History Rhymes

Reading during my current trip has included scholarly accounts of two major political leaders active in the 20th and 21st centuries.  As I read, I jotted down revealing details about each one.  Can you guess who they are from the excerpts below?

Leader #1

·      His highest words of praise about someone were that they had “said some very nice things” about me.

·      He was ignorant and uniformed but constantly promoted himself as a “genius.”  He had total faith in his views and ideas on all subjects and ignored experts.

·      Foreign heads of state meeting him observed “his self-assurance and self-praise are absolutely monumental.”  They found him “bizarre.”

·      In his rallies, his speeches were rambling “monologues,” but people had to cheer and applaud, lest they attract threats of violence from others in the audience.  The rallies were not customary political events but “tribal rituals.”

·      He chafed under any limitation on his power, expressing open hostility to checks and balances, rule of law, the judiciary, and the electoral process.

·      He portrayed himself as the champion of national exceptionalism.

·      His governance was highly personalized, with his family holding key positions of power in the party and the government.

·      He eventually came to surround himself only with loyalists and sycophants.

·      His decision-making style was impulsive, ego-driven, and often based on personal instincts rather than the opinions of experts or careful deliberation.

·      His ascension to power was “history repeating itself as farce.” 

Leader #2

·      He was a highly charismatic leader who inspired unprecedented and unshakable loyalty from his followers.

·      His rallies were showcases for the fervency of his popular support and featured long rambling bragging rants. 

·      He promised to restore national “greatness” and said that only he could do it, casting himself as the savior of the country.

·      He targeted immigrants and minority groups as scapegoats for the nation’s problems and campaigned based on xenophobia and racism.

·      He promised if elected to suppress opposition, control the media, and otherwise undermine democratic institutions.

·      He took the political use of outright lies and disinformation to a new level.

·      News outlets that criticized him or reported the truth about his activities were automatically accused of falsehood and illegitimacy.  He could not tolerate an independent or objective press.

·      He exploited divisions within society, pitting groups against each other, calling opponents the “enemy” and solidifying his base by preaching relentlessly of a war between “us” and “them.” 

I know.  It’s impossible in each case not to think immediately of Trump. 

But neither one is Trump.  The first is Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator of Romania between 1965 and 1989.  The second is Adolph Hitler, who became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. (In case you are not aware, under Ceausescu’s 24-year dictatorship, thousands of opponents were imprisoned, tortured, and killed, all freedoms were eliminated (including bans on contraception and abortion), living standards plummeted and inflation soared.  Thirty-five years later, the country has yet to recover.)

Across time and cultures authors and playwrights – Sophocles, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Milton, Ibsen, Schiller, Camus, and countless others – have taught us that character is destiny.  Flawed leaders inevitably result in chaos and national disaster.  When a leader lacks integrity, wisdom, or any moral compass, when they are unhinged by unbridled ego, greed and selfishness, when they inhabit the fantasy of their own greatness and lose the correcting anchor of objective truth, the result is ruinous.  Always. 

It does not matter whether the authoritarian is on the right or the left.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s Chavez or Franco, Mao or Mussolini, Stalin or Pol Pot.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the 1st century or the 20th century, or Europe, Asia, or the Americas.   The result is the same:  destruction of democratic institutions and norms, purges, deportations, camps and mass detentions, famines, forced ideological conformity, war, genocide, economic collapse, cultural collapse, ethnic persecution.    

As Mark Twain said, history may not exactly repeat itself, but it rhymes. 

Dachau

Last week I visited Dachau. 

In the Reichstag elections of November 1932 the Nazi party, promising to restrict immigration and expel non-Germans, received only 33.1% of the popular vote.  Although a majority of the German people voted for other parties, Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933.  Democracy ended two months later, in March. 

Despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign, Hitler’s greater obsession turned out to be retribution against his enemies.  One his first acts was to order the establishment of detention camps, the first of which, Dachau, opened on March 22, 1933, as a detention center for political opponents of the Nazi regime, primarily Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, and others who had spoken out against the Nazi program (the establishment of concentration camps for Jewish citizens came later).  

