UNITED States of America

 UNITED States of America

United we stand, divided we fall. A house divided against itself cannot stand. E pluribus unum, “from many, one.” These are all phrases that emphasize the importance of unity. We are the UNITED States of America. The fact, that we are a UNITED nation first and a collective of states second, seems to have escaped some people lately. One political leader in particular seems to think that it is “every man for himself, and only the strong (wealthy) survive.”

Only the Strong (wealthy) Survive

The preamble of our Constitution mentions that it was, “We the People of the United States…, that established this country. That Constitution and its Bill of Rights lay the foundation for a country united for a common purpose. It establishes our representative democracy with its system of checks and balances as the core of this union. We are a single nation that is currently made up of fifty states. We are not a collection of 27 countries that later formed an economic and political group like the European Union.

Capitalism is the second pillar necessary for the proper functioning of our democracy. It is the mandate of our government to provide the balance between the capital engine that fuels our democracy and the needs of its people. Neither can survive without the other. It is the taxing of capital that finances the needs of the people. The representative democracy of government decides the particulars of that taxation. Who gets taxed, how much they get taxed, and how those tax dollars are spent are decided by this elected government. Our problems today can all be traced back to this one function of government. It all comes down to money because money equates to power.

In the quest for money and power, some would seek to abandon our democracy so that they alone could dictate how the spoils of capitalism are managed to their personal benefit. Some envy the Viktor Orbáns of the world, or Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as they are strongmen who keep the very wealthy rich and crush all opposition to the detriment of their people. It is they who get to decide how much they get to keep and how much they will allow to trickle down to their people to keep them functioning and working to protect their rich lifestyles.

So far, our democracy has stood the test of time. Its first serious test was our Civil War. The second most serious threat came on January 6, 2021, when a sitting president decided that he wanted to remain the “strongman” in charge by denying the results of a fair election. Today we see a continuation of that assault on democracy where that same former president seeks to regain his position of power. He does this so he might retaliate against his oppressors and finalize the abandonment of our representative democracy for one more closely aligned with Hungary, Russia, or China.

The path to his success relies on making people believe that he is working to help the working class. He will continually tell lies to make his followers numb to his deceit. He will incite fear of immigrant hoards coming to take away our jobs, rape our women, drug our children, and eat our pets, to distract them from his true purpose. He will flip-flop on his once strong position on abortion and women’s reproductive rights by still claiming to one group that he alone overturned Roe v. Wade and to others that he is the champion of women’s reproductive freedoms. You get to choose which of his conflicting positions you want to believe. Believe whatever you want, he doesn’t care as long as he wins your vote.

“the result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that lies will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world — and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end — is being destroyed.”  Hannah Arendt

As he has done for all previous elections, he is making claims that the upcoming election will be corrupt. If he wins, it will be the best election ever. If he loses, he told you he would be robbed by a corrupt election process. All of this is to establish motivation for another coup attempt. He has threatened violence again if he is not elected. He still refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election, except privately where he has admitted he, “lost by a whisker.” That “whisker” was 7,059,547 popular votes. That’s one big whisker. Luckily, that popular vote also translated to an electoral college win for Biden. Trump also lost the popular vote to Clinton in 2016 by 2,865,075 votes but won the electoral college because those two million plus voters didn’t live in the right states.  

A vote in Wyoming is worth 3.65 times what it is worth in California

It is not time to swallow the MAGA lie that America needs to be “Great Again” when it has always been great. It will continue to be great as long as it is UNITED. We need to protect our democracy and remain the UNITED States of America and not fall for the false promises that will lead to the strongman form of government promised by Project 2025. You know that title. Trump hasn’t heard of it, doesn’t know what it contains, and doesn’t like what it says if he had read it. It outlines what Trump’s wealthy benefactors have set forth for the elimination of checks and balances so that they can manage the faucet of capitalism to better control how much drips to feed the needs of its people.

No, this is not the time to abandon our democracy. No, it is not the time to abandon our election process. No, it is not the time to abandon our system of checks and balances. No, it is not time to create an all-powerful executive branch of government. No, it is not the time to shift the power of our government to become fifty individual states with fifty different sets of laws that no longer protect our established freedoms. It IS the time for unity and a time to protect the UNITED States of America.