Not for myself, but for my country. Over the last few weeks I have watched with increasing horror the train wreck that has become our presidential election season. I am a 64 year old, white, rural housewife, former business analyst and accountant, who holds degrees in Business Administration and Public Policy and Administration. I must admit that for several decades my interest in politics was limited to the occasional evening news report, but as I started studying for my Masters in Public Policy in 2005, I realized that I had been assuming, wrongly, that this nation would right the ship of state, that people would see that history was repeating itself, and would demand sanity be returned to our nation. I was wrong — horribly, completely wrong. And more importantly, I realized that we are all to blame — both sides of the aisle, the media, and the electorate.
I am the first to admit that I messed up. I got tired of the hit pieces about the Clintons in the 1990’s, but mostly because I have been both the wronged wife and the other woman in my life. Especially in my 20’s, and while I am not proud of either position, I do understand a wife denigrating a mistress with vulgar and abusive language, but I also know that the wife also in private tore into her husband for humiliating her and abusing her trust and that it takes a lot of strength to stay in such a marriage and rebuild it. I did not choose to stay but then again I was someone with nothing left to lose if I left, whereas these two people had careers and integrated political aspirations that required them to work it out or they both would sink. I also had a daughter, but my disgrace did not play out in the media where she could be irreparably harmed, so I respect HRC for protecting her daughter — something Trump did not do for his children. I have also been sexually assaulted, not once but twice while a young child and as a teenager. You never actually recover from this kind of thing, so I find the comments of Donald Trump to be entirely repulsive and the fact that he used people who had been victimized to try and legitimize his actions is even worse.
But for Trump to use Bill Clinton’s adultrous behavior against her when he clearly supported it in 1998 is nothing more than insane. Bill is not running for office and while it may be painful for Chelsea, I suspect is more a painful reminder of what Trump did to their mothers for all of his adult children. That Trump has so little empathy for his own children, should worry all of us greatly.
The lewd comments vs. the leaked stolen e-mails, the threat of further exposures for both campaigns is the sign of campaign distraction, and we have allowed the media to drag us down into this sewer. And it is just what Trump and his shadow allies want. I find myself looking at history as I listen to Trump followers calling for armed revolution if HRC wins. This is how Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin all came to power — media distractions, armed insurrection, decimation of the opposition — and all of it right under the noses of the average citizens of their countries until it was too late to stop them. It is the result of a controlled media, something Rupert Murdoch made sure of by getting the FCC to allow multiple media ownership in a single market. Add to that the Citizens United from a conservative SCOTUS, and all the pieces were in place for Trump.
I have been sickened as I have watched the last few days of coverage, and while I am relieved that media seems to finally realized that they have been played by Trump, I am terrified of the response of the Trump followers. These people, at least some of them, seem to think that armed revolution is the answer. They have embraced his racist, misogynist, intolerant, anti-American rhetoric with a fervor that I have only seen in staged rallies in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia or Communist China. And so many people tell me “Do not worry. After the election they will all go home, and the threat will be forgotten quickly.” NO, IT WILL NOT! HISTORY SHOWS US THIS!
Our nation was started by a small group of men in Boston standing up by force of arms against the largest power in the world at that time. Our Civil War was started by small groups of men raiding and demanding secession because of our, apparently still strong, antipathy towards freeing African-Americans. The riots of the Sixties were started by small groups of students, actors and actresses, and political activists causing political upheaval over foreign policy and racial inequalilty. It does not take a large group, an army if you will, to start a war — only a group of people who believe so strongly in something that they will die for it, even start a war for it.
FOX News and its owner and managers force fed the GOP messages of hate and intolerance with a fervor under the guidance of Roger Ailes and Karl Rove. The Tea Party was the result, feeding off the racism engendered by regional intolerance and religious fervor. They took over the GOP because people like the Bushes and Dick Cheney thought they could control them — and then found they could not. They spread lie after lie, and the other media outlets let them get away with it, allowing itself to be labeled liberal and unreliable in the process. Control of the media in a nation that has been consistently dumbed down by GOP education policies is crucial in creating a dictatorship. Now we have the dictator on the horizon, and threats against our elected officials from some voters that support this dictator. They have been taught to vote against their own best interests, and they do not want to hear that the Second Amendment only guaranteed the right to own guns if they were in the state militias which have been replaced by the National Guard or that the only gun control bills passed in the last 20 years have been GOP bills for setting up registration and databases in GOP controlled Congresses.
We are at a crossroads as a nation, and I fear for my family and my nation in ways I have never known. I grew up doing air raid drills in case of nuclear attack — herded into a school basement and not being able to see my parents, afraid I would never see them again in case of a real attack. I still remember that sense of terror and impending loss. Now I wonder if children will be forced back into the air raid drills, and I fervently pray they are not.
I wonder when the next civil outbreak will occur as it did in the ‘60s, causing people to die on a college campus or a city street, or if it will be in a little town like I live in surrounded by Trump supporters. I wonder when the next homegrown terrorist blows up a building or a marathon or a football game or…. I have always considered myself a fairly brave person, using common sense and life experience to avoid danger, to not go seeking it. But I am afraid — deep in the bone, sick to my stomach, terrified as I watch history replaying itself and the public in general being totally unwilling to accept that Donald Trump is not only personally dangerous, but that he has surrounded himself with people who feed into his conspiracy theories and delusions and paranoia.
I have faced down men with guns on the street and I have fought back against attackers, but I do not have the ability to fight back against millions who will swarm to follow this maniac. I have only words. So, VOTE and make sure that Donald Trump does not become our president. VOTE because your life and the lives of those you love depends on it. VOTE to insure that all the other wonderful things in our Constitution survive this year. VOTE so you can proudly say on November 9th “I AM AN AMERICAN!”. Do not let it be the last time you can.