It is foolish to believe that people's views can be changed by a post on social media; certainly not late in a contentious election cycle. Persuasion or not, though, sometimes we just need to scream into the abyss at the ludicrous place in which we find ourselves.
The margins of conceivable victory in the presidential race are razor thin. But whichever candidate prevails, substantial damage has been done to our national reputation. Our nation will have to live with the infamy that Donald Trump is even taken seriously.
Donald Trump is utterly unqualified to be president; he lacks the intellect, temperament, experience, and judgment, evidencing not a trace of the self-awareness of his shortcomings. Eight years ago, all he had was name recognition, from a lifetime of high-visibility marriages, and divorces, and high-visibility real estate projects, many of which ended in bankruptcy - and finally, a stupid game-show. But people were somehow ready to at least imagine that he could function as president, and develop the skills and bearing befitting that station.
But that was not to be. Instead of growing into the office, he shrunk the presidency to match himself. Once he attained the power he sought, he wielded it ruthlessly ... dictatorially. Then, at the end of his term, when he was voted out of office, he took the dictator's approach of denial, lying, and suborning a violent insurrection, in order to remain in place. For the first time in US history, we had a sitting president subverting the peaceful transfer of power.
His dictatorial leadership alienated the best of the people he could attract into his administration--people who had experience, and knowledge of how our system is supposed to work--many of whom are appalled at the prospect of him regaining power. These outspoken opponents include secretaries of state, national security advisers, military branch chiefs of staff, and even his vice president.
Never before in our history has such a collection of alumni stood in opposition to their former commander-in-chief.
His bullying was as outlandish internationally as it was domestically. While in office, he disparaged and alienated our partners in international alliances that have helped maintain peace and stability--and resolve crises--in Europe and east Asia for decades. Instead, he cultivated personal alliances with many of the most dangerous dictators in the world, most prominently Vladamir Putin - who stands to benefit most from the collapse of the NATO alliance. Trump extorted the beleaguered Ukrainian president; threatening to cut off military aid, unless Ukraine fabricated and released damaging information against Trump's presumed opponent.
As he cultivates his alliances with these dictators, he has repeatedly spoken enviously of the unitary power they exercise in their countries - expanding that admiration to include the worst dictators from recent history, including Adolf Hitler.
Four years after losing his bid for re-election, he still maintains, and his knuckle-dragging cult still believes, the totally debunked fantasy that he won the 2000 election, and was robbed of his second term.
He is prepared to repeat, and expand upon the worst abuses of his first term, if given another chance. His abuse of the most vulnerable members of our society; racial, religious, and other ethnic minorities, our LGBTQ+ neighbors, immigrants ... anybody who he can single out and 'other' in the narrow minds of his core constituency. He makes no pretense of decency when mocking them; fabricating and amplifying toxic slanders - such as the claim that refugees are stealing and eating the dogs in neighborhoods where they live, or that 'woke' schools are surgically changing the sex of children without their knowledge. These stories would be horrific enough, if shared as jokes. But, because he insists that his cult listen only to his 'truth', and ignore all other sources of information, the most credulous among them believe that these are true.
The world waits anxiously to know whether, for the next four years, the United States will be a force for stability and peace, or whether they will face a world in which both a dictatorial United States, and Putin's expanding, dictatorial Russia will use their combined strength and corruption to dominate the rest of the world. Whichever it is, nobody can escape the sad fact that it is this close.
