Crazy Faith Ministries
It has been said that the reason he is president is not because of who voted for him, but because of those who did not vote.
I remember hearing people on “the left” say they would not vote because their candidate, Bernie Sanders, had not gotten the Democratic nomination, and I heard others say that they would vote for Sanders or not at all because they just did not like Hillary Clinton.
One of my friends shared his painful reality that his brother was in prison because of the Clinton- era “three strikes and you’re out” provision in his 1994 crime law, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. And there were clips on YouTube of Clinton having called Black youth “super predators.” These children, she said, had “no conscience, no empathy.” Black people did not forget, nor should we have.
But this upcoming election seems different. Every person should vote in this country, for it is the bedrock of our democracy. Other nations have modeled their democracies after ours, striving for “one man, one vote.”
Given that the right to vote is the central feature of a democracy, and for African Americans, given the fact that people demonstrated and died so that Black people could vote, it seems to be a travesty of our very history that some Black people choose not to vote.
The effort to suppress and deny Black people the right to vote is only increasing because “the other side” sees the power of the Black vote that it always feared. They are working through their state legislatures to make laws that amount to modern-day poll taxes or worse. We have worked too hard to not go to the polls.
But we cannot just go to the polls. We have to vote a new president in – but most importantly, we need to vote the current president out if we are disturbed, bothered and frightened by what is going on.
This president is a walking example of “powers and principalities in high places.” His racism, his sexism, xenophobia and disregard for the oath he took to preserve and protect the Constitution should alarm everyone. We are never quite sure from one day to the next what he will do on impulse, who he will insult, including important allies, or what decision he will make that will cause masses of Americans to suffer.
His words are his weapon. He is a media guru and knows how to manipulate the media, which he has done very well.
He is so absolutely narcissistic that some have called into question his mental state. His mental state, however, is not the issue – protecting our country and its citizens is.
He is running roughshod over the House; he is ignoring the constitutional dictate that in this country there are separation of powers; he is using the U.S. Justice Department and the attorney general as his own tool with which to protect himself from his own shortcomings.
He is stoking the hatred and fear of his base; he has raised concern that, should he lose the 2020 election, he will prompt his followers to become violent, according to Leonard Pitts Jr. in a commentary in the Miami Herald.
If Trump wins the 2020 election, it is probably safe to say that it will be because people do not vote. Their nonvoting is part of the living out of the adage by Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”
“We the people” of this country do not have the option of not voting. This president is aligning himself – and thus the country – with the world’s dictators and despots, including Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. He is breaking away from our allies and seems at the time of this writing to be readying the country for war with Iran, as noted in MotherJones.com.
The GOP is allowing this to happen; their sick loyalty to this president is helping him to sell the country down the river. They either do not care for the Constitution they swore to protect, or they haven’t read how dictatorships have happened in other countries, or they do not care.
Driven by their determination to overturn Roe v. Wade, and their disapproval of issues of sexuality, they are hellbent on getting judges in the courts who will reverse the decisions that they have hated for so long.
They believe that God sent Trump into the presidency. Michele Bachmann said that Trump is “the most godly president this nation has ever had,” according to a newsletter on USAToday.com.
That should scare people who are thinking about not voting. This election will be a trek into the lion’s den of justice.
Hopefully we will take a determination that we will not let the gains made for so many people over the past 50 years to be negated or further eroded by this man who is a bane to the cause of “justice for all.”
While all elections are critical, this one is even more so. Dictators get into office because people elect them.
The hope is that Americans will grab hold of the principles that we say are so important and vote this man out of office. Even if we are successful, he will make a stir and claim that the election was rigged. Hopefully, there are think tanks and strategy sessions happening even now so that we can preserve this country, flaws and all.
If we do not vote, we will have nobody to blame for what happens to us and this country, which Trump says he loves. His country and that of the masses are not one in the same, and our staying away from the polls will drive that reality home.
Rev. Dr. Susan K. Smith is the founder and director of Crazy Faith Ministries. She is available for speaking. Contact her at revsuekim@sbcglobal.net.
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