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.