Regardless of the Winner, Our Long National Nightmare is Not Over

It will not end tonight even if Kamala Harris ultimately wins

Gerald Ford became President under extraordinary circumstances. Richard Nixon had resigned the Presidency having found that he would be impeached and that Senate Republicans would not save him. He resigned and left office on the morning on August 9th, 1974. Ford his Vice President, had succeeded Spiro Agnew who resigned after pleading no contest to felony tax evasion charges on 10 October, 1973.

In his short inaugural address Ford, commenting on the criminal actions and moves to prosecute and impeach Nixon, said:

“I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.

In all my public and private acts as your President, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end.

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule…”

Donald Trump has unleashed the whirlwind on the American political system which just nine years ago was considered impervious to the evil machinations of a would be dictator who managed to transform the venerable Republican Party from a mainstream conservative political party into an openly Fascist, racist, personality cult. However, as early as 2015 I was identifying him as a racist and Fascist, and by his election I recognized that his followers had been waiting for a political strongman and were absolutely devoted to him, with many believing him to be a biblical type of messiah. They were now a cult that had been prepared for him by three decades of conservative talk radio, Fox News, and right wing Christian preachers.

Even if he loses tonight, they will remain as a malignant political force bent on avenging their defeated cult leader. If he wins he will embolden them to carry out his worst edicts with a ferocity unmatched since the violence of the Ku Klux Klan, the White Leagues, and Red Shirts who committed wholesale massacres and uncounted lynchings while reestablishing White Rule throughout the South following the end of Reconstruction and who solidified their racist rule throughout the country following the legalization of segregation by the Supreme Court’s 1894 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, and other decisions to limit the protections of the 14th Amendment and roll back Civil and Voting Rights for newly freed and enfranchised Blacks.

Unfortunately, if he wins, we can expect, based on his unhinged rhetoric and the extreme policy proposals of him and his close allies in the Heritage Foundation, many of who were members of his first administration who drafted Project 2025 that our Long National Nightmare is only beginning. Their actions will surpass those of the former Confederates and sympathetic Whites in non-southern states. The will emulate those of Hitler’s Nazis following their takeover of the German government in 1933, beginning with the persecution, imprisonment, unlawful detention, or killing of political opponents, including elected officials, the arrest, detention, and deportation of millions of people, including undocumented immigrants and fully legal immigrants, even naturalized citizens. Some of his violent supporters talk of extrajudicial executions of his opponents. Such threats are given credence by the actions of Trump to attacks upon opponents over the past few years, including Paul Pelosi.

Trump always utters what was previously unimaginable, and unfortunately, for years the corporate media has given him a pass or downplayed his words and actions as if they were normal. Because of this, those actions frequently died in the newsfeed and people paid no attention, thus enabling Trump. The complicity of the corporate media, most evidenced by the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post who stopped their papers from endorsing Vice President Harris.

The complicity of the corporate media in helping the twice impeached, former president, who was convicted of multiple felonies in the State of New York and judged to be liable in a case that the judge said amounted to rape, is at least as as complicit as that of the Republican leaders who surrendered and sense of decency, honor, or morality in continuing to support him. Their obedience was based on their fear of him and hope that he will reward them for their subservience to him. He has no respect for all but the most compliant cultists of his party, and his approval is only a pipe dream for most, as he despises Marco, Ted, Tim, Mitt, Mitch, Nikki and even “W” as well as the host of former opponents and open doubters in the Grand Old Propaganda Party who have endorsed him, or say nothing openly against him. They are all fools if they think that they are safe from his vengeance. Though cognitively addled, his memory of offenses, real or imagined is first in his worm infested brain.

As I write this the early results favor Trump, however they are all in places that he was expected to win, so they don’t necessarily point to him winning. The later results, which will likely will come in much later might well give Harris the win. I actually expect that, but election coverage now exhausts me and wears me out. What used to be a passion, is now a dread, and this is all because of Donald Trump and his cult. I have had death threats and had supposed Christians try to destroy my military career because they disagreed and blatantly lied about I said in 2018. I honestly fear form my life, and future should be elected, because, like retired Regular Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps officers, I can be recalled to active duty and tried for my opposition to Trump. He and his supporters have threatened much more important officers than me including Generals John Kelly, Mark Miley, and many more with that. No one, even distinguished and highly decorated officers is safe from him.

No matter what the final results show, I expect Trump to preemptively declare victory long before he secures the Electoral College majority, and to bring lawsuits in any state or county where he lost or is losing. If those lawsuits fail to prevent a Harris win, expect violence. Trump has already predicted and promised that.

Please remember that just because a candidate wins at the ballot box that they will respect the constitution or institutions that they are elected to defend. Timothy Snyder wrote: “The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.” This is exactly what happened after Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30 January, 1933, and even though Trump wasn’t able to fulfill his desires in his first term, doesn’t meant that he won’t if he wins this year. The Supreme Court, whose majority was appointed by Trump, which gave him immunity for any action, regardless of its legality this year has effectively ensured that he will be able to do whatever he desires without fear of prosecution for anything that would otherwise be illegal for any President in our history. How can any American not be afraid? Unfortunately, the MAGA Trump Cultists will never understand this, until he comes after them, which with all of his official actions as President being legal he will certainly do, because they do not learn from history.

A German clergyman named Martin Niemoller was a war hero who commanded a U-Boat in the First World War was an ardent supporter of Adolf Hitler before Hitler’s seizure of power. However, when Hitler began to go after his opponents, even those who Niemoller approved of, until he came after Christians like him. Niemoller joined the Confessing Church, which opposed Hitler and his Nazis actions. Niemoller would be arrested and sent to Concentration Camps by the Nazis. He wrote:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then 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 out for me

Milton Mayer, an American who was of German Jewish descent. After war he went to the state of Hessen in German to teach in a University, where he got to know numerous Germans from across the social spectrum. One was a professor in the University where he taught. He wrote a book entitled They Though they were Free: The Germans, 1933-1945 about the comments of his professor friend:

“Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late.”

Sadly, those deceived by Trump who are consumed with hatred for imaginary enemies will not learn that until their lives, fortunes, and families suffer that they won’t be spared, but by then, it will be too late.

I close this article not knowing the final election result. I cannot stay up any longer. But I do plead with my readers, that no matter what the result they you do not retreat into despair or surrender your or other peoples freedom without a fight, if you do you will be no better than the Germans who not only failed to resist Hitler, but then became late members of the Nazi Party who joined in order to keep their social status, economic prosperity, and upward mobility.

Regardless of the winner tonight, that is the choice. Freedom or tyranny. Voting in all states is over, but our choices are not.

Trump promises that he will end the legal and constitutional rights of all Americans, including immigrants who want nothing more to be a part of our country with its promises of liberties.

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. Not like those are important, but they are. That is why in the face of Nazi and Japanese aggression and war crimes, President Franklin Roosevelt said this in his Four Freedoms speech:

The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.”

President Roosevelt described all that former, and maybe Future President Trump is. The question now is whether anyone, regardless of tonight’s final results are, will still fight for freedom.

I will fight regardless of the cost. I will not be silent. There can be no surrender to tyranny.