We The People

 We The People

The first three words of the US Constitution read, “We the People…” It does not say, "I the Authoritarian." It does not say, "I the Dictator." You either believe in the Constitution and its concept of all power coming from “We the People,” or you can no longer say you are an American patriot. You cannot claim to be, "making America great again," if you believe that any president can have unrestrained power to do as he pleases.

We will be faced with such a decision this November as one of the candidates would like to change the Constitution without amendment. That candidate has openly expressed his admiration for Vladimir Putin who holds the title, “President of Russia” under a constitution that he amended without following the law. That so-called president just got “re-elected” in a process where he dictates the outcome. All challengers are murdered at his direction. With the March 2024 Russian presidential election forthcoming, his only serious challenger was Alexei Navalny so Navalny was murdered in prison in February 2024.

Whatever you feel about immigration, abortion, education, healthcare, the cost of living, etc., these issues and problems pale in the glaring light and threat of authoritarian rule. This should not be an election about “the issues” as would be normal in an American presidential election year, this is about the continuation of the way of life foreseen by our founders. Our founding fathers wrote our Constitution emphasizing, "We the people," because they had just fled the autocratic rule of a sovereign king.

The term “sovereign” is all about supreme power and authority being vested in a single individual. It is that sovereign power that is being sought by one of our presidential candidates. That candidate may lie about many things. He may boast falsely about his wealth, the size of his adoring crowds, the size of his penthouse, his military experience, and his business acumen, but he is all too clear and truthful about his ambitions. He would like to be America’s Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, or Viktor Orban, and he would rule America in a fashion those dictators fully understand.

Protections guaranteed under our Constitution are being regularly eroded by others within his party of MAGA as they claim to be protecting “our freedoms” while taking them away. They regularly name such policies and efforts with deceptive wording to disguise what they are doing. Trump acolyte Ron DeSantis promoted Florida's Individual Freedom Act specifically to infringe on our freedoms. FIFA, aka the Stop Woke Act, was found to violate the First Amendment to the Constitution on March 4, 2024, by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

We were extremely lucky that there were a few individuals in key positions that prevented our first American coup in 2021. Those people paid for their patriotism with their careers. They will not be around on January 20, 2025, to prevent a takeover of our Democracy. Far-right extremist groups have evolved and have been emboldened since the deadly Charlottesville rally of 2017. Their leader is planning for the complete overhaul of our country beginning “on day one.”

Many have asked, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago. Perhaps you forgot that four years ago, hospital morgues had to hire refrigerator trucks to hold the overflow of the dead. No, D.T. didn’t cause the pandemic. He merely denied its existence, told us it wouldn’t come here, and mismanaged it when it did arrive. This was not an unforeseen event, we had been warned it was coming. Who can forget his advice to inject bleach or somehow shine a germicidal light inside our bodies. We had set up the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense to deal with pandemics. Trump closed that NSC directorate in 2018. He seems to have foresight like Mr. Magoo. Covid-19 hit us with devastating consequences in 2019.

In November we will be called upon to decide if we want to continue with a government where the power comes from, “We the People,” or allow a dictator into the White House. Trump has sworn that he will only act like a dictator on his first day so that he may unleash his wrath on his rivals. If any of you believe it would only last a day, perhaps you can explain where that Mexican check ended up to pay for the border wall. Trump has sworn to abolish NATO and has encouraged Putin to invade all of Europe. This candidate has promoted a plan for cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He has also floated the idea of taking over the FBI to turn it into a political arm of the Executive Branch. Imagine what it would mean if a president could have his own police force to attack his rivals.

Forget the issues in this election. Vote to save our Democracy so that we stand a chance of addressing those problems with fair-minded leadership. Vote for the better human being, not the man who would be king. Only We the People can save, We the People.