The man a majority of voters selected to be their next president does not represent me. He does not represent my values. I will continue to advocate for the people who do.
Americans who fell for Trump’s lies will live to regret their choice. They will come to be ashamed of what they have afflicted on the rest of us. They will miss living in a democracy.
Their children and grandchildren will come to hate them.
Not mine. I stood on the right side of history.
***
This is an Open Letter I published on July 9, 2022:
We live in an age of fake news. Not the type Donald Trump complains about — that is the actual news. Trump just doesn’t like it.
No the fake news stories I’m talking about are in fact the products of propagandists who treat our democracy as if it were a reality TV show where they can control the plot, the characters and the outcome.
They circulate works of fiction like Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. From a propaganda perspective, this ploy seems to be working. Millions of people believe the Big Lie despite zero evidence. Thousands of them were willing to take the extreme step of storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 in support of it.
Fake news of this sort is very, very dangerous. It not only can cause violence and mayhem, as we have seen, it can destroy our entire way of life.
Living in the 21st century United States with its highly developed mass media turning us into passive consumers of information as opposed to critical thinkers is a recipe for living a life of denial.
Although we came seriously close to losing our democracy, millions of Americans don’t accept that interpretation of our recent history and seem likely to repeat the mistakes that brought us Trump in the next election cycle.
Too many Republican candidates and state officials still say they believe the Big Lie. That makes them — whether they realize it or not — a threat to our democracy. It’s time for any honest Republicans who have survived the Trump barrage of propaganda to wake up and notice what is going on.
You can still vote for Republicans, just not any who believes and spread the Big Lie. Vote for somebody like Liz Cheney, a true patriot, if she chooses to run for president or Mitt Romney, for example. Otherwise, if you vote for an election denier, you become part of our Big Problem in America and you will be on the wrong side of history.
And your descendants will never forgive you.
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