This morning I overheard a loud conversation about last night’s debate between two college girls on the bus. One very pretty young mixed race student was telling her companion: “I just don’t want an uneducated person in that position. She doesn’t even have a law degree!” I was trying to keep my nose in my book, but that made me chuckle to myself. When the talkative one went on to say: “You know, Hitler was elected in a democratic election. They just want to vote for somebody just like them.” At that, I had to turn around and ask her what significance the statistic had that ~95% of African Americans are polled as supporing Barack Obama. She went blank for a moment and responded that not ALL of them vote on the basis of race.
I pose to the club this question: What significance does this appearance of the Nazi trope on all sides have? Is it some kind of weird desire for wish fulfillment? Is there some kind of will to chaos afoot in our country? Have we simply reached a toxic critical mass from Hollywood images? Anomie?
With a month before the election we have supposed adults posting revolution fantasies on this forum – fight or flee? The first few times I thought maybe it was cathartic, but, the election is a month away!!
The presidential election in the world’s most successful and long lasting constitutional republic is a month away and people who think enough of their own opinions to post them in this forum are nonchalantly talking about overthrowing or seriously weakening the inheritance from our forefathers because they feel a pea under their mattress and yet, they themselves have been too passive, lazy or inattentive to remove the damned thing.
Our republic is not founded on personalities, but on institutions and processes. If we allow our opponents to take those institutions because we are either too lethargic to act or too paralyzed by perfectionism to seek out allies, it is our own fault. If we damage or destroy our civic institutions in a belated effort to evict our opponents, it is all the more our fault and we are in mortal risk of becoming the greater evil ourselves.
Conservatives! Master thy selves! Man up! Put aside the dark reveries and get thee to work!
