My father and many of yours left their families and risked their lives to stop Hitler and save Western Democracy. Because they succeeded, we call them the Greatest Generation.
We’re engaged in the same battle. The time for complacency, for feeling we are powerless, that our votes don’t count, is over. It’s time to step up and save American Democracy.
This month voters in France with little in common politically united to defeat the far-right candidate the whole world expected to win. We can do the same. It’s time to stop making this election about Party and admit it’s a question of right and wrong, not right and left.
You may find the candidates, two elderly white men, unappealing. I get that. But only one continues to insist the 2020 election was “stolen” when every metric proves it was not, and only one refuses to promise it will accept the results of the upcoming race. Only one was complicit in the Jan. 6 insurrection, an attempted Civil War. Only one, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling on Presidential immunity, is a felon convicted of 34 counts. That alone should invalidate a campaign that is a blot internationally on the country’s honor.
Who heads the tickets matters far less than the Parties’ starkly different visions. Trump wants to punish public schools that teach “real” science and tell hard historical truths. It wants to control what we and our children read.
His Party enables his disrespect and abuse of women. It threatens to take away their decades-long access to bodily autonomy, not only abortion but IVF and even birth control—women’s healthcare, period—and punish doctors who treat women in clinics and emergency rooms. President Trump packed the Supreme Court with Justices who lied when they promised to leave Roe v. Wade alone. Its end has already increased maternal and infant mortality rates. Every poll shows most Americans are strongly opposed to it all. If he appoints another Supreme Court justice, the final pretense of blind justice is gone.
Trump promises to put eleven million immigrants in detention camps, and then deport them. He’d replace trained federal civil servants with people whose only credential is loyalty. He may well withdraw the U.S. from NATO, the greatest peacemaking alliance in history.
Biden’s Party is by no means perfect. But its vision stands for the same things America does: freedom and individual rights at home and the defense of Democracy worldwide. It supports women’s healthcare and a woman’s right to plan her own family. It seeks a sane escape from our decades-long quagmire of immigration; it would have passed a compromise immigration bill except for Trump’s interference. It guided us through the Covid crisis with sound, scientific counsel and the American Rescue Plan. It passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, an investment in our crumbling roads, bridges, and railways. It produced the Inflation Reduction Plan to lower the deficit, fight inflation, and focus on climate change as never before. It passed the Build Back Better Act, providing almost $400 million for childcare and universal preschool, in-home care for the disabled and the elderly, and so much more. It has created more jobs than any other comparable period generated while still lowering the National Debt. It has supported NATO in an unprecedented way.
Biden’s strong team, from Vice President Harris on down, will lead the country regardless of what happens to the man at the top. Can we say that about Trump, who demands allegiance, not expertise? He has eliminated the many accomplished people who worked in his administration, leaving only hacks who uncritically support him. He “jokes” about joining a club with dictators like Putin and Orban he so admires. Our Founding Fathers worked hard to prevent that kind of unfettered power at the top, and history has followed their lead. If we elect Trump, we may never get back the America we know.
This campaign should not be about partisanship. It’s not Joe Biden who is on the line; it’s American Democracy. So do we vote for the rule of law, for law and order, or for another four
years of chaos and crisis in which Donald Trump takes away our freedoms? In the wake of the assassination attempt, let me be clear: our battle must be peaceful. Violence is never justifiable.
We are the only ones who can save our country. As Heather Cox Richardson so eloquently says, “This is our moment.” Vote as though your country depends on it because it does.
Editor’s note: The views in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The Laurinburg Exchange.