An Existential Crossroad

      As someone who's been studying existentialism off and on since 1977, I consider myself as someone who probably has a better insight into it than most. So when talking heads on TV refer to the existentialist threat of a second Trump term, I know exactly what they're talking about. However, you can't expect that phrase to have the proper impact it deserves if the people at large cannot even explain or define what existentialism actually is.

     Yes, Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democracy as long as he draws breath and the fascist danger for which he's currently the avatar will continue long after he's gone. But it's getting people to understand that that's the tricky part. For instance, you could warn people that they're about to get inundated with a surfeit of Hydrogen hydroxide but that's unlikely to get the same reaction as simply telling them they're about to get flooded with water. It's all in the message and the clarity of that message.

     Existentialism (and, admittedly, this is an oversimplification. If you wish, you can read a master class on the subject by reading Jean-Paul Sartre's magnum opus, Being and Nothingness) is essentially the individual's search for meaning in a universe that was never created to make sense. And if there's any time the human race, especially Americans, has ever lived in an existential crisis, it's right now.

     After all, we're living through an election cycle that looks and sounds as if it's been scripted by Lewis Carroll. Here we have the Republican nominee for President, a twice-impeached, four time indicted, 34 time convicted criminal who's also been found liable for sexual assault, falsifying business records, cheating on his taxes, starting a riot at the Capitol building and credibly accused of stealing Top Secret documents. And yet the GOP and mainstream media are treating him as if he's Richard Cory. 

     Yes, we miss the meat and curse the bread but he glitters when he walks!

     And unless one admits the likely reason for his widespread popularity in every state, which is his talent for assembling a cult, one is confounded by Donald Trump's persistent appeal. He hates his own base (He even called them "disgusting" and thanked the pandemic for giving him an excuse not to shake their hands). He has no sense of loyalty unless it's unilateral and flowing to him. He's famously thin-skinned and randomly lashes out at those who steal even an iota of his thunder. His bloated self regard is cartoonish and bursts the bounds of parody ("a brilliant young man". "Very stable genius".).

     As "president", he did more damage to this country in four years than Bush II or Reagan did in eight. He pulled us from the nuclear pact with Iran, freeing them to pursue nuclear weapons. He pulled us from the Paris climate accord. He pulled us from the INF treaty with Russia, freeing them up to ramp up production for their nuclear stockpile. And, if he could've gotten away with it, he would've pulled us out of NATO.

     He failed to secure the border and built just 52 miles of wall, not an inch of which Mexico paid for. He started a needless a trade war with China by jacking up tariffs that were then paid by the American consumer and put American companies out of business. He completely mismanaged the pandemic, resulting in the loss of 400,000 American lives by Inauguration Day 2021. And, of course, he signed into a law a ruinous tax cut in which 83% of the money flowed directly up to the 1% and stuck middle class and lower middle class taxpayers with the bill.

     Those are just some of his bigger fuckups and yet tens of millions of us want four more years of the same. Except, it wouldn't be the same. It would be worse.

     It's been said before that when Hitler was in prison after his failed Beer Hall Putsch, he told the German people what he'd do in Mein Kampf if and when they ever elected him Chancellor. And he did just that. That's because the fascist, authoritarian mindset is deeply seated in arrogance. Because when fascists like Hitler and Trump tell you what they're going to do, they're essentially daring you to try to stop them. And the German people failed to do so. And we're poised to inherit that mantle of moral failure.

     In West Palm Beach over the weekend, Trump literally told the crowd that if they elected him, they'd never have to worry about voting ever again. That's something a wouldbe dictator would do and not just on Day One. It ought to be mentioned right now that after Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933, Germany didn't have another election until 1946. Before then, Hitler had essentially outlawed all other political parties.

     Then, of course, there's Project 2025, which is in and of itself a reason to never elect another Republican president ever again for as long as our Republic endures. Project 2025 is essentially an updated Enabling Act that Germany had rammed through in 1933 just a couple of months after Hitler took over. 

     Now, you'd think any one of the political, legal, moral and policy failures enumerated above would keep any person from getting elected president. And yet, since Trump got "elected" in 2016, apparently a Republican needs fewer qualifications to become president than anyone would need to get hired as a mall cop.

     And then, there are the right wing vehicles of grace that continue to bail out Trump time and again. A right wing billionaire out of California that put up the bail for his appeal in the New York fraud case (That a right wing judge had knocked down to a fraction of the original amount). Then there's Aileen Cannon completely tossing the documents case. The staggeringly corrupt Supreme Court giving Trump near blanket immunity from committing crimes as long as lower courts designate them as "official acts". The list goes on and on.

     There's your real existential crisis. We're living in a world, a country, that no longer makes sense. We're living in a country in which the rule of law no longer applies to Donald Trump.

     But, oh, Kamala Harris never pushed a child through her loins, she cackles, so she can't be elected.

     However, I have faith in the American people, a faith that was rewarded on Election Night 2020. That was the night when 81.2 million people voted for Joe Biden, more than any other presidential candidate in American history.

     And Vice President Harris is breaking records all over the place. In the first three days of her presidential run, she'd taken in a cool quarter of a billion dollars, meaning she doesn't even need the sizable war chest she'd inherited from Joe Biden. Her Zoom conference calls are literally breaking Zoom. And yesterday at the Villages, the right wing feeder community for Florida's burgeoning nursing home industry, about 500 golf carts filled with voters came out for Vice President Harris.

     This isn't the MSM force-feeding us a bullshit narrative. The same corporate MSM that harped on Biden's age and cognitive decline without hardly mentioning Trump's? The same MSM that forced a decent man and a good president out of a presidential race while giving endless free passes to a carnival barker and his neo-Nazi sycophants? Please. 

     Kamala Harris is the X factor, the fly in the ointment for which neither Donald Trump nor his enablers in the MSM have an answer or that they even expected. 

     People, this November 5th, we'll have two choices: Either Trump loses his freedom or we lose ours. I would think that would be a no-brainer.