Yet again, our democracy, our Republic, is hanging by a thread. It feels like it has been hanging by a thread for the past three years.
It was hanging by a thread during the 2018 congressional elections. Had the Democrats not won the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, there would have been no check whatsoever on the lame duck. There would have been no impeachment. There would have been no one calling out the blatant hypocrisy of the trumplicans.
Fast forward to the Presidential election. Another thread to hang by as we had a pandemic and voter suppression with which to contend. We were brought back from the precipice by high voter turnout, especially blacks and people of color. Had Biden/Harris not prevailed, we would have an autocrat in office and all bets would have been off.
Then we had over 60 court cases where the lame duck was suing for a variety of reasons, many frivolous. All trying to disenfranchise and throw out votes cast by registered voters of both parties. Some cases went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the lame duck had appointed one-third of the Justices. Had all of these judges not actually done the job to which they were elected or appointed, the lame duck would most likely have been president-elect. Not only would this have meant an autocrat in office, but it would have also have ushered in the U.S. essentially having kangaroo courts where the lame duck wins no matter what. Justice, such that it is, would have ended.
If that wasn’t bad, we then had strong-arm tactics, threats, and protests towards election officials. Governors and Secretaries of States were being lobbied, and threatened. Senators and the lame duck were attempting to interfere in state election results, calling counts into question, and as we just discovered, trying to get election officials to “find” votes, just ignore the electorate, and change the results to the “right” results.
Tonight we hang by another thread—control of the U.S. Senate. If the two Democrats win, the Grimm Reaper no longer controls the senate, no longer decides what comes to the floor, and he no longer holds the power to deprive the people of the aid they need. It will mean whether the Biden/Harris administration will be able to make progress to fix and heal the country, or languishes on the desk of someone with no empathy for the suffering of the American people.
But, it doesn’t stop there. Tomorrow we have 153 seditionists who will try to, once again, thwart the will of the people, subvert democracy, and perform a coup in plain sight. It is only, only because the U.S. House of Representatives is majority Democrats that this seditionist movement will most likely fail. We won’t know for sure if we still have a democracy, a Republic, on Thursday until we see how it all plays out when the Electoral College votes are certified.
Lastly, or maybe not, there is still one thread upon which we hang. It is the question of the military. The lame duck will not stoop too low to try anything and everything to overthrow our country. He so wants to be a Putin, a Jong-un, a Duterte, an Áder, or a Xi Jinping. He wants it so bad he will subvert the democratic process, demean the press, embrace white supremacists, and do nothing about dictators taking action against the U.S. to hold onto power. The big unknown is will the military remain neutral, will it follow an unlawful order, or will it come to the point of having to remove the lame duck. Unfortunately, we still have 15 days until Biden is sworn in. That is 15 long days in which the lame duck still has time to destroy us from within.
I wish I could say the thread will become at least a string once we arrive at a Biden presidency. However, I’m not confident. I’m not confident because the lame duck makes the press too much money. Normally a former administration loses a lot of press coverage once they are out of office. If the press allows the lame duck to still sucks all the oxygen out of a room, then we will continue to have to contend with his cult, his trumplicans, for at least two more years. 2022 will be as important as 2020. That will be the election in which Democrats can pick up seats in both houses, and hopefully many Tea Party and trumplicans are voted out.
We have 15 critical days to go. Then a quick breather, then we have to start working on the 2022 races.
As the late John Lewis said, “Democracy is Not a State. It Is An Act.”
We must continue to act, act each and every day. To survive as self-rule, we must put in the work. We must also get to the polls for every election, not just those for the president. We must also elect Democrats and progressives up and down the ticket. All elections matter, not just those at the Federal level.
Join me in the state of acting, not the act of complacency.
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 