92 years later, in the country that scarified nearly 500,000 of its citizens to defeat Hitler, a man idolized by almost exactly the same minority percentage of the voting population has also vowed to use the power of the presidency to seek revenge, retaliation, and retribution against those he considers his political enemies.    At the same time, he told Time magazine and has repeatedly promised that immediately following his inauguration he will open detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland.

Millions have visited Dachau since it opened as a memorial in 1965, determined that it must not be allowed to happen again.

But it is happening again.  Historians analyzing the greatest global catastrophe of the 20th century observe that the Nazis could have been stopped in 1932 had major establishment figures not miscalculated that Hitler could be controlled, and had center-right and center politicians thrown their support behind a single opposition.   Should Trump not be stopped, history will reserve its harshest judgment for non-MAGA Republican leaders who, through public endorsements of Harris, could have made it safe for conservatives of all stripes to cast the only moral, patriotic, and intelligent vote, but instead took the expedient, selfish, and cowardly route and stayed silent.

A Not-so-Distant Mirror

I have been reading the superb British travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account of his 1930s walk from London to Istanbul.  In 1933, about nine months after Hitler came to power, he passed on foot through countless German towns and villages, meeting and observing local people in pubs, inns, and chance encounters on the road.  It was early enough that most spoke freely about what was happening in German politics.

Fermor reported that Nazi party activities seemed to be “swallowing up” the whole lives of its followers.  He reports an all-consuming religious-type fervor, directed at a single man, which seemed to allow no time or energy for the rest of life.   I read this on the same day that I saw the heart-breaking testimony of a January 6 insurrectionist, relating how he had been consumed by cultish devotion to Trump and his life had shrunk to near-constant immersion in the on-line hell of the far right.  

Fermor also observed, “It was a time when friendships and families were breaking up all over Germany.”  All I could think of were all the many sad reports from friends about family members lost to Q-Anon and other conspiracies, which left them unable to tolerate the lack of belief by their loved ones and former friends. 

Even the nature of the fervor seems similar.  Over and over, in his meetings with self-proclaimed followers of Hitler, Fermor found that they had little understanding of Hitler’s actual policies or ideology.   Instead, their enthusiasm was grounded in the deeply human longing for a savior, vulnerability to the false promises of the demagogue, and a sense of belonging with a group of co-enthusiasts.  It seemed to Fermor like some sort of emotional contagion, which once caught was impossible to dislodge.   Remember that the Republican Party redefined itself as a cult on August 23, 2020, when the GOP national convention resolved that the party’s agenda is whatever Donald Trump says it is from time to time. 

And finally, Fermor was astonished by the number of Nazi supporters who told him they came to the Nazi movement from other parts of the political spectrum, not from prior affiliations with the right.  He gives a detailed account of a young Nazi who stated that he had been a committed Marxist and was unable to see any conflict between his current and previous positions.   It is hard not to think of the millions of voters here who switched to MAGA from a lifetime of voting D.  

Of course, there are vital differences between now and 1933.  The erosion of America’s hegemony from its peak immediately following the end of the Cold War cannot be compared to the humiliations suffered by Germany following the end of World War I.   The economic pain of the American middle-class pales beside the damage caused to Germans by the hyperinflation and economic collapse of Weimar Germany.   And MAGA’s appeal to white male supremacy cannot compare to the deeply rooted and pervasive antisemitism already present in Germany when Hitler came on to the scene.    

By the time of the 1934 mid-term elections in America, a surging fascist movement, enamored (like their contemporary brethren) with Hitler, Mussolini and other foreign strongmen, energized the GOP campaign to re-take control of Congress. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins is reported to have said the following:  “They deserved to lose the election even more than we deserved to win it.” 

