The price of expediency

by Elliott Oppenheim, Florence

Is our America invincible? We may soon get the answer. 

Several hundred delusional candidates are running for offices throughout the country in the mid-term elections. They have every right to run and to be as irrational as they want. But, if, in the upcoming election, we lose the separation of powers between the three government powers, we will no longer have our Democracy. If the extremists win the election, our Democracy will collapse. Without change America will continue to roil in fear. America is not indestructible. 

Each potential voter has the duty and obligation to vote. Voting is the single-most important act to make Democracy work.

Using Nazi, Hitlerian techniques of mind control and manipulation, distorting political forces sweep America seeking to impose an anti-Semitic, anti-minority, anti-LGBTQ, hate-based autocratic theocracy based in fundamentalist and extremist Christian religiosity. They are winning. 

Observe Iran and Russia and Burkina Faso as examples of current government implosions as a consequence of extremist government factions. It is happening right here in Montana.

This pernicious movement fuels itself appearing like road flares, springing from the offensive phenomenon that a statement repeated loud enough and long enough, even in the face of its untruth — a lie — becomes believed as truth and attracts supplicants. Backed by vast resources, it is a cult phenomenon. 

It will take decades to correct the destruction and damage already done.  

But this is not new. Eradicating Jews and many others in the name of Christianity, the Crusades when, during the 11th to 16th century, were armies of the Catholic Church that rampaged Europe attempting to create a Catholic world — killing opponents to their religious views. 

Expungement of different opinion is what the extremist religious right now accomplishes in America. America faces forces in a major social, demographic, and religious revolution and upheaval antithetical to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the First Amendment … and the Constitution. Extremist factions are expunging and blurring the lines between the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches of government set forth in the Constitution. 

Without dramatic opposition on November 8th, we, all of us, me, you, all of us, will, for an indeterminate future, metamorphose what the Constitutional framers foresaw as America the Beautiful, our land of the free, home of the brave, with equal justice and opportunity for all … into … what? White, Christian irrational extremism?

This movement was in motion well before the recent Dobbs decision, shutting down abortion rights. It is time to see what is happening as morally and ethically and religiously pernicious. Like Saudi Arabia and other countries, extremist forces in America seek to impose minority-held religious values as the law of the land.

On Tuesday, November 8, 2022, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. Thirty-nine state and territorial gubernatorial elections, as well as numerous other state and local elections, will be contested. This will be the first election affected by the redistricting that follows the 2020 census. There are 39 gubernatorial seats up for grabs in 36 states and 3 territories. 

The redistricting originates in extremist political religiosity and is anti-Semitic, bigoted and prejudiced against people of color, and is hate centered, directed at creating a white nation for Christian people: anti-Semitic, anti-minority, anti-immigrant, anti-economically disadvantaged. 

Niccolò Machiavelli in late 1513 noted that a regime can govern only with the consent of the governed. It is that pushback against being ruled autocratically that rises up in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and in America.

January 6,th the Dobbs abortion decision, interfering with voting rights, are a direct tyrannical assault on Jews and other minorities. This religious manipulation and persecution led the Pilgrims to America in 1605. 

If you want our form of government — one person, one vote —  then you have to believe that those with the most votes win and we accept election losses. And if you believe in liberty and justice for all, then all means everybody. “It ain’t justice if it ain’t equal,” my friend and mentor, civil rights lawyer Lenny Schroeter taught. If you believe in religious freedom as conveyed in the Constitution and elaborated by the First Amendment, that means everybody gets religious freedom.

Voter suppression, removing access to information, book burning, relocating people for political gains are techniques the Third Reich used as it rose to power to install Hitler in 1933. These are techniques deployed in America now. 

If you believe in democracy, dissenters are not enemies. A democracy is a collection of people with differing views. People should be able to be whom they want to be. How is society harmed when people become themselves? Can’t we love the way we want? Unisex bathrooms seem to work out in many countries. 

A one belief system is anti-America. The US Supreme Court can’t function as the enforcement arm of a political party. For our Democracy to work, people have to trust the system, trust the agencies, and believe that they will be treated evenly and fairly. 

Over 500 election deniers seek political office. Actively inciting violence is no way for this Democracy to continue. A society built upon expediency will crumble. If character and integrity do not matter, what does? Vote for kindness and equality and religious freedom for all.  

To heal, America needs trials for perpetrators. … all of them.