A Referendum on America

There is no Electoral College tomorrow. Raw numbers win it in every state. That should be somehow reassuring considering that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by three million. 

Yet tomorrow is a day of both hope and dread. There is hope that the Democrats will at least win the House of Representatives and a chance to  clean up the Trump Swamp, saturated as it is with lies, broken promises, corruption, criminality, and  – yes – evil.

But there is dread, too – strong and deep – that America will not come to its collective senses and that the horror that is infecting this country will not only continue, but will continue almost unbridled, a license for Donald Trump to wreak havoc on every democratic institution that he has not yet been able to destroy.

Tomorrow is a referendum literally on the future of America, and while there was fear of a Trump victory in 2016, that fear has morphed into an existential dread now that we know that the Trump presidency this far has been many times worse than we could imagine given the treasonous and slavish devotion to his agenda by the Republican-controlled Congress.

There is really no need to rehearse here the Trump Treason to date; it is written indelibly now in the pages of this country's and the world's history. This one incredibly arrogant and ignorant narcissist in two short years (although they seem in some ways an eternity of surreal madness) has been able to take the good name of America and make it both a laughingstock for those who laugh at tragedy, and – worse – a growing symbol of nationalism and unbridled hate. We have stepped back to a time when white sheets and burning crosses were part and parcel of the American psyche. Obviously, there is no Klan riding untrammeled through the American hinterland, but the same racist reality that enabled the Klan to flourish is rearing its gorgon's head again.

Perhaps Donald Trump is America's punishment for the deep stain of slavery on the country's soul. Indeed, the Constitution and all its inherent promises of democracy and equality ring strangely hollow when compared with the total denial of these “rights” to a slave population in the millions.

If we thought we were beyond that, we have only to listen to the voices of Donald Trump and his accessories. Trump's current madness of dispatching 15,000 troops in combat gear to the Texas border is exhibit A that we are not beyond the most blatant racism. These are brown people that Trump wants to keep out of America. They are not rapists and criminals and terrorists. They are simply brown people escaping from countries who threaten theirs and their children's lives on a minute-by-minute basis. 

But they are different; they are brown. Their skin alone makes them unacceptable to Donald Trump, whose father before him and whose sons and daughters after him are racists to their hollow cores.

Go forth and vote tomorrow. The future of America is at stake.