I commend this thought to your attention if you are doubtful or unenthusiastic about Democrat candidates up or down the ballot.   Let’s say you’ve even concluded that they don’t deserve to win.  It doesn’t matter. Secretary Perkins’s point is the key one and the great lesson of the 20th century – the other side deserves to lose even more.   

The First Fifteen Months

You only need to answer to a single question in order to cast your vote in November:  What would happen to America if Trump were re-elected?    You might think the answer requires speculation.  It does not.  It can be answered by simple observation.  There is another country whose previous leader was reelected in 2022 thanks to a fanatical adoring base consisting of about 25% of the electorate, a wave of anti-democratic nationalist populism, and a political deal giving ultimate power to religious fundamentalists.  I refer to Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel.

David Shulman, a professor emeritus at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and 2016 winner of the Israel Prize (the country’s highest cultural honor), in a recent piece in The New York Review of Books, gave the following account of what followed Natanyahu’s reelection in 2022:

For the last fifteen months, since this government was sworn in, we have watched the accelerating disintegration of the state and its institutions.  No one, not even the most optimistic of our [Israel’s] enemies, could have predicted this swift decline.  We have a prime minister whose main talent is to contrive ever more unscrupulous schemes for his own political survival . . .  a society hovering on the brink of civil war; a sick economy impoverished by unimaginably vast transfers of citizens’ tax money to the ultrareligious factions and their yeshivas; a civil service that has been gutted by the appointment of political hacks and sycophants in place of professionals; a legal system, once more or less functional, in danger of being destroyed . . . once-banned violent . . . extremists, relegitimized by Netanyahu, in the Knesset and high-ranking positions in the government . . . [It is as if the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan had been appointed head of the FBI.] This is the short list.  I won’t ruin your day with the long one.

He did ruin my day.  I hope I have ruined yours.

Talking Points

Political discourse in this country often seems to have been reduced to the repetition of the day’s talking points promulgated on social media by each side.   So taking a break from long-form analysis, here are my talking points for today:

1.     With Trump’s absorption of the Republic National Committee into the Trump organization/family, we no longer have a two-party system.  We have a demagogue and an opposition.   The Republican party had a good 170-year run, but it lies in ruins and cannot be resurrected.  Before Trump puts Putin-like barriers in their way, the center right in America had better start organizing a successor.

2.      It is no longer responsible to tolerate or amplify (as even the most responsible media sources routinely do) the now-almost-daily assurances from Trump apologists that it’s all rhetoric (“Trump being Trump”) and that he won’t actually do any of the “crazy shit” he says.   Don’t believe them.  He means what he says.

3.     Nor should we take any comfort from the same apologists’ messaging that, even if Trump tries to do the “crazy shit,” there are impediments that will stop him, so it’s OK.  Really?  The “establishment” figures who surrounded him before are gone.  The non-MAGA Republicans who had retained some influence within the party have lost it or exited the field.  The Supreme Court is disinclined to stand in his way. 

4.     Unless you stop ignoring Trump’s pathological narcissism, you will never understand him or what we face.  No issue is interesting to Trump unless it involves him personally (and most issues are re-framed so they are about him).   The world is divided into friends and enemies.  Friends are those who flatter him and appear for the moment to buy into his narcissistic narrative of greatness; enemies are everyone else.  Information is credible if it supports his narcissistic narrative or advances his goals.  Information is dismissed as “fake” or a “hoax” if it does not.  Understanding Trump really is that simple. 

5.     The damage he has already done to America’s standing in the world is devastating.  This week’s statement green-lighting Putin to attack NATO members was the most damaging yet.  The late Senator John McCain nailed it in 2018 following Trump’s first meeting with Putin: “Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. . . . Coming close on the heels of President Trump’s bombastic and erratic conduct towards our closest friends and allies in Brussels and Britain, today’s press conference marks a recent low point in the history of the American Presidency.”   This week was worse.

Talking points are for talking.  Please.

MAGA Troops in the 'Hood

Dear Millenials and Gen Z:    Bored with politics?  Grumpy about the Democrats running an old man?  Thinking maybe you’ll just check out and not vote?   Planning to hunker down in Ft Greene and bake some sourdough? 

