07/17/2024
This week, the (R) Party is meeting in Milwaukee, a mere 80 miles from my home. Yesterday, their presumptive nominee chose Sen. J. D. Vance (OH) as his running mate. Vance, once a fierce critic of said nominee—speculating that he might be “America’s Hitler”—apparently had a conversion when he saw which side his bread was buttered on.
In the wake of the despicable July 13 assassination attempt on the former president, Vance joined other (R)s in insisting that (D) campaign rhetoric caused that senseless act of violence. This, despite the fact that the former president has been our #1 cheerleader for political violence ever since he entered public life, telling us who to hate and what to do about it. But that's not how Vance now sees it. He puts the blame for July 13 on (D)s who have called the former president an authoritarian, even fascist threat to democracy.
So I’m wondering: should I drive to Milwaukee and turn myself in, or should I stay in Madison and wait for them to come and get me? After all, eight months before The Former Guy won the presidency back in 2016, I wrote an article titled “Will Fascism Trump Democracy?” for On Being. http://tiny.cc/vfm5zz
Then, in my 2018 book, “On the Brink of Everything,” I wrote this: “On January 20, 2017, the country I love inaugurated a president who embodies many of our culture’s most soulless traits: adolescent impulsiveness, an unbridled drive for wealth and power, a taste for violence, nonstop narcissism, and massive arrogance. A man who has maligned women, Mexicans, Muslims, African Americans, immi- grants, members of the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, and Mother Earth—a man who’d sooner deny the obvious than apologize for the outrageous—became the putative ‘leader of the free world.’”
And, as you know, I’ve been a regular critic of The Former Guy on this page, as recently as the 4th of July.
Well, I’ve decided not to turn myself in. Instead, I’m going to keep speaking up for the democracy that is the political birthright of all Americans. I have self-imposed limits, of course, among them a commitment to the old-fashioned norms of love, truth, and justice. Love of country requires me to keep calling him a threat to democracy simply because he and his party are. (See Project 2025 for details.)
This is America. No one should ever be limited by fear of “revenge and retribution,” the words The Former Guy has used to describe the way he intends to conduct his second term as president-king, if we give him one.
Memo to Self: Do everything you can, legally and ethically, to see that he doesn’t get one. He’s already getting enough help from the Supreme Court, and from the way our legal system allows the ultra-rich to sue, delay, and avoid consequences. We the People are the only firewall left.
