However this election turns out-

We have work to do- let go of the anger and fear!

Obviously America is divided. There are interests out there to keep us divided. How did we get there? What changed America where so many Americans are against each other? So many questions to ask. Who were and are the players sowing such division? We can all make a grand list! Conspiracy theories run rampant; misinformation that floods the internet. Hate based racist, misogynist, xenophobic rhetoric is pervasive. Anger and fear blinds one’s ability to critically determine and ascertain facts versus rhetoric.

Anger and fear has been historically used to manipulate. Have we forgotten that Hitler’s “Nazi propaganda machine exploited ordinary Germans by encouraging them to be co-producers of a false reality”?

Congress cannot get the work done for the American people due to blocking by right wing extremist minority factions. Trump was the only president to be impeached twice. The  Capitol insurrection marked the most bipartisan impeachment in U.S. history.

Let’s look further back for a moment. I attended a  2005 World Affairs Council Book Launch featuring guest speaker Christine Todd Whitman— former EPA Administrator under the Bush Jr. Administration. Whitman, a moderate Republican,  had resigned her position in protest against a demand by the White House to institute a new rule allowing power plants to make major alterations without installing new pollution controls.

 In her book It's My Party, too: Taking Back the Republican Party... And Bringing the Country Together Again she criticized the policies of the George W. Bush administration and its electoral strategy. Whitman argued against the hijacking of her party by zealous "social fundamentalists." (See link to By Terry Gross’sNPR Interview with Whitman below.)

We also need to understand the that the outcome of the 2010 election had dozens of Tea Party-affiliated candidates winning the Republican nominations for their respective U.S. Senate, House, and gubernatorial races. This intensified a power grabbing relationship between the Tea Party and the Republican Party.

I was residing in the Washington D.C. metro area when the Tea Party was first sworn in. The Tea Party were out to further Newt Gingrich’s “Revolution”.  Gingrich and comrades were determined to use partisan battles to kill any sensible compromise in Congress with their extreme divisive politics and attacks. I sat in congressional hearings on Capitol Hill and watched the chaos begin. The hostile rhetoric by the Tea Party representatives blatantly sent discussions in these hearings into a tailspin. I remember in several sessions watching their continual disruptive put downs of Democrats rather than engaging in the work at hand. This was the tipping point in my estimation.

Fast forward to January 6, 2021, when a hundred and thirty-nine House Republicans and eight senators voted against certifying some of the Electoral College votes, even after being forced to vacate their chambers with a pro-Trump destructive mob that stormed the Capitol just hours earlier!

The United States is not a perfect union, yet it has worked despite elected representatives who now cannot find common ground on many issues. We are not a nation-- as of yet-- under a totalitarian regime. The majority of us have access to clean water, food and housing. We are free to congregate and criticize and move elsewhere as we choose.  Corporations have more power than ever and stand in the way of government’s main function to deliver public goods that the private market place cannot provide effectively or cannot provide at all. We trust everyone to behave civilized and be good people and that includes our elected officials…right? More is needed on creating living wage  jobs and improving existing wages.  More affordable housing is needed and that is the role of the private sector, right? Access to affordable health care should be mandatory.  Predatory and bad actor corporations still need to be held accountable. The war on women and minorities needs to stop.

I am a staunch Democrat, and I am aghast at the inability of so many who have not done their homework nor wish to understand how government works. Uprising and upheaval can lead to chaos and history has shown that  revolutions and their resulting chaos not always lead to agreement on what political settlement is best and, in many instances, revolution has led to unstable and brutal domestic conflict.

Back in 2023 Politico Magazine’s article explored What Is Broken in American Politics Is the Republican Party’. Fourteen experts weighed in on then House Speaker Republican Kevin McCarthy’s ouster and why Republicans keep destroying their own leaders. Read more at: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/06/republican-leaders-mccarthy-expert-roundup-00120170

I cannot help but quote the NY Times Oct. 27, 2024, article : Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism

“Donald J. Trump’s closing rally at Madison Square Garden on the second to last Sunday before the election was a release of rage at a political and legal system that impeached, indicted and convicted him, a vivid and at times racist display of the dark energy animating the MAGA movement.

A comic kicked off the rally by dismissing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” then mocked Hispanics as failing to use birth control, Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock-throwers, and called out a Black man in the audience with a reference to watermelon.

Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers.” A third called her “the Antichrist.” And the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Ms. Harris — the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father — with a made-up ethnicity, saying she was vying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.”

How will this all end… Or begin?

Lee Drutman a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America and “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America” proposed back in 2020,

“There are two possible ways this ends. The first is the one we all fear — the unwinding of our democracy, because one or both sides hate each other so much that they are willing to support anti-democratic and authoritarian leadership in order to maintain power. (This is the threat Democrats have explicitly raised in recent months.)

The other scenario is a major realignment and/or a collapse of one (or both) of the two major parties, which could reorient American political coalitions and resurrect some of the overlaps of an earlier era. The growing partisan hatreds and the forces driving them have been a long time in the making. It’s possible they are coming to an end. But more than any other time in the last century and a half, they are testing the very foundations of American democracy.” https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-hatred-negative-partisanship-came-to-dominate-american-politics/

I am not always a fan of every article in Forbes Magazine, yet after the January 6, 2021, insurrection Forbes put forth some solid ideas to heal the nation. Was anyone paying attention? Some excerpts:

“Disbelief and cynicism won’t change America. Actions will. Not just any actions, though. Now is the time for actions, taken individually and collectively, that will ultimately help fortify the spirit of the nation and the souls of its citizens.”

“For us to heal our nation, we not only need to plug into our stories, our local communities and ourselves, but we also need to unplug from those things that contribute to our anger and our fear. That doesn’t mean we should turn a blind eye or tune-out to what is difficult to hear. But it does mean finding ways to distance ourselves from some of the angry noise and social media fear-mongering that make us feel helpless and upset. Changing the channel doesn’t need to be an act of avoidance. It can be an exercise of choice – of choosing to see something different that might help us learn to think about possibilities, not just problems.”

SOURCES:

Presidential candidate Barack Obama speaks to the audience at the Democratic National Convention, Denver, Colorado, August 25-28, 2008. A More Perfect Union Copied the text: Barack Obama. “A More Perfect Union”, Speech, March 18, 2008. From Teaching American History. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/a-more-perfect-union/ (accessed October 31, 2024).

Ray, Michael. "Tea Party movement". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Oct. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tea-Party-movement. Accessed 31 October 2024.

Domenico Montanaro. NPR. These Are The 10 Republicans Who Voted To Impeach Trump January 14, 20215:01 AM ET https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956621191/these-are-the-10-republicans-who-voted-to-impeach-trump

Seth Cohen, Chief Impact Officer, Forbes, Worried About America? 4 Ways You Can Help The Nation Heal Right Now, Updated Jan 10, 2021, 12:20pm https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2021/01/10/worried-about-america-4-ways-you-can-help-the-nation-heal-right-now/

David Atkins, Donald Trump May Still Destroy the GOP, After All, The Washington Monthly, September 8, 2021 https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/09/08/donald-trump-may-still-destroy-the-gop-after-all/

Adapted from Selling Hitler: Propaganda and the Nazi Brand by Nicholas O’Shaughnessy. Published by C. Hurst & Co. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/how-nazi-propaganda-encouraged-the-masses-to-co-produce-a-false-reality.html

Fresh Air | By Terry Gross Christine Todd Whitman: Battle for the GOP Core Published January 27, 2005 at 12:00 AM EST and listen at: https://www.wrvo.org/2005-01-27/christine-todd-whitman-battle-for-the-gop-core