Consider this.  By early next year, if Trump is elected, he’s just promised you’ll be seeing red state national guard troops, federalized and answering to Trump, marching through your neighborhood rounding up folks for mass deportation.  Think you’ll be able to ignore that? 

You didn’t think this was all real?  Tonight blue state governors all over the country are scrambling to analyze whether they can keep control of their own state’s national guard troops, and legally use them to confront the red state troops rounding up people in the streets of blue state cities. 

[Hint to blue state governors:  read Christian Nation, Chapter 13:

“Can they really take over the New York Guard?” the Governor asked.  I answered.

“Yes.  Since 2007, a Governor’s consent is not required for the President to assume command of the Guard in a state.  What we need to do is ensure that all the senior officers are loyal to you, sir.  If they are not, we must replace them while we can. . .”]

So maybe it’s time to reconsider sitting this one out.

When I wrote my dystopian novel, Christian Nation, it was not difficult to predict what Christian nationalists and their puppets would do upon obtaining control of the Federal government.  In part, because they’ve told us what they will do (as Trump continues to do), and in part because a quick legal analysis reveals the steps that would be required to implement their agenda over the vigorous objection of the majority of the population and all of the blue states.   I’m sorry to say it, but every scenario ends in violence:

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the Feds advanced up through New Jersey and the formidable Joshua Brigades from Oklahoma, Kansas, Alabama, and Colorado took up positions up and down the west shore of the Hudson, from the George Washington Bridge in the north down to Bayonne Island.   Manhattanites lined the east bank of the Hudson staring across at the alarming sight of tanks and artillery all poised to shoot across the River at the full length of the island.  In a symbolic gesture, the Holies occupied Liberty Island from the Jersey side and draped the base of the Statue of Liberty with the “Christian flag”.   At the same time, a small unit of Marines landed at Stony Brook on the North Shore of Long Island, and proceeded south to secure McArthur Airport in Islip.  We watched nervously as huge C-17 transports streamed continuously in and out of MacArthur Airport all afternoon, discharging troops, tanks, vehicles ,and supplies.   The next morning, the City was transfixed by the strange sight of tanks and armored personnel carriers streaming west along the otherwise empty Long Island Expressway and Southern State Parkway.   The defense perimeters at the City’s eastern edge were pierced following a brief skirmish.  A brave unit of Guards briefly halted the advance around Kennedy Airport using only three old tanks brought down from Camp Smith in Peekskill, until helicopter-fired missiles destroyed each tank.   The Governor pulled all our forces back to Manhattan, and deployed them at the bridge and tunnels exits, which were relatively easy to defend, and to reinforce the troops at the most obvious spots for amphibious assault around the island’s perimeter.   By the end of the day, the same formidable line of tanks, artillery and troops lined the east bank of the East River all the way up to the South Bronx. 

It gets worse.  But it doesn’t have to happen.  All that is needed is for turnout percentages of independents and Democrats to approach those of Christian fundamentalists (typically around 85%).  The decision to disengage and stay home is a decision to welcome MAGA shock troops to the ‘hood and send 5% of the American workforce back where they came from, leaving the economy in a shambles.  It’s your choice.

This time, we must listen

Writing from a future theocratic authoritarian America, the narrator of my 2013 book, Christian Nation, opens his memoir as follows: “So I suppose what happened here is that they said what they would do, and we did not listen.  Then they did what they said they would do.”

History teaches that demagogues frequently signal their intentions but that most people simply do not believe that they actually will do what they say.   Of all the lessons derived from history, none is more relevant to our present moment.  

And what has our home-grown 21st century demagogue said he will do?

·      On “day one” his priority will be retribution against his perceived enemies, using and (he said) abusing power to extract revenge. 

·      Personal loyalty to Trump will be the litmus test for all appointments, high and low.

