In 2024, Americans Need This
Before we vote in November
Image by Tazz Anderson Photography from Pixabay
The battle's already underway.
Not Ukraine, although that's one of the battle's main fronts.
Not Gaza, although that too is one of the battle's main fronts.
I'm talking about the battle the Founders of the United States launched on July 4, 1776.
The battle between democracy and authoritarianism.
The battle between freedom and dictatorship.
The battle between self-determination and power over others.
The battle between the extremely unequal, stratified social system of a landed, hereditary aristocracy versus open-to-all economic and entrepreneurial opportunities for creating and spreading new wealth.
If you want to get religious: the battle between evil and good.
I've just finished reading the ONE book ALL Americans need to read and internalize before the 2024 national election.
If you're in another country, read this book to understand what's happening today in the US. You'll likely be indirectly affected by the outcome.
Besides, the battle is global. Depending on where you live, you may or may not feel threatened . . . but you're at risk too.
We are all.
The battle is simply bigger and more dramatic in the US because:
1. It began here, with us, in 1776. Before that, the entire world was authoritarian, and almost nobody thought that could change.
Our Founders proved the skeptics wrong. They bravely struck the biggest single blow for freedom in human history.
They rolled back the 10,000 year-old iron fist of a feudal, aristocratic king: "traditional" tyranny.
Sure, peasants had revolted before against cruel local lords.
But America's Founders not only kicked King George III's troops out of the Thirteen Colonies, they declared all - that's A*L*L - of us equal.
And endowed by our Creator with rights not even a king can take away.
They even had the cojones to declare these rights - which in practice were recognized nowhere else in the world - “self-evident.”
2. We are large and diverse. From the beginning, we have been a multi-cultural, multiracial, multi-ethnic country and society.
Thanks to immigration, we are growing ever-more diverse.
Unlike no other country on Earth, only a small minority of the population - First Nations/Native Americans - have a long history occupying this landscape.
The ancestors of African-Americans were brought here by force.
The rest of us are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.
Because the United States is the most powerful country on Earth, takeover of it by a dictatorship would dangerously destabilize the rest of the world.
It would also encourage existing dictators, such as Putin, and lead other countries to vote for the neo-fascist politicians running in their elections.
This poison is spreading around the globe.
The Book Exposing the Neofascist Threat to American Democracy
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson
To a large extent, it's similar to the book I wrote about before Christmas: Let Them Eat Tweets.
But Ms. Richardson writes as a historian, not a political scientist. She never mentions the Conservative Dilemma.
She has another take on what's happening in America today.
It's the latest attempt by the group she calls "enslavers" - because from 1776 to 1865 they literally did own slaves - to reverse the Declaration of Independence.
And "enslave" us all. Not quite like African-Americans in the antebellum South, of course, but to force us to live in a similar economy.
One where only white men born in the United States have rights.
But where only white people born to money have the right to lots of money. The enslavers of today are white supremacists and so-called Christian nationalists who want to keep all people of color, all LGBTQ people and all workers forced to work for the elite wealthy.
They want to deport millions of immigrants, including legal immigrants and their children who possess American citizenship, keeping them in camps - all except Trump's wives and children, that is.
If you think I'm exaggerating, you're not paying attention to the latest news of Donald Trump's speeches.
He sounds like Adolf Hitler.
Literally.
Except in English.
Immigrants from Africa and Asia are “vermin” who’re "poisoning" the blood of America.
We've Forgotten the Declaration Before
American slavery ended with the Civil War, but subsequent elites who believed in their own superiority - not the equal rights of the Declaration - include the Northern industrialists who accumulated huge amounts of wealth during the Gilded Age.
They've also gained a lot of power beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Richardson brings our history up to date, ending with Trump as the likely 2024 Republican Party nominee for President.
A man who's already guilty of attempting the violent overthrow of the United States government.
Yet only a few Republican office holders have the moral decency to oppose him.
Even though they can’t restrain themselves from expressing their self-righteous indignation against President Biden.
Recently, all House Republicans voted to make a prominent wannabe theocrat (he wants to turn the US into a white, so-called "Christian" dictatorship) Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Speaker Johnson has said he believes God should destroy America for recognizing the legal rights of the LGBTQ community.
Even though they are - simply - people.
