Trump Declines Any Commitment to Peaceful Transition of Power If He Loses This Election

This was a post that should have been published a while ago. Yet, with some of the problems that I have been experiencing with the blog in these past few weeks, it kind of got lost in the shuffle. It seemed worth publishing now, however, because it is not irrelevant. In fact, with the election just one day away, and with the recent incident when a bunch of Trump fans in Texas took it upon themselves to drive out on a highway and physically slow down a Biden campaign bus, it seems more relevant than ever. There may have been plenty of things that I have not appreciated about past major presidential candidates, largely based on ideological differences. However, I have never seen the frankly anti-democratic spirit, words, and actions that dominate the re-election campaign of King Con Don and his legion of mindless morons. 

In typical fashion, Trump did not outright order this. But he praised this very bad behavior, empowering actions that, frankly, are nothing less than a threat to American democracy itself. It feels more and more like what the country is voting on this November is the decision to either reject this kind of absurdity as an aberration, or to accept this as the new normal of what passes for American politics, which will in a very real sense, be the end of American democracy as we have known it. If we allow this man to get away with all of this, and if he stays in office for another four years, who knows how much more emboldened he will feel, and what new attacks on democracy he will relentlessly set about undermining?

So after seeing this post, I decided to publish it today:

Is this even really a surprise?              

From the moment when he won the election in 2016, I had a sinking feeling that Trump’s ascension to the White House was bad news for democracy. Very bad news. He will never give up power, I figured. Nor was I alone. Bill Maher has been saying this very publicly for a long time as well.              

Why would anyone be so suspicious that this man will not give up power, at least not easily, or possibly even peacefully?              

Well, because he is an intolerant, narcissist and MAGAlomaniac, and his lust for power is legendary. He has always been like this, and there is no reason to think that he would change once he actually took office.              

Nor has he changed, or grown into the office, or anything else that people claimed he might change into once in office.              

And Trump has consistently said and done things to confirm the worst suspicions about him held by his detractors. Often times, he will claim that he was merely joking, like when he was “joking” about the United States perhaps having a president for life, or about how his supporters would demand that he has a third term in office years ago, even though he was not yet done with his first term, not having won a second term, and which he obtained in an election when he lost the popular vote by almost three million. It’s funny how all of his “joking” always seems to be about power, and his lust for obtaining more of it, or keeping the power that he has, huh? Some really funny “jokes, “right?

This is a terrible time in our nation's history. It is made all the worse due to the fact that tens of millions of Americans frankly foolish believe that it is such a great time in our nation's history. So many people are still captured by a certain charm that this obvious fraud, this well-established scam artist, possesses. He has a long history of manipulating people, and the saddest aspect about this chapter that our nation is currently writing is what it has revealed about friends and neighbors, and sometimes family. Trump has brought an all too visible ugliness, just apparently buried under the surface for all of these years, into the spotlight in what passes for politics today in our nation.

There are some very real reasons that Trump won, of course. He appealed to people who felt left out, or left behind, forgotten. Certainly, there was an element of race, particularly racism, that he also tapped into rather shamelessly and cynically. In that, he is both the same and different than other politicians. But not everyone who voted for him is a racist. It is not quite as clear-cut as that.

But the anti-democratic spirit that bleeds through the words and actions of not just Trump, but his supporters, is hard to ignore, or explain away somehow. It would also be dangerous to ignore, or explain away. It is clearer than ever now that what is at stake in this election is what remains of our practicing American democracy itself. That is not an overreaction, as Trump's brash refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power should he lose this election amounts to an attack on the spirit of democracy itself. It is nothing less than an attack on the voice of the people, and their power to choose their own leaders, to say nothing of the political continuity and stability of the country itself. 

Trump needs to go. We urgently need to get this incredible threat to our democracy out of office, and put his presidency into the past, into the dustbin of history. We cannot afford not to do so.