·      He will circumvent the Constitution by ignoring the failure of any nominee to receive required Senate confirmation and instead govern with a slate of permanently “acting” officials.

·      He will “overhaul” or “dismantle” the DOJ, the FBI, and intelligence agencies and direct them to “go down and indict” his perceived enemies.

·      He will impose a political test for general and flag officer promotions in the U.S. military.

·      He will “scour” the country for undocumented immigrants, assemble them in detention camps, and deport millions each year.

·      He will “never” perform America’s treaty obligation to come to the defense of Europe and “we will quit NATO.”

·      He will “shift” the “excessively large endowments” from private universities to a new “American Academy” where “no wokeness or jihadism [is] allowed.”

·      He will abrogate by executive order birthright citizenship guaranteed by the Constitution.

·      He will not accept the results of any election he does not win, “because the only way we’re going to lose is if they cheat on the elections.”

To be clear, these are not my predictions, just the things that Trump has already promised. 

But Trump himself is not the only one we need to listen to.  As was just again illustrated in Iowa, Trump and the GOP are now wholly dependent on Christian nationalists.  There is no path to electability without them.  Their leverage is total.  The price for their support?  Implementation of the entire culture war agenda through whatever means required, whether lawful or unlawful.  They have been clear and consistent for decades about what they want and what they will do with power if they get it.   When I wrote Christian Nation, I compiled that agenda into “The Blessing,” a federal law that is adopted as soon as they control the federal government.    I have included this following the main text of this blog and urge you to read it.  If you’ve actually been listening to the far right, you will not be surprised.   If you haven’t, you will be astonished at its radicalism and breadth.   To understand what pulling the lever for the GOP means in 2024, you need to consider not only what Trump says he will do, but what the core of the new GOP coalition will require the GOP to do if it acquires power.  Abortion is just the tip of the iceberg. 

When reading, please bear in mind that the right’s prior purported attachment to “states’ rights” has always been merely tactical.   If Trump becomes President again, the GOP takes the House and Senate, and the Supreme Court fails to act, then the Christian nationalist agenda will become the law of the land, controlling in both red and blue states.   Some people are under the misimpression that blue states will be places of refuge.  They will not.   In a replay of the run-up to the Civil War, blue states, like the confederate states before them (and ten southern states seeking to escape federal civil rights legislation in the 1950s), will explore doctrines such as “nullification” and “interposition” in an effort to disapply the new federal laws in their states.  They will fail as a matter of law.   The question will then be whether the blue states acquiesce (unlikely) or whether the union as we know it will end.

Although many of my generation and education believe it to be self-evident that democracy and rule of law are necessary and beneficial, this is far from self-evident to large sections of the population, whose cynical view is that these institutions have been corrupted and, in any event, have largely served the interests of others.    Moreover, the passionate right-wing minority would happily trade both democracy and rule of law for things they regard as more important, such as the realization of the Christian nationalist ideal and final victory in the long-standing culture war.   

So please, resist the comfortable illusion that the return of MAGA might not be that bad.  Abandon your normal political or ideological preferences.  Forget about Joe Biden.  Just do one thing:  Listen to what Trump, and the Christian nationalist movement that enables him, are saying.  They mean what they say. 

Excerpt from F. Rich, Christian Nation (W.W. Norton, 2013), Chapter 12

The Blessing

I.  There is no power but God, and the powers that are ordained by God.

1.     As the fate of the nation depends entirely on unbending obedience to the will of God, it shall be treasonous to deny the existence of God, to question the Word of God, or to advocate disobedience to the will of God.

II.  The Lord created America that His will may reign on earth.

2.     The sovereignty of the United States of America is absolute.  Accordingly, the United States shall not join or support any international organization.

3.     The United Nations is hereby expelled from the territory of the United States.  Its operations shall be relocated within one year.

4.     Any treaty that abrogates the absolute sovereignty of the United States is hereby repudiated and declared null and void.

