The Path Forward

And then there were two, but it was always going to be this way.

The way things turned out is the way they were always going to turn out.

We all knew who both party’s nominee for president would be.

There will be events called conventions that will be more like coronations.

There will be fawning adoration on both sides.

Both parties will claim to represent what is great about America.

Many say there is no difference between the two.

They say this election is like previous elections, and it doesn’t matter who is elected.

It’s not true.

The current president is criticized for being too old.

Some believe he is aiding genocide.

They think he needs to give way to someone else, someone younger.

But a sitting president rarely declines running for reelection.

It was never going to happen in this election cycle.

There’s the other candidate. The former president.

The former president whose presidency and current candidacy would seem unbelievable in a novel or a movie.

He made fun of disabled people.

He ridiculed military heroes, even though he is a draft dodger.

When he was president, he was a racist, misogynist, and nativist.

He has openly declared his dictatorial intentions.

There are people that say that there is no real choice.

They say that they won’t vote, or they will vote “other,” or “none of the above.”

Which will be the same as voting for the former president because any vote not for the current president is a vote for the former president.

They say that they can’t vote for the current president because of what is happening in Palestine.

My questions to those people are:

How important is freedom to you?

When a candidate declares his intentions to be an autocrat, how can apathy be a choice?

We have already seen the erosion of personal freedoms because of politicians elected in his wake and judges he appointed.

Are you content to see freedoms not only eroded, but erased?

In this country, we like to lord over other so-called “third world” countries that have long histories of tinpot dictatorships.

We like to boast that we could never have a Hitler or Stalin in America.

But take a disaffected segment of the majority, (who mostly feel disaffected because a recent president was a different color).

Add a candidate who speaks to their demons,

Who encourages and feeds off prejudice, racism, sexism, and xenophobia,

And you end up with a dictator in the White House.

Our Supreme Court is compromised with conflict of interest, licentiousness, and graft.

We have current members of Congress who aided, abetted, and likely planned a coup de ’tat in our nation’s capital.

Not voting is the same as saying that you are against equal rights for People of Color and women.

Not voting is the same as giving assent to totalitarianism.

Not voting is the same as saying that you’d rather live in a country like Putin’s Russia.

The current president isn’t perfect.

He isn’t young.

He isn’t always right.

But he believes in the democratic process.

He wants to be president.

Not a dictator.

There are only two roads on the path forward.

Democracy or dictatorship.

If you don’t vote, your non-choice is a choice.

And you might have lost the privilege to vote for the foreseeable future.