I’m haunted by this picture, which seems to capture the mood of the Trump campaign and today’s Republican Party. For God’s sake, please don’t let this be the face of our nation’s future. It is, of course, not up to God — we are a democracy, so our destiny is in our own hands.
The founders of our republic knew better than to institute a pure democracy; they did not expect us to govern ourselves directly. But they did ask us to recognize and elect to represent us women and men (well, back then it was just men) of courage, character and wisdom, who would fairly represent our values and interests — and to reject the bullies, the blusterers, the con artists, the gabblers of wild lies who substitute anger and insult for reasoned argument. They bet that they could trust us to do that, at least in the long run — or, as Winston Churchill put it, more sardonically: “The Americans will do the right thing, once they’ve exhausted the alternatives.”
We’ve exhausted the alternatives. Tomorrow we find out if we’re still up to the responsibility the founders charged us with.