5.     No U.S. citizen shall be extradited to face criminal or civil proceedings in another country.

III.  This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of our Lord Jesus Christ.

6.     The most important task of man is to accept, embrace and obey God’s law.

7.     God’s law, as set forth in the Bible, shall be the supreme law of the land, prevailing over any imperfect human law.

8.     The American Constitution is a divine gift and shall be strictly construed.  The Constitution shall be interpreted in accordance with the higher law of the Bible. 

9.     The purpose of the federal and state court systems shall be to do God’s will and to faithfully interpret and enforce the law of the land in accordance with the Word of God.

10.  No judge shall interpret the law or render any judgment that is contrary to the will of God as evidenced by the Bible.

11.  Only persons who have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior shall serve as federal judges.

12.  The Constitution wisely limits the role of government, and such limitations shall be deemed to prohibit involvement by the Federal Government in education and social welfare, which shall remain the exclusive domain of the people, their churches, and if permitted by state constitutions and state law, the states. 

13.  No state or local government may enact any law prohibiting so-called “hate crimes,” which can too easily be used to persecute or abuse those faithful to the Word and laws of God.

IV.  The Lord gave America the Biblical capitalist system for our material comfort; He reigns over our economy and demands obedience to his will in return for our prosperity.

14.  Only one economic system, the free enterprise system, is consistent with God’s will and God’s law.

15.  No economic system other than the free enterprise system shall be taught or practiced within the United States.

16.  The advocacy of socialism in any form is treasonous.

17.  Poverty is due to disobedience to God’s will.

18.  In a Christian Nation, where obedience to God is the measure of equity, “labor unions” are unnecessary and illegal.

V.  The Lord gave us marriage for our pleasure and for procreation.

19.  Marriage shall be the sole form of civil union or partnership recognized for any purpose within the United States. 

20.  Marriage means marriage between one man and one woman.

21.  No other form of “marriage” consummated in or recognized by any other jurisdiction shall be recognized or valid for any purpose whatsoever within the United States.

22.  Adulterous behavior by either husband or wife is a crime.

23.  Homosexual behavior of any kind is a crime.

24.  Sexual relations outside of marriage are a crime.

25.  Sexual perversion, even between husband and wife, is a crime (provided that a wife may pleasure her husband in any way her husband desires and to which she consents).

26.  No person shall participate in the creation, distribution or use of pornography, all of which shall be crimes.

27.  Abstinence from all sex (including masturbation) outside of marriage shall be the only form of sex education permitted.

28.  No foreign national who is homosexual shall be eligible for immigration to, or resident alien status in, the United States.

VI.  The Lord created the male who shall reign in headship over the family.

29.  Upon marriage, a wife shall be obligated to obey her husband.

30.  A child shall obey his or her father.

31.  The primary responsibility of a husband and father shall be to align the family with the will and Word of Jesus Christ.

VII.  The family is the basis of American life and the fundamental unit of American society.

32.  The discipline of children is in the sole discretion of parents.  No unit of government shall outlaw or regulate the discipline of children, nor prosecute any parent or teacher for the disciplining of a child.

33.  It shall be unlawful for a child to strike a parent.

34.  Incorrigible juvenile delinquency shall be a crime.

VIII.  Only the Lord may determine when life shall begin and end.

35.  For all purposes of the law, life begins at conception.

36.  Abortion, meaning any act that terminates life following conception, shall be illegal.

37.  Killing an unborn child through abortion shall be a capital offence.

38.  A woman who permits her child to be aborted shall be guilty of a felony.

39.  Euthanasia, meaning any act that terminates life prior to its natural end, shall be illegal.

IX.  The Lord loves our children and gave his Word and his will as the basis for educating our children.

40.  Children shall be instructed that God’s Word is the only reliable path to the truth.

41.  Reason unguided by God’s Word is an illusion, often perverted by Satan to divert us from obedience to God’s will.  It shall be a crime to teach that philosophical investigation or the so-called “scientific method” are the sole or primary paths to knowledge.