If he believed in the Declaration of Independence, he'd know God gave all LGBTQ members the same inalienable rights he gave to the rest of us.
People with such unAmerican beliefs shouldn't even be in the House, in my opinion.
Yet all House Republicans voted for this rightwing extremist who hates the fundamental principle of our democracy.
They all also voted to force all American schoolgirls who wish to participate in sports to submit to genital exams.
(No, the law didn't pass, because the Senate is not controlled by hateful Republicans. But this shows you how extremist they are, to want to persecute America's schoolgirls.)
That's why I say: you can't trust Republicans - no matter how *nice* or *moderate* some of them may try to appear.
My Congressional rep, Ann Wagner, sends out a weekly email that totally avoids even mentioning Trump and the MAGA cultists. She keeps her cowardly head buried in the sand.
But she still voted for an advocate of a Christian-in-Name-Only dictatorship and to force the government to examine and monitor the genitalia of little girls.
Look at 1853
In the interviews Richardson gives to promote this book, she's always asked whether American democracy is going to survive Trump in 2024.
She always gives hope by comparing our current situation to 1853.
As I recall from my high school American History classes, America's political history for the first half of the 19th century was the fight between slavers and abolitionists.
According to Richardson, by 1853 it appeared the slavers would win.
They would control the entire government, giving themselves permission to spread slavery as Americans expanded West.
The literal enslavers were winning.
The Tide Turned
More Americans realized slavery was just plain wrong.
Ambitious Americans also realized they could get wealthy in an free, open West, but not in the South, which was economically strangled by its own self-appointed aristocracy.
That is: spoiled, rich entitled assholes who think being born wealthy meant they were superior to the rest of us.
Politicians opposed to slavery formed the Republican Party while the Democrats dominated the South.
Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas, including in my home town of Alton Illinois.
When Lincoln ran for President, troops of "wide-awakers" held rallies around the country to support him.
(So, now you know why Florida Governor DeSanctimonious hates "woke" so much. He wants to return us to the pre-Lincoln era of slavery.)
You know the rest.
Lincoln won the election of 1860. Traitorous Confederate soldiers fired on Fort Sumter, kicking off the Civil War.
A few years later, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and delivered the Gettysburg Address.
When I first read Lincoln's Speech as a kid, of course I recognized its references to the Declaration of Independence.
But Richardson places that speech into a historical context I'd never before known.
At Gettysburg, Lincoln was not just referencing the Declaration of Independence:
He was RESURRECTING it.
And its ideals.
The incredible concept that we ALL have rights - and the same rights.
And we all have the duty to make sure the men who died at Gettysburg did not die in vain.
That . . .
"this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
If that doesn't give you goosebumps, unsubscribe.
The Battle Continues Today
American history remains the story of the ongoing war between those who uphold the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and those who wish to impose their own dictatorship . . . so an authoritarian white "Christian" plutocracy can roll in wealth while ordinary people starve.
Will Americans elect the wannabe - and no longer trying to hide it! - dictator, Donald Trump?
As discussed before, Trump is just the most widely known example of how the enslavers or authoritarian elites want to grind their bootheels into our faces.
We really need that "new birth of freedom."
Richardson Concludes:
Democracy is a process.
Thanks to President Lincoln and the soldiers who defended America, our nation has endured until now.
How much longer?
We don't know.
Richardson doesn't pretend to know either.
She's doing her part by writing a daily Substack newsletter that comments on the events of the day in the light of American history:
Letters from an American - Heather Cox Richardson's Substack newsletter
We've faced these despicable, evil authoritarians before, and defeated them.
Will Trump lose this November? We'll see.
If he does, will enough of his supporters commit violence to overthrow the government?
We'll see. I don't believe they'll actually take over, but will manage to kill people. Maybe many people.
Will a government that's "of the people, by the people, for the people" perish from this earth?
We'll see.
It is for us, the living, to dedicate ourselves to defeating the wannabe dictators - Trump, Speaker Johnson and the entire MAGA cult - who believe God gave them the privilege to crush our freedom with the heels of their jackboots and deny us the inalienable rights endowed us by our Creator.
That's our job in 2024.
I'm about as scared as I was when I was nine years old, listening to President Kennedy's speech regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis.
That's the closest the world came to World War 3.
Happy New Year.
May we still be free when January 1, 2025 dawns.
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