ON PATRIOTISM

Are you paying attention? This man is making it clear that he’ll stop at nothing. Laws be damned, culture be ignored, history be forgotten, imagination be limited, this man has moved from dangerous to apocalyptic.

The 45th president of these once-United States of America doesn’t just exist for adulation, he believes he is bigger than and better than the United States Constitution, the laws of the land or the desire of most people for peace.

He has ignored the laws, thumbed his nose at the rules, used one of the most reverent books on the planet to feign faith in order to promote his disdain for anything in his way. He has thrown gas on the fire, undermined staid institutions, dismissed basic conventions and stoked division while his vanity left many tens of thousands of his pawns to die needlessly.

Friends, we are witnessing the very democratic system of government any patriot holds dear being undermined. In his mind, all we hold dear comes after his insatiable need for attention. When he recently was asked who was the most famous man in the world, he feigned modesty by saying, in response to the sycophants surrounding him, that Jesus is the most famous person on the planet. Well, sir, just the mere mention means you are putting yourself in the same category. Sorry, but that is sickening.

So, because he cannot bare the notion that his presidency has been soundly rejected, he holes himself up in the people’s house, forcing cash-strapped states and counties to prove that his specious claims that fraud cost him the election are pure fantasy. In fact, these frivolous claims have all been dismissed. He is trying to prove that our democracy is inept and that the only way he could have lost was due to fraud.

And are his white supremacist friends still standing by, waiting for him to give them the signal that they should turn their vast caches of weapons on their fellow Americans?

To my many good friends who happen to be Republicans: surely the preservation of our democracy, the proper functioning of our government, the peaceful healing of our nation are more important than continued disfunction in the White House, obscene tax breaks and indiscriminate reversals of rules made to protect the planet from further man-made destruction? Your old argument about the strength of the economy sure is, well, dead.

To those whose information is coming from Fox News: Do you really believe that Fox News is the only news outlet telling the truth, when all of the other outlets are reporting in unison? Is the conspiracy that vast? Are the hospitals really not overwhelmed, the undertakers not busy, the public health professionals lying? My mother used to say, “Look at that! Everyone in that parade is out of step but my son, Alan!” Get it?

This has got to stop. If you consider yourself a patriot, don’t you think that our Constitution should trump Trump? Don’t you think that ignoring the will of the people in a democratic society should prevail over lies and presidential narcissism? And don’t you think that taking the wrong side in that question will come back to haunt you someday?

“We the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution.”

Beautiful words, aren’t they? A true patriot would, of course, say so. And a true patriot would know a fraud when he or she saw one.