America’s Future is Fragile and Uncertain…Unless We Vote
There’s a precise term for the situation in which the United States and its people find themselves on this the 248th anniversary of the country’s independence: Screwed.
In the last week, we have witnessed two death blows to our republic: 1) the mental deterioration of President Joe Biden and 2) the wholesale sacking of the nation’s foundational commitment to equal justice under the law.
Today, right now, we have a president who is incapable of performing the most basic, performative aspects of his job. For months, his handlers shielded him from unscripted public appearances, pooh-poohed concerns about his fitness and deflected every comment on his public demonstrations of age-related frailty. Yet, there it was for all to see on the CNN set as he demonstrated degenerative symptoms familiar to anyone who has ever seen elderly family members slowly slip away.
The president’s handlers have done a great disservice to him and to the country to hide his state for as long as they have. Had they leveled with him and us 14 months ago before he committed to the 2024 race, the Democratic Party and the nation would have had ample time to prepare a robust, forthright electoral fight against Donald Trump and his Republican cultists. As it is now, we will be voting for a shell of a man only because his fragile mind and body are all that stand in the way of catastrophe.
And it is certain catastrophe that we are facing. Climate change is rendering vast parts of the world uninhabitable, and masses of people are on the move to more hospitable places. Fascism is on the rise throughout the world. A new axis of evil — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un — is challenging the U.S. built world order. The wealthy democracies of Europe and East Asia are gearing for a new great war. And if it comes to that, it is up in the air which side America will choose.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party is marching the nation off a cliff. The cultist-dominated Supreme Court on Monday forfeited all current and future claims of originalism, textualism, fealty to the 18th century language of the Constitution and any other legalistic bullshit that the Federalist Society and Republicans have spewed since Richard Nixon first insisted on placing “strict constructionists” on the high court.
In clear contravention of the plain language of the Constitution and the commentaries of the founders, the court invented a criminal exclusion for Trump and all presidents that is 180-degrees from what every American has believed since the nation’s founding—that no one is above the law. That’s no longer true. The Constitution was written clearly anticipating official presidential lawlessness—“high crimes and misdemeanors”— but this court has said “never mind.”
It has invented a monarchical presidency with powers that George III might have only dreamed of having. And it has handed those powers to the worst human being who has ever stepped over the threshold of the White House.
So where do we stand now? Doddering old Uncle Joe, drooling there at the far end of the holiday picnic table, is all that stands against the disaster of a second Trump presidency and a Republican cult prepared to remake the country into something out of an Ayn Rand fantasy.
We are teetering on the edge of the abyss. Vote, goddammit.
