The question posed in the title of this article refers to the coming election in November. When we cast our ballot, will we have truly examined valid information so we can make the wisest choice?
No doubt many voters have already decided who they plan to vote for when they cast their ballots. However, it is important to use the time remaining to make sure we’re well-informed before voting.
We remember that Trump famously said he could shoot someone walking down Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters. I truly hope that is not a correct boast.
Some of the statements by former President Donald Trump alarm me even more than that one about shooting someone. I was shocked when he twice said he would be a dictator, “only on Day One” (usatoday.com/story/news/ politics/elections/2023/12/11/Donaldtrump- dictator-one-day-reelected).
Trump took vows before God and witnesses in each of his three weddings that he would “forsake all others and be faithful until death parts us.” We know he broke those oaths repeatedly.
It is no surprise that he would also break his vow to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States, as he did on January 6, 2021. That’s when he summoned hundreds of his followers to storm the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent the Constitutionally-mandated certification of the election that he had just lost to Joe Biden.
Any bride would reject a groom who said, “I will honor my vow, except on one day I will go out and commit adultery.”
In my view, Trump has demonstrated that solemn vows are not important to him, and that he will break them any time he feels like it.
The next promise Donald Trump made that alarms me is his claim that, if reelected, he will have Liz Cheney arrested and tried for treason in a televised Military Tribunal. He also said he would put President Biden, VP Kamala Harris, Senator Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and Mike Pence in jail (nytimes. com/2024/07/01/us.politics/ trump-liz-cheney-treasonjail. html).
That policy is like Adolf Hitler’s playbook. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and had absolute dictatorial power, he had dissenters arrested and imprisoned. One of the best known of those was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spent the last two years of the war in prisons and concentration camps.
Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who spoke out against Hitler’s genocide and evil practices and against the way the Church was becoming Nationalized. Churches were adorned with Nazi flags and pictures of Fuhrer Hitler, including patriotic sermons and songs (Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, New York, NY: New York University Press, 2001, p. 1).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged in Flossenbürg Concentration Camp two weeks before American soldiers liberated it (history.com/ this-day-in-history/defianttheologian- dietrich-bonhoeffer- is-hanged).
Do we really want a president who will have American citizens arrested and tried in televised Military Tribunals because they dared oppose him in peaceful protests? That is what he has promised to do. Hitler did exactly that in Nazi Germany, minus only television.
The examples I have given are factual claims Donald Trump has made in public statements. I believe these should affect the way Americans feel as they go to vote on November 5, 2024.
Feelings by themselves are neither right nor wrong. Only opinions supported by facts are the most sensible ones.
Martin Niemoller, a German philosopher, wrote the following soon after WWII: “First, they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
The future of American democracy is at stake. We all have a part in protecting it, by voting wisely on election day.