Opinion: Your Vote Is Never More Important Than Now. Here’s Why …

The pity is that so few seem to be concerned with the daily turns in our national government.  Either too busy to notice or too indolent to care. Whichever state of mind might identify you – and for the latter that would be about 75% of the population – the events of the past few weeks are alarm bells meant to call attention to the real fact that our unique democracy is being tested to its limits and its continuation depends upon the inclusion and interest of all of us, every damn one of us.

“It can’t happen here.”  Wrong. It is happening here. I speak as one who has had intimate contact with the Slavic political culture that  our President so admires. The Russians of 1951 are no different than the Russians of 2020 – merely employing more electronic gadgetry to the same old messages.  Russian egos are immense. They are a power that propels their owners into furious imaginary scenarios which promote their desire for something they can barely explain.  But the end is domination, absolute power with attendant incredible cruelty, balm for their paranoia and gold for their little personal needs. I am scribbling this after reading and hearing the Russian – American associate of Rudy Giuliani tell that he is frightened – he and his family –  of the Department of Justice (suborned by Trump) and the Attorney General, William Barr – and concerned about what they will do to keep him quiet.  Are we watching America dissolve under the acid attack of our own federal agencies?  Trump has so infected the many federal agencies that it will take a generation to cure the disease of carpetbagger smash and grab.

It’s beginning to resemble the Russia I knew in 1953 with people popping up one day only to disappear the next – permanently – and not just in Russia.  Northern Europe was awash in dingy doings by nameless felons.  Many years later, still intrigued by those times, I wrote a short novel (“The Spanish Ambassador’s Daughter”) to illustrate the nonsense I witnessed then.  It was also during the days of the McCarthy hearings when many reputations were demolished by a paranoid “Commie-hater” whose own paranoia sparked a huge witch hunt, looking under beds for Commies and Commie sympathizers.  The Russian disease USA style.  And I see it today. 

My latest email to our REAL president, Mitch McConnell: “Sure, he’s shrinking the government, eradicating environmental rules,  placing right-wing judges in lifetime positions and about to rape the western lands – all part of the Republican agenda.  But, at what price?  I see a horde of elected Republicans simply looking the other way as Trump ravages our democracy – and you allow it.  You know he has said that he owns the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate and the Republican party, which he has remade into his own unfortunate image.  That means he owns your wrinkled old ass, too.  Imagine what might occur should Trump be set free:  Insurrection?  Revolt?  Armed conflict in the streets?  Actually, there’ll be marches, but most Americans don’t have the gumption to stand up to people like you.  I’d like to be proven wrong on that count.  I’m not optimistic.