Now, all lines are blurred
To the Editor:
I was judged rather harshly for a letter, by no less than six people in three newspapers, for doubting the average American voter's capacity to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from falsehoods.
The results of the 2024 election, I believe, proved me correct.
The final count revealed that 2,241,300 (plus) North Carolinians voted for a candidate for governor who self-described as a "Black Nazi," who promoted returning to a time of slavery and when women were not allowed to vote.
Democracy only thrives and endures in a well-informed citizenry; otherwise, it withers, rots, and eventually dies. We're trapped in an epidemic of ignorance, the winning half of the electorate having rejected factual reality. That's how it's worked for every dictator around the world who has managed to dismantle democracy by creating his own disinformation domain. It seems that reporting lies (no matter how preposterous) works.
There was a time in America when it was commonly accepted that the rule of law was good, racism and misogyny were bad; that telling the truth was good, lying was bad. An unmistakable division existed between right and wrong. Both major parties respected rules of law, peaceful transfer of power, traditional democratic values; a plotted, armed coup attempt on our Capitol — unthinkable. Now all lines are blurred.
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Over the last five decades we've actually altered the meaning of the English language. We've invented excuses for bad behavior and convinced ourselves that's acceptable. Before anyone realized something was terribly amiss, Trump was president and Rudy Guiliani felt risk-free to blurt: “There is no such thing as the truth.” Without truth there can be no trust — without trust there can be no society.
To destroy a civilization you have simply to neutralize the guiding principles that made it a civilization. Accomplish that and its citizens are vulnerable to any tyrant or dictator who happens by. Trump has proven better at crushing democracy than our institutions are at preserving it. I fear we've created the power to destroy ourselves absent the wisdom to ensure we don't.
Making far more difficult the task of keeping our republic viable, the ethically compromised Justice John Robert's Supreme Court has liberated us from constitutional law, not because of science or precedent but because they had the power to do it. Their false judgments ensure we'll be ruled by billionaires who regard themselves as superior beings, dismissive of both their fellow humans and the earth itself, men who will never allow ethical principles to get in the way of their financial principals.
When America's obituary is written, and Trump's impeachments, trials and his democracy-destroying criminality rehashed ad-nauseam, history will record how far America fell, probably proving John Adams correct: “Democracy never lasts long. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
Nothing justifies a vote for Donald Trump — nothing. No single vote for Trump is anything other than an abandonment of character, honor and patriotism. Not a single one. The incoming Trump administration will define our nation for decades, possibly for all time.
David L. Snell
Franklin
