracy continues, or we give a super unchecked boost to authoritarian fascism.

I know some would call this hyperbole.  I know some are tired of all the political talk.  I know because as much as I love politics, I'm almost sick of it myself.  I'm sick of the worry, sick of the hurt of seeing my friends still living in the con, sick of thinking about what things will be like if  President Trump and his "nationalists" remain unchecked.

But now is not the time to hide in a hole.  I am psychologically unable to canvass or phone bank, but I do what I can.  I give money.  I have signs in my yard and on my car.  I speak out, sometimes in places, I shouldn't speak out.  I write blog stories and newspaper columns.  I am not shy in print.  It's about my only strength.  So I use it, even though there is blowback risk.

Anyone can take your words and run with it in ways you cannot always control.  The idiot that shot up a Congressional Republican softball game had on his social media that at one time he was a Bernie Sanders supporter.  That was terrible, and Bernie was swift in condemning and rebuking the man.  Most importantly, there was nothing in what Bernie had said or ever will say that encouraged or incited violence.  Nothing.  Zero.  Nada.

Not so our current Presidential office occupant.  His middle name is incitement.  He has thrived on division and hatred.  His specialty is name-calling and dehumanizing his opponents.  He treats media as enemies of the people and then feigns surprise when people act on his rhetoric.  He and his Fox associates blame the caravan on Geroge Soros, a Jewish billionaire, and lie that he is sponsoring and paying protestors, and then do the "what, me?" when someone tries to send him a bomb, and another is so riled up about "Jews behind the caravan meant to attack the United States" that he slaughters Jews in their synagogue on the Sabbath.

This last two weeks we have seen a US resident alien working for the Washington Post chopped to pieces by a foreign dictatorship, a man determined to kill blacks (he couldn't get into a black church, so he just started shooting at a grocery store), another who wanted to help Trump out by sending a bomb to all the people that Trump regularly denigrated at his rallies, and an anti-semitic maniac use the caravan as an excuse to kill 11 people at a synagogue.

And yet.....

He still calls the press the enemy of the people, and talks glowingly about a Congressman who physically assaulted a reporter.

He still attacks and dehumanizes the people on the bomber's list.

He still uses code language, like "globalist" and"Nationalists," and continues to vilify Gergoe Soros.

He continues to slander African-American politicians, including using racially charged terms like "low IQ individual" and "thief".

He wants you to fear women and children and families trying to desperately to escape violence and find a better life for themselves.

All this and so much more.

And yet, most of the people around me remain insensitive to it all.

One week to go.

Well, at least it's good for weight loss.  My stomach is so riled up I can barely eat.

Please wake up, my Trumpeteer friends.  I know you're good people.  But you need to wake up.

Everything is at stake.