Democracy Dies When We Fail To Open Our Eyes

They say Democracy dies in the dark; I dis­agree; democ­ra­cy dies when we fail to open our eyes to those killing it.
Who can hon­est­ly say they did not see what Donald Trump was doing from as ear­ly as 2015 when he was tout­ing a run for the United States presidency?
You should not lie that in 2015 ‑2016 you did not see reporters repeat­ed­ly ask him if he lost the elec­tions, would he con­cede, and he refused to say he would. You saw it, yet mil­lions of you vot­ed for him.
This was the very first time in any of our lives that we had seen a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date refuse to say he would abide by the norms estab­lished by the found­ing fathers of this great republic.
What did you think he would do if he refused to abide by the most basic estab­lished norms that had guid­ed the actions of pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates for the life of the republic?

When he attacked the foun­da­tion pil­lars of the repub­lic, what did you think was behind that? The Courts, the Media, the Investigative Agencies of Government that we all trust to keep the nation safe from ene­mies from with­in and with­out; did you not see the strat­e­gy as alien to American polit­i­cal culture?
You saw him go on a sys­temic cru­sade against media hous­es that refused to par­rot his pro­pa­gan­da and lies; what did you think that was about? Are you going to pre­tend that you did not know that those char­ac­ter­is­tics were exact­ly indica­tive of the behav­ior of would-be dictators?
Oh, by the way, in addi­tion to tak­ing on the per­sona of strong­men, he open­ly expressed ado­ra­tion for them; Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, North Korea’s Kim Jon- Un, China’s Xi Jinping, Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and oth­er despots around the globe.

He also open­ly pre­tend­ed to joke about being pres­i­dent for life if he was elect­ed; after he was elect­ed, he open­ly flout­ed the idea of remain­ing pres­i­dent for sev­er­al terms.
None of this has ever hap­pened before, but Americans pre­tend­ed that this was nor­mal. In 2016, Americans elect­ed the most immoral, rep­re­hen­si­ble, amoral and cor­rupt human being to be their pres­i­dent over an accom­plished woman.
Donald Trump ham­mered away at American Democracy through­out his four-year pres­i­den­cy with help from sur­ro­gates inside and out­side the Republican party.
Trump com­mit­ted every crime a pres­i­dent could com­mit, and he knew he would lose the 2020 elec­tions. Still, he had a plan to stay in pow­er. That plan was to stack the Supreme Court with as many Justices as he could; he added three in his sin­gle term with the help of the Mitch McConnell anti-democ­ra­cy Republican conference.
Trump planned to have some Republican states declare that they could not deter­mine the win­ner of the elec­tions in their state, which would toss the mat­ter to the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives, where Republicans had a 26 – 24 major­i­ty of state leg­is­la­tures they control.
This would ulti­mate­ly toss the elec­tions to the Supreme Court he had recent­ly remade with his stooges Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amey Coney Barrett, in addi­tion to the three that were there pre­vi­ous­ly, John Roberts, Samuel Alito a hyper-par­ti­san and of course Uncle Clarence Tom-Ass.

Despite every­thing Donald Trump did before and dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, he was elect­ed pres­i­dent, and there­after he began dis­man­tling American Democracy.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump’s chief strate­gist Steve Bannon said that Trump’s cab­i­net picks were aimed at the “decon­struc­tion of the admin­is­tra­tive state,” mean­ing weak­en­ing reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and oth­er bureau­crat­ic entities.
A dunce him­self, Trump chose Betsy DeVos to run the edu­ca­tion depart­ment, Louis Dejoy to head the US postal ser­vice, and a host of oth­er flunkies vehe­ment­ly opposed to how the agen­cies and cab­i­net posi­tions they were head­ing operated.
Steven Mnuchin at Treasury, Jeff Sessions at Justice, Ryan Zinke at Interior, Ben Carson at Housing, Scott Pruit at the E.P.A, con­firmed what Bannon had bragged about to their CPAC Klan rally.

What exact­ly did Donald Trump, a failed busi­ness­man, bring to the table that caused him to be elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States after he was heard brag­ging on tape just before the elec­tions that he grabbed young women by their genitalia?
I mean, the pop­u­lar Gary Hart was dead in the water for far less, Howard Dean tanked after let­ting off a freak­ish howl. Bush senior lost the elec­tion arguably because he did not know the price of a loaf of bread.
American polit­i­cal his­to­ry is replete with can­di­dates of both polit­i­cal par­ties fail­ing due to the prover­bial October sur­prise. Usually, some issue came up that shocked voters.
Donald Trump’s past and present were not just sor­did; they were dis­gust­ing and com­plete­ly unsuit­able for dog-catch­er, much less the pres­i­den­cy of the United States.
So what was it about Trump that caused Americans to elect him the 45^th United States pres­i­dent? Please do not tell me that he was a busi­ness­man from out­side Washington DC, it is a crock, and you all know it.
It is the same sto­ry that the main­stream media fed the nation for decades about white blue-col­lar work­ers, rather than call­ing them what they tru­ly are, large­ly une­d­u­cat­ed racist white people.

What was it that caused them to turn out to vote for Donald Trump in num­bers nev­er before seen for a Republican pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, 75 mil­lion? What was Donald Trump’s appeal despite all of his crimes and faux pas, racism, and being the first pres­i­dent in his­to­ry to be impeached twice, and in a sin­gle term?
Was any­one sur­prised that despite every­thing Donald Trump was allowed to get away with, he decid­ed to orches­trate a coup d’ e’tat against the American Constitution and gov­ern­ment to make him­self pres­i­dent for life?
Trump’s plan has always been to seize pow­er then pass on lead­er­ship to his under­lings as he sees fit, as is the case in the coun­tries named above run by bru­tal dictators.

Every one of those 75 mil­lion who vot­ed for him knew what he was about. Some were not sophis­ti­cat­ed enough to under­stand that he want­ed to be King, but it would not have mat­tered even if they were that smart.
Retaining an America in which whites are priv­i­leged, and every oth­er race is sub­servient to whites has been far more impor­tant to some than retain­ing the world’s old­est democracy.
That was what inspired them to turn out on January 6^th in their thou­sands to over­throw the American exper­i­ment to install an imbe­cil­ic moron who would do what­ev­er they want­ed to fur­ther white dom­i­na­tion over oth­er races in America.
He is an amoral char­ac­ter who will do any­thing to enrich him­self, includ­ing tear­ing down the coun­try he claims to love but is inca­pable of loving.
President Joe Biden gath­ered over 100 world lead­ers at a sum­mit and made a plea to bol­ster democ­ra­cies, call­ing safe­guard­ing rights and free­doms in the face of ris­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism the “defin­ing chal­lenge” of the cur­rent era.
Nowhere is Democracy in greater dan­ger than in the world’s old­est democ­ra­cy, right here in America, where the Trump-packed Supreme court and Republican leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try have placed American democ­ra­cy on life support.
For the court, prece­dent in vot­ing and oth­er rights mean noth­ing. At the same time, the leg­is­la­tures use vot­er-sup­pres­sion laws and ger­ry­man­der­ing to select the vot­ers they choose rather than the vot­ers choos­ing them.
If and when American falls, so too will the remain­ing few democ­ra­cies across the globe; some esti­mates say only 20-per­cent of the world’s peo­ple live in a free country.
Only one in five peo­ple live in a soci­ety that can be called free, and it is get­ting worse.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.