If you’ve looked at the news at all lately you’ve probably noticed that our country is, to say the least, divided. A fresh mass shooting is in our minds as we witnessed more reckless hate in Pittsburgh. In counties across the USA, there is a concerted effort to suppress voters, typically minorities, because they can’t produce multiple forms of identification, or because they haven’t voted recently. America is making it harder to vote in a democracy. The President of the United States mobilized thousands of soldiers to stop a group of people from entering our country legally. Asylum is a legal process; the caravan nonsense you hear on the news is just more fuel for the division fire. We can’t decide if any of those things are bad. Um, they are.
A Supreme Court Nominee who has a loose interpretation of Presidential power got the nomination from a President currently under investigation by his own government. More than twenty women have come out with sexual assault allegations against the two of them combined.
A Senator finally called for an investigation of the event after sexual assault survivors tearfully confronted him. The investigation lasted less than a week, without interviewing any of the three people allegedly involved. The Senate voted.
50-48. The nominee is now a judge on the Supreme Court. For life.
The New York Times reported that the President of the United States has a history of dodging his taxes. He responded by mocking the paper and calling journalists the enemy of the people. It was not the first or last time he’d done it.
People cheered.
The events above are but a small part of a mystifyingly long list.
Forget the president, and whatever feelings you have for him. This is bigger than him. Bigger than all of us. A WWII-era historian recently suggested that this period in America reminds him of Germany in the 1930s. It’s too much to say that the President is the second coming of a certain mustached dictator, but it is not hyperbole to suggest that the American Republic is in danger.
Facing what they saw as a tyrannical government, our founding fathers fought to create a government of their own; one for the people. It might feel cheap to invoke their name, but the principles they laid out for our country are in genuine trouble. Bipartisanship, checks and balances, the right to participate in democracy – they all face severe challenges at the moment.
The government they created formed the basis for constitutions worldwide. It is the longest running government in the world. Stability breeds stability, and there are forces in our capitol trying to undermine that. It feels like any action by the people in power is taken to retain or acquire more power. There is an ungodly amount of sludge in our government right now. The only way to clean up the mess in DC is to remove the people who pour the sludge in.
We have a chance to do that on November 6th. It involves only driving to your town house and filling out a piece of paper with some names on it. By doing that, you can overthrow the government without firing a single shot.
Take. That. Chance. Who knows, we may not always have it.