42.  There shall be no tolerance of lies, falsehoods and illusions.  The primary task of all teachers is to protect children from falsehood.

43.  A principal task of public education shall be to teach obedience to God’s will.

44.  A principal task of public education shall be to teach sexual purity.

45.  No atheist, homosexual or single woman shall be permitted to teach or play any role in a public or private school, at any level.  For this purpose, (i) any person over the age of 30 who has never been married shall be presumed to be a homosexual, and (ii) any person not registered with and certified in good standing by a recognized church shall be presumed to be an atheist.

46.  Each classroom in American, public or private, shall, at the commencement of each school day, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and join in a prayer of thanks to God for America.  The prayer may, but is not required to, mention our Lord Jesus Christ (but shall not mention any other purported deity, prophet, saint or other figure from a specific religious tradition other than Christianity).

X.  Although a Christian Nation whose Christian citizens have a duty to open the eyes of all its citizens to the Word and light of Christ, the right of non-Christian citizens to believe and practice, in the private sphere of their families and places of worship, religions other than Christianity shall be tolerated.

47.  Religions other than Christianity are permitted.  Witchcraft, Wicca, astrology, the worship of Satan, any violent sect of Islam and other cults, are not recognized as religions.

48.  All places of worship and other property, real and personal, present and future, of superstitions and cults that are not recognized as religions shall be forfeit to the state in which it is located.

49.  Non-Christian religions shall be entitled to maintain places of worship, but shall not be permitted to make public displays of the symbols of their religions in any place other than the interior of such places of worship.

50.  The promotion of non-Christian religion through advertisement or missionary or proselytizing activity shall be prohibited within the territory of the United States of America.

A Choice Between Worlds, not Candidates

In ten months there will be an election.  If the voters believe they are choosing between two people, it is probable that Trump will win.   Why?  Because one person is an old man who epitomizes a traditional culture in which decency, truth, and substance were core values, and the other is a creature created by contemporary popular culture in which superficiality, outrage, illusion, and vulgarity reign supreme.  Do you think the voters will choose PBS or WWE and Big Brother?

The only way the outcome will be different is if, instead of choosing between two candidates, the voters enter the booth with the mind set that they are choosing between two futures for themselves and their families.    Accordingly, over the next ten months we must put the candidates in the background and embed in the minds of voters that they face a choice between two worlds.

One is a world in which abortion is illegal everywhere in the country.   Thousands of women and doctors have been jailed for murder.  Red states have outlawed contraception and criminalized sodomy and blasphemy. The government tells you what books your children may and may not read.  The culture war is over, with total victory for the Christian right.

In this world everyone not a white native-born Christian is a second-class citizen.    If your children are black or brown or foreign-born or non-Christian they are bullied relentlessly in school and on social media.    They are told they are not “real Americans.”

Tens of millions of immigrants, including those resident here for decades, have been deported and the economy is in a tailspin, with acute shortages of labor.  For small businesses, there is no one to wash dishes or clean the office.  Nannies and landscapers are now a luxury available only to the super rich. 

In this world Trump is America and America is Trump.   He is in your face all day everyday.  There is no escaping him.  He has declared that to oppose or criticize him is treason and stated that he should be president for life.  

It’s a world where we all now understand why Russia and China worked so relentlessly to ensure Trump’s re-election.  The United States is in full retreat from the world stage.   With the US having quit NATO, the Russian empire has been re-established.   China now has full hegemony over Asia and has overtaken us as the leading economic power.   Russia’s and China’s unbridled ambition mean that our children and grandchildren will be called to fight and die in another world war; it’s just a question of time.

And the other choice?  At the worst, it’s the world of the status quo.  The imperfect, frustrating, messy world of American democracy.   The world that has over two centuries enabled American prosperity and power.  The world in which we continuously struggle to deliver on the promise of liberty and justice for all.  The world in which elections are free and fair and we have presidents who do not think they are kings.    

That’s the choice.  Two worlds.  Not Trump vs. Biden.