We, or at least I, thought for the longest time that it couldn’t happen here. Not in the USA. We were impervious to such decay, such poisonous thinking. Of course that turns out not to be true. We’re not special. We have serious flaws. In some ways we’re just another gathering of scared, selfish humans, a shrinking enclave of descendants of western and northern Europeans who see the writing on the wall, who are riding the prevailing winds of self-centeredness and fear and digging in of heels, trying to hold on for dear life in a world that’s changing, and in a country that’s trying, in fits and starts, to live up to its ideals.
Donald Trump and his mindless followers do not want this to happen, and the groundwork is being laid by which the white, Anglo-Saxon status quo will continue, and America will become just the latest failed experiment in democracy, ruled by a minority and the latest batch of autocrats. No doubt a most dramatic and shocking fall.
I care not one bit how Fox News treated the results of the Arizona audit. All I know is that the news sources I trust are at once laughing at the predictable results and also looking beyond them to what they indicate: that we have reached the crisis point when all signs point to a frightening abandonment of checks and balances, where Trump continues to lurk, or loom, and plot his return to power by assaulting and discrediting a process that has survived but may not survive much longer.
Steve Schmidt eloquently observes that America stands or falls on our capacity for honoring a compact, i.e. not losing faith and belief and trust in a sharing of power in a complex world. Trump and all his zombie friends would prefer to keep it much simpler, much less complex and more just a contrast between patriots and traitors, between “freedom lovers” and those who hate America. Even though most of them love America, albeit a fuller expression of it.
3 Cents' 