Trump Day After
This is a Special Edition - Dictator for a Day: Trump Assassination FAILED.
Normally the Dictator platform tries to bring satire, levity and a little wishful thinking to situations in our country. If I was a Dictator for a Day here’s what I would do. Sort of like what you’d do if you won the lottery - though I’d really like to win the lottery. I don’t want to be a dictator.
What do you say after the attempted assassination of a former president and leading candidate for the office of President of the United States? Has the greatest nation in the world officially become a Third World Banana Republic? I don’t believe so. But we may have become the world’s most ideologically divided nation and much the worst for it.
America has survived one Civil War of guns and cannon and dead and maimed soldiers, devastated families, carnage and hatred that lasted far too long.
We cannot afford another.
In one sense what is looming may be worse than a war of hardware. It is a war of minds. Of thinking. Of love and hatred on both sides.
A friend told me the morning after “America is resilient. We will overcome.” I hope so.
America was never more unified or resilient than it was during World War II. The world was at war. America was allied with other nations against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan, both of whom did threaten the very existence of our nations.
But neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden threaten our nation’s existence if we let our constitutionally prescribed processes play out. NEITHER is an existential threat to democracy.
Somewhere along the continuum of American history since World War II our political divisions have become deeper. Much deeper. Somewhere along the line many of us have forgotten that success is built upon compromise. Our Founding Fathers knew that. So they ensured that part of that compromise would be created through the checks and balances to power they built into our Constitution. They are there to ensure that no branch of government, no party or person can overstep its bounds. That you cannot always have things all the way your way, in every way, or our nation and Democracy are doomed. Finished. Ended forever. We will become the equivalent of a Banana Republic. Let the processes play out peacefully and that is just not going to happen.
All of us at times have thoughts and fantasies we don’t discuss aloud. Who among us hasn’t fantasized over the complete undoing of another being, for reasons legitimate or petty? Some of these thoughts may be healthy when they allow us to vent frustrations and thus excise what would otherwise be more dangerous energy.
Unfortunately, social media has allowed the topsoil of sanity among many of us to be unearthed, overturned, and the serpentine thoughts of hatred to slither into view. It has contributed to the development of an illogical thought process, that if you don’t like something you simply destroy it. But that’s akin to launching a nuclear bomb on the mosquito that’s flying around you. That nuclear bomb will take you with it.
Humorous, satirical memes are one thing. Satire - including the Dictator podcast - are part of the fabric of American politics. Memes are the modern form of political cartoons. Satire is a form of expression older than our Constitution - and protected by it.
But the vitriol in the wake of the attempted Trump assassination, the unadulterated hatred, thoughts like “missed by this much” or “next time take shooting lessons” - and far worse - only feed the weak-minded among us to actually act out.
More will come out but as of this writing the gunman authorities say tried to assassinate Donald Trump was a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who apparently was both a registered Republican and a donor to a progressive political action committee aligned with the Democrat Party. How conflicted is that? Public records show he apparently lived at home with parents who were licensed behavioral care counselors. No past history of problems.
What happened?
He’s no longer around to say, “The Internet made me do it.”
But I have to think it didn’t persuade him not to open fire on Trump.
Be careful what you wish for.
To promote a form of thinking, to promote that a candidate for office or someone who is in power is so evil, so corrupt, so much an incarnate of the very devil himself - and who should be destroyed at any cost - is to drive the wedge among us deeper and deeper, into an abyss - a Rubicon – that America may someday be unable to traverse.
I pray that day is not here and never comes.
And that’s a Dictator. Special Edition.
Special Edition TRUMP ASSASSINATION FAILED