On Politics

It's an election year, did you hear? This time around, it's scary.

Our Republican front runner is building his power with rhetoric that scapegoats vulnerable minorities. Muslims fleeing political upheaval and civil war, who have had their lives destroyed by extremism, are being told they will not be allowed in the country whose motto is Freedom and Justice for All. He wants to build a wall to keep people out because he is so ignorant of history that he believes walls actually work, when in fact they embarrass the nation that builds them. Remember "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall?" If not, you should look it up. A Republican said it. He wants to register Muslims in the United States because their young men don't feel excluded and disenfranchised enough. He wants to deport millions of people from US Soil. Do you know what has to be built in order to accomplish such a feat? Internment camps. Sound familiar? Other Republicans are talking about carpet bombing the Arab world. These people are being cheered by thousands.

We have another candidate using facts and figures to build his argument that the middle class in America is in danger. He is only saying what economists have been saying for decades. He wants to give free college to everyone, like they do in Europe. He wants to bring single payer health care to America, like they already have in Europe. He wants to readjust the tax structure to pay for it. The numbers work. Independent agencies have vetted his math and approved it. He wants to bring prosperity to the middle class again, and how is he dismissed by the media? Not possible. Can't do it. Pie in the sky. Vote for the one who is in bed with Wall Street, the one who will uphold the status quo, won't rock the boat too much, won't piss off those powerful billionaires who are really running things, including the media. They try to prop her up. They try and try. Maybe they'll do it, and she'd be so much better than the fascist orangutan, but only because she's not insane.

Please don't bother posting your defensive comment spewing hysterical fear, and rage, making some veiled threat like, "You'll feel differently when the scary brown people come for your family!" No they won't, so no I won't. And I won't feel differently when people are forced into long lines where they have to register, and ushered into camps where they await deportation, and become more angry, more embittered, and more sadly aware that after a death defying slog through deserts both figurative and literal, the land of Freedom and Justice for All was a mirage.

Let's not go down this road, America. Let's remember who we are. For the love of all that is holy, if you are capable of empathy, if you believe that violence and oppression are not the answer, if you don't buy into the easy scapegoating being touted by a bullying braggart who inherited his wealth, if you believe that hope is a worthy cause, vote. Please vote. And remember what Edmund Burke said:  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing.