We Are Our Vote
The 2020 vote is a look in the mirror vote.
In 2016 many decent people voted for Trump. They just could not bring themselves to vote for the other unlikable character. We didn’t know either candidate at the time. What we knew of Hillary had been amplified by her husband’s mistakes as well as the Republican gotcha machine. What we knew of Trump was even less. We were taking a chance, going into the unknown. We cannot be held responsible for what he turned the presidency and our country into. Nobody was to blame. Our system produced two candidates and the country chose one. That is the way it was.
No more.
With the vote this week nobody can hide from the responsibility. A vote now for Trump is a vote for somebody we know. We have witnessed it all in his nearly four years. We know what to expect. We know that foreign powers will be driving our agendas and the new cold war with China will get hotter and hotter until it boils over. We know that children will continue to be separated from their parents and young immigrant women chance having their wombs removed without permission or explanation. We know that extreme groups will be told to take up arms and white supremacy will rise so high it seeps into our institutions and laws. We know that any protest on our part will be met with a brutal response by a private national police force. We know that the Department of Justice will become the president’s private lawyer. We know that government workers will lose their jobs on a whim (Trump just signed an executive order giving himself the power). We know that medicare and health coverage will be killed and we will remain indentured to corporations who can treat us as they wish. We know that all information will flow to us from the White House and only the White House. We know that the media will be hollowed out. We know that science will be diminished until it can only be practiced in secret. We know that sleaze, nepotism, self-enrichment, pay to play and crony capitalism will become the standard operating procedure of government.
Most of all we know that by voting for Trump we will lose our fundamental right to vote.
There is no more turning away, shrugging the shoulders, no more shirking responsibility. If we vote for Trump, we do so because this man’s beliefs form part of our belief system. Come on: we know this. We cannot escape the truth that we are it. A truth that will exist with us and in us forever, regardless of whether he wins or not.
This vote is a look in the mirror vote.
