It Doesn’t Have to Happen

Just one more time,  The Story of Nations:

From bondage to spiritual faith,
from spiritual faith to great courage,
from great courage to liberty,
from liberty to abundance,
from abundance to selfishness,
from selfishness to complacency,
from complacency to apathy
from apathy to dependence,
from dependence to bondage.

Now take a moment to consider that progression, and especially think about where America stands along that cycle.  Hint: second word in the penultimate line.

That line, From apathy to dependence, can be restated accurately in today’s world as From nonvoting to Donald Trump.  If that were to happen, the next step, under a Hitler-trained fascist dictator like Trump, would clearly be bondage.

That’s what happens when good people blindly vote to put a tyrant in charge of their country, like German voters did in 1934 when they elected Trump-mentor Hitler as their president.

The numbers that reveal our national apathy are undeniable.  We Americans, and especially Democrats, are so apathetic we do not vote. Consider the numbers from the last General Election.  Only two thirds of registered voters cast ballots in the 2020 General Election even though it was one of the most important elections in American history.

That means one in three registered voters did not bother to vote that day, and that doesn’t even count the number of eligible people who didn’t even bother to register.  That totals an awful lot of Americans who did not vote, and bad politicians, such as Trump, are elected by people who do not vote.

Those are horrifying numbers, especially in today’s world where you can vote early or by mail or from your hospital bed.  Maybe some people have a legitimate reason not to vote, but that number must be somewhere south of one percent.

Some people who were paying attention years ago warned us that this day was coming.  On Dec. 6, 2010 — note the year — the news and opinion website Salon ran an article under the eerily prophetic headline, “How America Will Collapse (by 2025)”.

The article said that history should remind us that empires are fragile things, so delicate that “when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the  Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britian, and in all likelihood 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.”  The arithmetic shows that year to be 2025.

It went on to say that Washington was dreaming if it thinks America will fare any better than the other nations.

“The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and could be history by 2030.”

And look at us.  It is happening.  It is possible — some say it is probable – that Donald Trump will be our next president.  The Atlantic magazine found the prospect likely enough to ask 24 knowledgeable writers what would happen if Trump were elected, and their responses included “a revenge presidency, ” “he could build autocracy”, “could plunge the country into a constitutional crises not seen since the Civil War”,  “four more years of unchecked misogyny”,  “a MAGA version of U.S. history”, “the dissolution of a shared reality”, “a judiciary more loyal to Trump than to the Constitution”, “the consequences of withdrawing from America’s oldest and strongest military alliance”, et cetera.

So it’s happening and it could continue to happen.  We could elect Trump and continue down the path to dependence and then to bondage.  But we don’t have to.  It doesn’t have to happen.

If we want to skip dependence and bondage and go directly from apathy to spiritual faith, which is the next natural step in the cycle, we can.  We can become responsible adults.  We still can run this government like it’s supposed to be run, a government  by us, of us and for us. Maybe the Trump-dictator thing will shock us into seeing what almost was and still could be, and start us moving with a fresh new step toward the future our Founders intended for us.

But to have that kind of government depends on everyone participating, everyone voting.  And that’s where each of us comes in.  Each one of us must do whatever we can, in whatever realm we occupy, to awaken sleeping nonvoters and  make them aware  that when they do not do their part in upholding our democracy, we slide onto the path we’re on now – and why that is so dangerous.  Suicidal, even.  After all, it’s true that only those of us who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it (although they make us repeat it with them because they do not participate).

So the solution to our national apathy is simple, although certainly not easy.  But we can begin by looking at where the fault lies, and I place most blame on the popular news media, the Democratic Party and the Biden administration.

Begin with the news media.  It is still focusing its coverage on the horse race aspects of the presidential race – Is Haley up? Is DeSantis down? What do today’s polls say what will happen a year from now? —  instead of letting tomorrow take care of tomorrow and focusing instead on what plainly is the most important news story of today:  the vast and crucial differences between living in a democratic republic or under a dictatorship, between electing Joe Biden or Donald Trump.  We can only hope the media will change its focus after Super Tuesday, March 5, when Trump is widely expected to take such a huge lead over all his competitors that he will be virtually unstoppable.

Gallup polls show most people are not paying attention to any of that right now.

I also blame the Democratic Party because Black people and young people, two of the party’s most important and most dependable groups, are steadily leaving the party – worse, often politics altogether — and the party isn’t doing enough to bring them back.  Black people complain that the party promises them good things before elections but ignores them afterward.  I get that.  Young people complain that democracy just isn’t working for them, and that both Biden and Trump are too old and too isolated in their castles to understand their problems.  I get that, too. Both groups have legitimate reasons for their complaints.  If they are wrong the party leaders must show them, but if they are right the party leaders must do something about it.  Or the drain will continue.

As for the Biden administration, it claims that it has done a lot for Black people and young people, as well as all other Americans, but if so it is doing a terrible job of making them see it.

The danger is not that all those disenchanted Black people and young people are flocking to Trump.  They are not. They may dislike Biden but they despise Trump. Or they may despise Biden but they hate Trump.  Either way, the danger is that since they don’t want either, they might not vote at all, which would be a vote for Trump.

Or they might vote for a third-party candidate who is pre-doomed to lose, which would be the same as not voting, which be a vote for Trump, and there it is again: Bad politicians are elected by people who do not vote.

So my plea to Black people and young people, and any other people who are thinking of sitting out this election because you don’t like either candidate, please do not.  Even if you cannot stand the thought of either candidate, realize you will end up a year from now with one of them no  matter what you do, so you might as well take the best of two bad choices.  So please, hold your nose if you must, grit your teeth, and vote Biden into office, if for no other reason than to keep our government from falling into a dictatorship.  Keep it running.  Then, as soon as the election is over, get involved.  Run for public office.  Work within the Democratic party.  Work wherever you feel comfortable.  But do something.  Make the changes you want.

It’s your future, and you have a chance to start returning this country to a path toward what the Constitution writers wanted it to be, to what the United States flag is supposed to represent.  You can become greater than the Greatest Generation, and it is urgent that you do so.  But you must pay attention and vote.

Maybe we can use this dictator scare to wake us up.  Something must.

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