Wednesday, January 24, 2024

When Hope Flickers, Who Stands Up?

Late Monday, as the clock approached midnight, a crowd of reporters gathered in the tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch in northern New Hampshire to witness the first primary votes cast in this year’s presidential election. 

A few moments after midnight, the town’s registered voters, of whom there are six, filled in their Republican ballots and dropped them into the ballot box. 

The results were quickly tabulated. The totals were six votes for Nikki Haley and zero for Donald J. Trump.

As I watched this time-honored ritual play out on CNN, I felt tears forming in my eyes. Six ordinary Americans had chosen to stand up, if only for a moment, to the awful darkness engulfing this nation by rejecting the man who is running to be a dictator.

Six regular people who no doubt knew they were on the losing side.

Their votes would mean little, of course, as Tuesday wore on and the outcome of the state’s primary contest became clear, but that did not diminish the significance of what they did in my eyes.

Rather, it intensified the pride and gratitude I feel for people like them everywhere, the people who keep the flickering lights of hope and reason alive in this deeply tortured country of ours.

The vote in Dixville Notch was an aberration at the start of what was a very bad day for American democracy and only the first of what I fear are very many bad days to come. All across the land, the dark forces of hate and fear are rising to overwhelm what remains of our better angels of hope and love for one another.

The truth, my friends, is that America is on the verge of destroying itself.

You may disagree, but in my deeply considered opinion, the only reasons for anyone to vote for Trump is fear of the Unknown and hate of the Other. He promises revenge, violence and chaos in response to perceived injustices that never occurred — the supposedly rigged 2020 election, which did not happen and is a blatant lie; and the series of court cases he faces, all of which he brought upon himself by his own criminality, which he now hopes to escape punishment for.

He is, in point of fact, evil incarnate, a narcissist, a bully and a coward. He is utterly unfit for office. 

Despite these indisputable facts, Trump is certain to be the Republican nominee for president.

Every responsible person in this country now needs to find some way, large or small, to organize to help the resistance to defeat Donald J. Trump. 

As you find your own way to get involved, please remember those six people in that small New Hampshire hamlet who stayed up late to make their voices heard. They had to know their votes for a better future would be quickly overwhelmed by the tsunami of fear and hate fueled by Trump and his Nazi-like propaganda machine.

But they stood up anyway. By doing so, they lit a path through the darkness for the rest of us.

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