Let the word go forth from this time and place,
to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been
passed to a new generation of Americans—born in
this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a
hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient
heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit
the slow undoing of those human rights to which
this Nation has always been committed,
and to which we are committed today at home and
around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well
or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any
burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival
and the success of liberty.
Readers, you must have seen the lines of voters in the USA, lined up and waiting to exercise one of their basic rights as citizens in a country of people who practice self-governance. You must have seen the deliberate attacks on the integrity of the electoral system, including the impediments against voting as absentee or voting early. I saw that, and noticed that is was the people of color, people of different demographics and ideology from the Trumpist faction in America, who bore the brunt of frictions against their voting.
After witnessing the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election, those same people who voted despite the attempts to stop them are now faced with their votes being thrown out. Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta are under threat of disenfranchisement. Nobody there has forgotten the violence associated with securing the right to vote for all Americans. Nobody has forgotten the harm caused by acting contrary to the will of the people during the Compromise of 1877.
The smart thing to do is accept that Biden and Harris are the lawfull and properly elected leaders of the government's executive branch for the next four years, and get on with the transition. The transition mandated by acts of congress decades ago.
The most impulsive and short-sighted thing possible is to go a holy war and try to destroy democracy in America. Do that at your peril. More than half of the country has had enough of Trumpism and its attacks on the norms and processes which have taken years, decades, and centuries to develop. Less than half of the country may be willing to accept Trumpism in exchange for lower taxes. Less than half of the country has no strong feelings either way and may not care that the law of the land protects and specifies electoral process. Perhaps it is one fifth of the country which is willing to support a Trumpist coup.
There are not enough bullets to stop a Biden / Harris Administration. Accept the multicultural America you have; the authoritarian ethno-state will be stillborn and not survive its birth. As one who studies people, I assert that continued agitation to overturn the election is trending toward catastrophe. Do you really want the end-times, like a Jim Jones follower swigging Kool-Aid?
Abe Lincoln had a few words about this, said in 1965, but still true today:
Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily
pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue
until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk and until every drop of
blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by
another drawn with the sword as was said
three thousand years ago so still it must be
said "the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether."
With malice toward none with charity for all
with firmness in the right as God gives us to
see the right let us strive on to finish the
work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds,
to care for him who shall have borne the battle
and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just and
lasting peace among ourselves and with all
nations.
A lasting peace must be a just peace, not merely some version of authoritarian "stability maintenance." I have said what I am going to say. Now I am buying some popcorn and standing by. Do the right thing, people.