Our country seems perpetually in a state where each presidential election is the most critical election of our lifetime. Some say that phrase is hyperbolic and overused, but many don’t take it seriously. Donald Trump’s rise, which has commandeered one of our two major political parties, has represented a Rorschach test for our nation, and the results have been alarming.
Half of our nation is chosen to support a presidential candidate who is the antithesis of every principle and ideal that we espouse that makes the U.S. an exceptional nation.
In many ways, the cover has been pulled back and the sheets removed; these people have been “Scooby-Dooed.” Regardless of who wins this election, our nation needs intervention.
We need intervention for those people who proclaim religion is the raison d’etre but support a candidate who has violated at least eight of the Ten Commandments and possibly nine if you include things like the avoidable deaths due to his management of the COVID pandemic.
Intervention is needed for the vomit-inducingly rich and powerful whose primary motivation is no longer how much money they make (economic indicators show they have flourished under Biden more than any presidential term in the last 50 years); instead, it seems more critical to chokehold the average American’s share of this prosperity. It’s an illness.
How about an intervention for all the “law and order,” “protect the blue,” and “you should have just listened” folks who support a convicted felon supporting storming the Capitol? This one is for you, the Supreme Court, who set the Constitution on fire by granting the most criminally indicted ex-president immunity for any crime committed while wielding the presidency’s powers. The “constitutional originalists” are habitual hypocrites.” All of these people are dangerously practicing “a la carte justice,” which allows them to decide when justice and consequences should apply, as if Lady Justice wears a MAGA hat.
A turning point for me concerning the soullessness of America was December 14, 2012, when 26 people were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Connecticut. Amongst those 26 victims were 20 angels aged between six and seven years old. I, like so many other Americans, felt that there was no way that politicians, specifically Republican politicians, wouldn’t rise to the occasion and enact legislation to minimize the chance of this happening again. To my surmise, they proved that their allegiance to the gun industry and the National Rifle Association was much more important than the lives of our children. Since then, the Republican Party has gotten worse. No tragedy or hardship moves them.
One of the reasons elections and voting are so important is that they are probably our most effective intervention—politicians whose standard operating procedure and platform is to appeal to people motivated by hate (Blacks, nonwhite immigrants, LGBTQ, Democrats, etc.) shouldn’t get within 100 yards of elected office. Still, we live in a country where too many people sign a blood pact with politicians who want to harm and penalize the people they hate or disagree with. Indeed, it would be great if we lived up to the altruistic virtues we promote, but it would be progress if people were to stop voting for candidates who enact policies that have a direct, debilitating impact on them. It’s almost like some kind of Political Sadomasochism. I’ll vote for you if you inflict pain on X group, even if it happens to inflict pain on me (Social Security, Medicare, ACA, tax cuts for the ultra-rich). At a minimum, it’s a case of self-flagellation.
This next issue will require more than an intervention. A significant number of Americans have divorced themselves from facts and reality. Too many Americans have resorted to basing their political, social, and cultural behavior on lies, misinformation, and absurd conspiracies. This results in instances of cognitive dissonance, where white women support candidates who consistently tell and show them they have no agency, not even their bodies. Some nonwhite immigrants are okay with being told they poison the blood of America, yet they vote for those candidates. They call Latinos murderers, rapists, and want to deport them, but for many of these people, there is a positive reaction to being attacked or disparaged.
Now, the United States is on the brink of electing a racist, sexist, xenophobic, corrupt, incompetent felon. America needs more than an intervention; it needs a psychiatrist.
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