Let's talk.
Democrats have a candidate and Harris picked Tim Walz as her running mate. Everyone -- as a young child I once knew said -- is excited with joy. Kamala Harris offers a sigh of relief and a bit of hope. But she is not the solution to the Trump problem. Happy days are not really here again.
Why?
President Joe Biden is willing to say it out loud. If Donald Trump loses the election in November, Biden is "not confident at all" there will be a peaceful transfer of power. "He means what he says. We don't take him seriously. He means it. All the stuff about, 'If we lose there'll be a bloodbath, it'll have been a stolen (election).'"
It's time to have a talk. Actually it is past time.
An old friend from Texas said recently, "What you are saying is that the ideal voter will have a ballot in the box and a gun handy?" I don't think he was just talking Texas. He's right. Biden is right. I'm right.
Donald Trump intends to be president again whether he wins or doesn't win the 2024 election. There's been lots of hemming and hawing around accepting the vote tally. If Trump wins, yes. Otherwise, who knows? That's a euphemistic "No." Threats of violence tremble over the election from Trump and others. Unpredictable but armed Trump believers wait quietly for the moment, for their moment. A man touched by God will not be allowed to lose. There is too much at stake. JD Vance (blue-eyed and fair haired sort-of-fascist family man -- a Kamala taunter with his own mixed brood) proselytizes and blathers about Trump and the wrath of God (there is a clear confusion of the two). More importantly Trump has the well-organized support of the Heritage Foundation and other groups. He has the apparent blessing of the Supreme Court and the Teamsters boss, the police unions and organizations, the megaphone MAGAs, lovers of guns, haters of women, racists, Christians and other groups. There are even outfits selling survivalist gear and food on TV.
There are lots of them and that's scary. But the frightening thing is how well organized they are. Thousands of members of this-or-that disgruntled group are simply awaiting marching orders.
What will happen, especially if it comes down to Harris and ballots and bullets? It's a clear people-get-ready moment.
But when I mention the idea that it could take more than a vote to right the ship and put it back on course, my fellow Democrats and various other un-Trumpers don't want to talk about it. They look down and mumble, "Nah" or "I hope not" or "That won't (or can't) happen" or "I don't want to think that could happen" or they resort to "We're not that kind of people."
There is no discussion of the idea that it could or might or will happen or that we might have to become "that kind of people" or live with the consequences. There is some good old dysfunctional family denialism, and there's can't-happen-here-ism, nobody's-that-stupid-ism, blind-hope-ism, ignorance-of-what's-at-stake-ism, no-way-ism, and some outright honest fear.
There is faith in it too. We are Americans and we've always believed that was enough to save us. I am 79 years old and it has always been there. Even in the 1960s when we were rabidly protesting the Vietnam War, the draft, the government itself, the various ills brought on by segregation, gender inequality, abortion rights and anything else we could think of (and I could be as rabid and frothing as the rest), we did it because we had a most often unacknowledged but deeply embedded faith that no matter how things were thrown off course, turned upside down, burned, trashed and smashed, the system we have known all of our lives would allow it to be fixed. That is why we could "misbehave" with such enthusiasm.
Presidents come and go, Democrats and Republicans come and go, Supreme Courts rule this way and that way but they come and go too, protests come and go too. But Americans are who we are. Things are what they are, democracy is what it is, things drift left and right but there are constant course corrections. This is our known world. It is the faith of our fathers who fought to save the world and democracy -- and told us and told us and told us they had saved it all for us. We believed it.
Now to do more than vote will require us to test it and perhaps lose it to save it.
There will be violence involved. Admit it. Prepare for it. Do it. It's an honest human response.
Kamala Harris will never get to where we want her to be if we can do no more than say, "We are not that kind of people." It is likely to take an army of "that kind of people" to save us and our democracy.
I lost my faith on the way to reality. Now, here I am. I am that kind of people. Who will give the marching orders and who will march? We must know these things before election day.
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