Donald Trump is the quintessential ugly American.
He is brazen, bullying, corrupt, racist, sexist, ignorant, intellectually lazy, xenophobic, wannabe elitist. He is greedy and needy1, he is incompetent at almost everything but grifting and self-aggrandizement.
Donald Trump has told so many lies in the past decade that if the George Washington myth we were fed in elementary school about and cherry trees had more than two shreds of truth, there would not be a single tree standing in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
None of this is news. Like the cloud of dirt and dust that trailed the unmistakable character in the beloved Peanuts cartoon strip, Trump’s behavior trumpets who he is.
But to say Donald Trump is the problem is akin to saying the dead canary in the coal mine is the problem. A dead canary merely tells us the atmosphere in the mine is polluted and unsafe.
That Donald Trump could take over a major political party on a platform of lies and remain a leading candidate to regain the White House is a tsunami of dead canaries in our political system.
That he is abetted by professional politicians and corporate interests that prize profiteering above all else — including the political system that makes their positions and profits possible — is revolting, but not surprising. Their success in inventing and distorting issues like critical race theory, gender equality and social justice to deflect attention from their raids on state and federal treasuries is not a new trick.
While the Trump name is not on the ballot tomorrow, Election Day 2022 is emblazoned with his shadow, because he has spawned so many trumpettes willing and eager to echo big lies about rigged elections and other assorted myths.
The country has faced several moments of truth in the 246 years since its declaration of independence. But not even during the Civil War did it ever seem like the country’s fundamental status as a democratic republic was at issue. Today, with election deniers and charlatans on the ballot seeking executive, legislative, and judicial offices in numerous states across the country, and hoping to expand their ranks in Congress, there is a real threat that after tomorrow, anti-democratic forces will be in position to revamp election procedures legally to establish minority control.
People sometimes wonder aloud how fair-minded citizens of Weimar Germany came to allow Nazis to take power. They don’t ask the question seriously enough to actually seek an answer. The loss of power by German democrats came when the Nazis were elected to office with the help of those who considered their selfish economic interests ahead of the greater good.
Tomorrow’s election is one of those tests. Citizens should act like this is the last time they will have a meaningful opportunity to vote. Because it might be.
Don’t be in a position where your grandchildren realize your complicity in the demise of a political system that, for all its shortfalls, has worked whenever sufficient numbers of people got off the sidelines and made their voices heard.
Do your part tomorrow and vote tomorrow, whether for preservation or destruction. Don’t by a bystander on the question of your family’s future.
R. T. Andrews
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i Trump's niece, Mary Trump, accurately captured her uncle's destructive personality in the title to her book on her dysfunctional family, Too Much and Never Enough.