Thank you for such a thoughtful and insightful article! It fills me with sadness to consider what is occurring, but it also fills me with resolve. I’m hoping millions of others will stay the course and not give up!
So much seems to be riding on our expectations for the midterms that it can be easy to ignore the extraordinary width and depth of the damage and the contradictory forces Trump and his myrmidons have managed to inflect and to amplify on our nation and on the world.
Just one example: ponder for a moment the extraordinary irony of Trump’s war on a theocracy very much like the one he, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, and others would like to install right here in the US.
Even if the Democrats win control of the House and/or the Senate in November, the ‘great task before us’ to try to return us to some semblance of the nation we were intended to be is herculean. And the Democratic Party has shown a remarkable tendency to shoot itself in the foot every change it gets.
Just for starters, internationally, no other nation can now ignore the possibility that another Trump may only be one election away. For even if the Democrats take back our national legislature, the forces that empowered Trump and which have always lurked within us will only go underground, to seek and to await their next ‘champion’.
Trump was no flash in the pan. I’m just over 81, and so my life has almost exactly spanned the period of our history from being the Arsenal of Democracy which, together with our allies, defeated (but unfortunately did not destroy) the greatest evil in human history to the present moral, social, political, religious, and financial morass in which we now find ourselves - in which a man who would not at all have been at all out of place in either the Nazi hierarchy or our own pre-Civil War slavocracy. That didn’t happen overnight in 2016.
In 1838, a rangy young politician stood before the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois and warned us that, “As a nation of free men, we must live through all time,or die by suicide.” He knew whereof he spoke, and he would later give his life and perhaps almost his sanity to preserve, protect, and defend that nation. In doing so, he did indeed leave us with that great task, one which is somewhat different but no less daunting today than it was between the two Aprils of 1861 and 1865.
VOTE EARLY--on Day One, if possible. If early voting is substantial enough to rattle the cages of the current Criminals in Charge they might start making obvious mistakes which in turn might get even more people to turn out to vote them out. And, if you need to vote by mail, do that early, too. And put your envelope in a monitored, official drop box, not a post office box.
Thank you, Mr. Eisendrath for the article and especially yesterday when you joined in the conversation with Andra and Sam. It’s very important and informative that we as Americans never forget the past such as WW2 when Jews like my great uncle family in Germany went to Auschwitz to die in the gas chambers. My great uncle was able to get out of Germany with his mother and father, but he changed his first name from Wilhelm to William yet he was always afraid even living in America 🇺🇸. His family was on a list to die that Hitler had signed. Good people helped them get out. His job was at a defense contractor.
Beautifully expressed. Thanks for so-much-needed infusion of HOPE.
Amen, brother, amen.
Thank you for such a thoughtful and insightful article! It fills me with sadness to consider what is occurring, but it also fills me with resolve. I’m hoping millions of others will stay the course and not give up!
So much seems to be riding on our expectations for the midterms that it can be easy to ignore the extraordinary width and depth of the damage and the contradictory forces Trump and his myrmidons have managed to inflect and to amplify on our nation and on the world.
Just one example: ponder for a moment the extraordinary irony of Trump’s war on a theocracy very much like the one he, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, and others would like to install right here in the US.
Even if the Democrats win control of the House and/or the Senate in November, the ‘great task before us’ to try to return us to some semblance of the nation we were intended to be is herculean. And the Democratic Party has shown a remarkable tendency to shoot itself in the foot every change it gets.
Just for starters, internationally, no other nation can now ignore the possibility that another Trump may only be one election away. For even if the Democrats take back our national legislature, the forces that empowered Trump and which have always lurked within us will only go underground, to seek and to await their next ‘champion’.
Trump was no flash in the pan. I’m just over 81, and so my life has almost exactly spanned the period of our history from being the Arsenal of Democracy which, together with our allies, defeated (but unfortunately did not destroy) the greatest evil in human history to the present moral, social, political, religious, and financial morass in which we now find ourselves - in which a man who would not at all have been at all out of place in either the Nazi hierarchy or our own pre-Civil War slavocracy. That didn’t happen overnight in 2016.
In 1838, a rangy young politician stood before the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois and warned us that, “As a nation of free men, we must live through all time,or die by suicide.” He knew whereof he spoke, and he would later give his life and perhaps almost his sanity to preserve, protect, and defend that nation. In doing so, he did indeed leave us with that great task, one which is somewhat different but no less daunting today than it was between the two Aprils of 1861 and 1865.
We would do well to remember that.
VOTE EARLY--on Day One, if possible. If early voting is substantial enough to rattle the cages of the current Criminals in Charge they might start making obvious mistakes which in turn might get even more people to turn out to vote them out. And, if you need to vote by mail, do that early, too. And put your envelope in a monitored, official drop box, not a post office box.
Thank you, Mr. Eisendrath for the article and especially yesterday when you joined in the conversation with Andra and Sam. It’s very important and informative that we as Americans never forget the past such as WW2 when Jews like my great uncle family in Germany went to Auschwitz to die in the gas chambers. My great uncle was able to get out of Germany with his mother and father, but he changed his first name from Wilhelm to William yet he was always afraid even living in America 🇺🇸. His family was on a list to die that Hitler had signed. Good people helped them get out. His job was at a defense contractor.
That kind of generalization is as much insult as partial truth.