The unthinkable has happened. The citizens of the United States of America, faced with the option of continuing to slog their way toward a more perfect democracy, chose to throw it away instead. They put a proven narcissistic liar back in charge of the country. Instead of struggle, they chose chaos.
It's not the first time in recent memory this has happened. Weimar is not ancient history. There are many still alive who can remind us of democracy's greatest weakness - that it can use the power of the voting booth to enable its own destruction.
If people in the 1930s had not merely skimmed Mein Kampf but taken it to heart, they would have seen the death and destruction of millions of scapegoats that was to come. And anybody in 2024 who fact-checked the "eating the dogs and cats" story about the legal-immigrant Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, can see the parallel in scapegoating.
Many supporters of the newly-reelected president insist we have guardrails that prevent such evil from taking root here. Only a conviction that one must never submit to despair keeps me going this morning as I worry about the ability of Ukraine to stand up to invasion, the possibility of wholesale deportation of millions of parents of American children, and the likely appointment of two more justices to the Supreme Court inclined to protect the Leader rather than the rule of law.
I worry about the possibility of installing a man who denies the effectiveness of vaccines to head our healthcare institutions, about the ongoing influence of Christian nationalists who insist non-Christians have no place at the American table, about the opponents of presidential policy who are being labeled scum and vermin.
Waiting for the results of the election was like waiting for the results of a biopsy.
I went through that before being diagnosed with a fatal disease. I know that may have something to do with the fact that I see this election through a dark lens.
But I know, also, that I can't predict the future.
Things may turn out all right.
