The Day Before: What Is At Stake

Earlier on this blog, I noted my intention to focus my attention on Doctor Who posts for the coming week. With the constant drum beat of political news as we head into the mid-term elections here in the United States on Tuesday and the numerous post-mortems to follow in the days to come, there’s more than enough political pontification without the small voice of I’m So Glad My Suffering Amuses You adding to the babble.

 

But at this moment in time, in the waning hours of the 2018 campaigns, I want to record my thoughts for posterity.

 

I am very, very afraid.

 

This election, there is more at stake than just mere policy.

 

What is at stake is nothing less than the very heart and soul of the United States of America.

 

The engine that has powered this nation from day one is not a shared language, a shared culture or a shared religion. What has given the United States its strength, its power is a shared ideal.

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

The men who wrote these words were not exactly sterling examples of what they described.  “All men are created equal”? Some of the men who wrote those words owned slaves.  But there it is from their quill pens to God’s ears. “All men are created equal.” We didn’t live up to it in 1776 but day by day, year after year, we inched closer to the ideal, through rancorous debate and sadly, through the shedding of blood.  

 

“Unalienable Rights (of) …Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”? In a country where women were not allowed by own property, where people of color were told where they could or could not sit on a bus. “Unalienable Rights”? Really? Yet the battle was fought, in the desperate hours of protest and the times of mourning for the dead.  

 

And bit by bit, we moved forward, sometimes slowly, haltingly, and painfully but we moved forward, closer to the ideal. 

 

It may not have been true when it was written in 1776 but by the sacrifice of our blood, of our sweat and of our tears and by the grace of God, we have worked and worked hard to hold this nation to account for the ideal that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

 

For the last three years, I have watched our nation move backward, not to build upon the shared ideals of our nation but to destroy and tear down.

 

Donald Trump is destroying the very core of our nation’s power, appealing to fear and to hate.

 

Tomorrow, if the status quo is maintained, if the current imbalance of power is preserved, Trump will have the approval to keep doing what he is doing, propagating his message of fear and hate, building his foundation of lies. 

 

November 6, 2018 must be a date where we say that fear will not win.

 

Hate will not win.

 

Lies cannot triumph over truth.  

 

Nothing less than the very soul of our nation is at stake.

 

If the results tomorrow offer not even the slightest repudiation of Donald Trump and his parade of lies, hate and fear, then the shared ideal that the unalienable Rights of Life,  Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is an ideal for us all, that shared ideal will be dead.  

 

I am very, very afraid.