This is a ritual I never want to repeat.

And, one way or another, I probably will not.

Four years ago, I wrote a post on the eve of the presidential election, and I did the same thing four years before that in 2016.

I knew that it would probably not have a material effect, but I felt compelled to at least be on record as taking a stand against a would-be autocrat.  This is part of what I wrote:

Sometimes I wonder how I would have acted if I had been an adult during the Civil Rights era.  Or if I lived under NAZI occupation.  Or during the Civil War. It disturbs me to think that if I hadn’t had the advantage of growing up with modern, forward-looking influences in my life, I could have landed on the wrong side of history. But thankfully I did have those influences and now that I find myself facing a similar situation, I have an opportunity and responsibility to use my voice and privilege to do what is right. 

If I felt compelled to speak out then, today I am even more resolved to crawl over broken glass if necessary to say the same thing, only louder: Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the United States and everything we stand for.

I know I don’t have a lot to add to the conversation about Trump vs Harris. Undecided voters probably don’t care what this blue-leaning quirky suburban mom thinks, but maybe they will pause when the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under then President Donald Trump, Mark Milley, says that Trump is “a fascist to the core.”

They may not care what I think, but maybe they will listen to John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving Chief of Staff, a decorated general & Gold Star father of a son killed in Afghanistan. If he says Trump praised Hitler, met the definition of a fascist, & would govern like a dictator if allowed—maybe they will believe him.

They may not care what I think, but maybe the fact that 40 out of 44 of Trump’s own cabinet members have also sounded alarms will get their attention.

They may not care what I think, but maybe they will look into why more than 700 retired national security leaders broke tradition to speak out to warn us about a candidate who has “heaped praise on adversarial dictators like China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as well as the terrorist leaders of Hezbollah.”

They may not care what I think, but I hope they care about what Trump himself says as he admires dictators and threatens to export citizens—not to mention immigrants—and promises to imprison journalists and anyone else who is vocal in criticizing him.

I could go on, but there’s no point.  If these facts don’t sway a person, nothing will. 

Instead, I will offer two observations. 

First, as I am writing this, Trump is holding a rally in Madison Square Garden, with eerie callbacks to the 1939 Nazi rally at the same location. He has not spoken yet, but his surrogates are already ramping up the hate-filled racist and misogynistic rhetoric, starting with calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” 

As others have pointed out, there is no strategic reason to hold a rally in New York.  It is instead designed to sow discord and fuel violence.

Second, this morning I read Heather Cox Richardson’s daily post, which was made up almost entirely of quotations from a 1945 US Department of War pamphlet on “Fascism.”

Here is an excerpt from this WWII pamphlet explaining how fascism could one day take over in America:  

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

While Richardson doesn’t refer to it here, another hallmark of fascism is intimidating the free press.  In 2020, the illustration for my blog was the opinion page of The Washington Post.  This year, for the first time in almost forever, The Washington Post bowed out of endorsing a candidate due to fear of retribution.  Thankfully, the New York Times did not follow suit and instead took the baton to publish the editorial above. Their writers urge Americans to “Believe Him” when Trump says he will “prosecute his enemies, order mass deportations, and use soldiers against citizens.”

In 2016, when I first performed this bizarre election ritual, I was in a more hopeful place. I wrote that “my country is still a country that welcomes immigrants.  We still value ALL PEOPLE, male and female, White and Black and everything in between, Christians and Muslims and Atheists.”

I was so confident we would reject this man. I never imagined that so many Americans would pull the lever for someone who meets the 1945 definition of a fascist. 

I hope to God I never write another blog like this again. I hope people do indeed “believe him.” And I hope they speak out and show up.

I am done with this ritual.