A pivotal election

Next Tuesday, voters here in the North Country will join their fellow Americans in making the most consequential political decision in all of our lifetimes. None of us has ever seen a presidential candidate who has so clearly disclosed his desire to end the 248-year experiment in democracy we call the United States of America.
We know that many voters in our region will put their mark next to the name of Donald J. Trump on Election Day. In doing so, they cannot claim they were unaware that they were voting for a man who is intent on turning the United States into a dictatorship.
Donald Trump has made his hostility to the principles of this country a virtual centerpiece of his campaign. He has openly called for ending the right of the media to criticize him, which is always the first step on the path to tyranny. Mr. Trump openly calls for pulling the broadcast licenses of CBS and ABC because they’ve engaged in critical reporting of his actions. Appearing just last week on Fox and Friends, Trump argued that the conservative network should no longer air negative ads about him or allow those critical of him to appear on their programs. Even the friendliest of networks isn’t good enough for Trump who, like dictators everywhere, demands adulation 24 hours a day.
Trump doesn’t even pretend that the First Amendment would provide protection for Americans under a Trump administration. He now regularly refers to his political opponents as “the enemy within,” and has called for the deployment of the National Guard and even our regular military to “take care” of his enemies.
Many of his supporters dismiss such talk by Trump and note that he didn’t engage in such actions in his first term. Yet, as many of his top advisers — including nearly his entire top military and national security staff — have since revealed, it was only because of their collective decisions to ignore or push back against Trump’s unconstitutional orders that the U.S. military wasn’t deployed against Americans and others in the country during his first term. Former top Trump staff say he wanted to shoot migrants seeking asylum or refugee status here in America. His former defense secretary Mark Esper has written that Trump wanted the U.S. military to shoot peaceful protesters in the streets in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and reacted with rage when military leaders told him that would be illegal.
Trump doesn’t share the protestors’ concerns about police brutality. In fact, a month ago, Trump called for giving police “one really violent day,” which he said would end the crime problem. “Shoot ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out,” may be the kind of idiocy you can find in the nuttier corners of social media, but it’s not how things operate in a country that’s supposed to be based on due process and the rule of law.
Perhaps that is why nearly half of his former Cabinet officials have refused to endorse him. Many, like former Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, and former Vice President Mike Pence, have said publicly that the man they watched behind closed doors in the White House is an unmitigated danger to this country. Other top officials, all Republicans mind you, say he regularly expressed admiration for Adolph Hitler along with more modern-day dictators like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Victor Orban. The former head of his Joint Chiefs of Staff called Trump “fascist to the core.”
These individuals know Donald J. Trump much more intimately than anyone in our region planning to vote for him next Tuesday, and anyone considering such a vote should at least pause to wonder why those closest to him recognize the danger he poses to this country, while far too many in our region clearly do not.
They might want to consider, as well, the ugliness that surrounds Donald Trump in the closing weeks of the campaign. At his rally last Sunday at Madison Square Garden, Vice President Kamala Harris was variously described as the “anti-Christ,” or as a “prostitute,” while those advising her were referred to as “pimps.” Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, was described as a floating island of garbage, while Jewish and Black Americans also served as targets for ridicule.
The Trump campaign tried to backpedal in the wake of the backlash to the event, but the orgy of cruelty and hate was absolutely in keeping with the tenor of the Trump campaign for the past several months. We’d like to think that Trump and the GOP reached rock bottom last Sunday, but we suspect there is worse to come depending on the outcome of Tuesday’s election.
It’s worth noting that dictators often come to power initially through the ballot box. Adolph Hitler was first elected as German Chancellor in 1933, and he used that authority over several years to seize absolute power. We like to tell ourselves that it can’t happen here, but in the end, the America we’ve known for the past 248 years, for all its faults, is ultimately based on a piece of very old parchment. The day that we, as Americans, say we’re okay with leadership that lights a match to that document is the day that “We the People” throw in the towel for a dictator.
Don’t think for a moment that others within our government will ride to the rescue if voters are reckless enough to put Trump back in the White House. Trump has made clear that his second term administration would be filled only with sycophants, starting with his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, who has already promised to violate the Constitution if given the chance. We’ve seen that weak-kneed Republicans in Congress, like our own Eighth District Rep. Pete Stauber, will back any illegal action taken by Trump. And the most corrupt and partisan Supreme Court in U.S. history has laid down its own marker when it declared Trump immune from prosecution for virtually any action he undertakes while in office.
Republicans in Congress and at the Supreme Court have set the stage for the end of America as we know it.
Let’s be clear. If given power again, Trump has no intention of relinquishing it. There’s a reason he tells supporters they’ll only need to vote one more time. No one intending to vote for him on Tuesday can say they didn’t know they were voting for a dictator instead of a president.
Tuesday could well be a turning point like no other in American history. Will we choose to continue our 248-year experiment in self-governance by electing someone committed to good governance and the rule of law, or will we throw it all away on a man with no knowledge nor respect for what it actually means to be an American?
On Tuesday, vote like the country’s future truly depends on it– because it absolutely does.