America is torn, but democracy still stands.
Today, the Electoral College sealed Donald Trump’s fate by honoring the will of a majority of the American people, and formally casting 306 ballots for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. I want to thank the many protestors across the country who resisted for four years and helped close this horrific chapter of our history.
Some may dismiss these activists and say they were inconsequential. I beg to differ. If the protests convinced people to go out and vote, then every single one of them mattered.
In the end, millions resisted Trump and his policies and helped deliver a decisive defeat. Down-ballot Republicans fared better, indicating the president’s behavior and his inept handling of the coronavirus epidemic doomed him. One to two percent of Republican voters said no thank you, too. Would they have if no one protested?
The Next Four Years Would Have Been Far Worse
This protestor mourns Heather Heyer who was killed when a white supremacist ran over her in Charlottesville.
Let us not underestimate Trump’s potential for destruction if he had won four more years, cementing his stranglehold on the American government for himself and his children.
As I wrote this post, the media announced 300,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. A half-million Americans are likely to die before spring. The pandemic is now the second deadliest event in American history next to the American Civil War (620,000).
Each flag represents an American who lost their lives to the COVID-19.
Trump and his media enablers tricked a significant portion of the population into believing the pandemic was a hoax, that it was a liberal conspiracy designed to control them. These blind followers attended MAGA superspreader events and Thanksgiving dinners without masks, intensifying transmission of the virus.
The Science March 2017, one of the earlier protests against the Trump Administration.
Now hundreds of thousands have died; a significant portion of whom lost their lives because of this denial of science. Trump has no empathy or remorse, a complete disregard for human life.
Female ministers protested border separations.
And what has become of immigrant families who were forced to separate while crossing our southern border? More than 500 children are still under the care of the federal government, separated from their parents at the border more than two years ago. Where are their parents? Are they alive? Forced orphans, these children will be scarred for life.
The Washington National Cathedral used this photo yesterday to condemn the Proud Boys and racial hatred.
Then there is the ongoing domestic racial violence. From the white supremacist Unite the Right march in Charlottesville in August 2017 to the December 2020 Million MAGA March in DC when black churches were vandalized, America’s great shame rose to prominence again. Blacks were repressed and attacked by Trump-supporting white supremacists.
A Black Lives Matter protest photo taken last June.
When blacks and other Americans resisted via the Black Lives Matter movement, they were labeled as radicals, socialists, vandals, looters, and Antifa. They were bullied and decried for protesting – with masks – during a pandemic. The right sent vigilantes to bully them and in rare cases shoot them. Finally, Trump and his right-hand man William Barr used the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security law enforcement officials to silence protests.
DHS Agents in military camouflage patrolled DC during Black Lives Matter protests in June.
The president defiled our elections and did his best to suppress the vote. When millions of dissatisfied Americans voted by mail and voted early to avoid the coronavirus, he cried fraud. Then when he lost definitively, Trump abused the court system with vain attempts to disenfranchise millions of voters.
The corrupted Republican party stood by and let him do it. People kept waiting for a plurality of Republicans to force Trump to respect our democracy, but instead faced with retribution, they protected their jobs. More than 120 members of Congress and 18 state Attorneys General are on record supporting the attempt to disenfranchise voters.
Have we witnessed a failed fascist coup?
Merriam Webster defines fascism as, “A political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”
Is this not what we have just witnessed for the past four years?
What do you think would have happened if Trump had “won” four more years?
The Election Is Finished
Game over.
Today, we can safely say the American democracy will live for another four years. Whether we can recover from Trump in the long term is another question.
Just for today, though, I am grateful. Thank you to everyone who resisted.