Urgent Plea for Action: Why Americans and the World Must Confront Trump’s Dangerous Path
by Annette Dion
What we are bearing witness to as citizens of the United States, and for that matter as citizens of the world, is a candidate for President of the most affluent and powerful nation on the planet devolving into a deranged and mentally unfit human, and leading us into yet another highly volatile and dangerous national situation.
By all appearances the mainstream media has yet to catch up. To which I say, “C’mon boys and girls. It is time to pay attention.”
As we have watched with cautious relief, a new vision of what can possibly emerge with the popularity of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on the Democratic ticket, we have, at the very least, a space to build ourselves up to feeling inspired and hopeful for a sane America.
Yet, the greater the rise in popularity of Harris and Walz clearly becomes, the larger their crowd sizes, the more myopic and threatening the most violent side of a devolving Donald Trump reveals itself. He becomes single-minded, obsessed with each piece of positive, new information that comes his way about the Harris/Walz ticket creeping up on him, and, just recently, even surpassing him in the polls.
We bear witness to his reddening face, the seemingly almost visible steam coming out of his ears, the angry grunting, like a bull facing the matador in the ring as he addresses the press and rally crowds, airing his infinitesimally long list of grievances, “Look at what they are doing to me!” he expresses at every opportunity and turn, “It’s so unfair! It is THEY who are criminals! We need to get back at them!”.
Trump is wounded. When Trump is wounded, Trump seriously seeks revenge.
Donald Trump demonstrably has zero problem with airing his continuous brazen lies and grievances in ways that put entire communities in imminent danger. And, as we all well know by now, this past he did it all yet again. He took on the obvious role of domestic terrorist leader. He decided he would ride the wave of conspiratorial claims started by his (brace yourself) equally dangerous white supremacist Vice Presidential nominee pick JD Vance, that Haitians in Ohio are killing and eating people’s pets. En masse. And that “they” need to be stopped.
When he is called out by a substantially lame press on these dangerous and divisive, potential-for-major-violence attacks on communities of innocent people, what does he do? Yes, I believe we all know this by now. Contrary to what is considered “normal behavior” which would involve recognizing the error in one’s ways and subsequently STOPPING the bad behavior and dangerous stochastic terrorist rhetoric, Trump characteristically doubles down. Every time. In addition to that he predictably urges his followers to follow him and to amp up the rage. Predictably, they escalate it. And the violence and the threats inevitably happen and continue.
This is not our first go around. It’s not as if we are all sitting there in our living rooms, scrolling through our phones, watching the news present itself saying “Oh, it’s just words and Trump bluster. It will blow over”. No. Let us be very, very clear. We already know what “the Donald” is capable of. We have firsthand evidence. We have ourselves borne witness to the fact that way more than once he succeeds in getting his cult members to carry out horrific deeds. No matter how much the MAGAs who somehow made their way in to our Congress constantly try to gaslight us and say “no, it isn’t like that.” Yeah, right. Gimme a break. It IS like that.
We are all living in trepidation. We have been subjected to this psychological abuse of this most dangerous and deranged man for the past 9 years with nobody ever calling him completely out on it. (hello? Mainstream media? Once again, is anybody out there…?) At any moment we know that all hell could break loose. It doesn’t take a psychic to tell us this. It only takes remembering the collective traumas we have been living through and learning and acting from that experience.
Secret meetings with Putin’s Russian agents on his first days in the Oval Office, stealing our national security secrets with the most likely scenario for his deranged criminal “Trump mind” being that he has already sold them to the highest bidders, urging people to come to Washington and have them participate in a violent and deadly coup, pissing all over our military along with our United States Constitution, letting people die in a deadly pandemic he made the conscious choice to NOT actually manage, defaming over and over again a woman he had been found guilty by a jury of his peers of raping, along with other credible claimants; other victims of his sexual assaults, hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein and now traveling around the nation on Epstein’s plan, throwing his support behind white supremacist and their criminal acts…
We all know that the crimes and injury are too numerous to write a complete list of here. And THAT fact alone is totally jaw dropping. THAT is unbelievable. How did we get here?
It’s a very long story, but we know it is one that is steeped in insatiable American greed and lust and stupidity, devolved into an ugly, disgusting, giant pathos that is very hard to bear witness to and to face, to say the very least. In fact, some people, in response to all of it, have just “checked out” because they cannot handle how hard it has become to look at. I cannot say that I blame them.
If that describes how you yourself cope, from the bottom of my heart right now, I urge you, PLEASE do not. Stop it. Stop “checking out”. RESIST the temptation to do so. This is NOT THE TIME for we as an American citizenry, to be checking out. There are only a few weeks left to election day.
And, it’s not only us. The entire world is begging us to PAY ATTENTION.
It takes courage. But we HAVE the courage. Courage is what this nation was founded on. It is what has made America, America. We are just a little out of practice, as a nation. We can fix that. We ARE fixing that.
Let me end by saying this. In Sebastian Junger’s book “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging” (which I highly recommend reading), Junger describes “what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty and belonging and the eternal human quest for meaning.” The book is about why—for many people—war feels better than peace and hardship can turn out to be a great blessing and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations.
The book’s description goes on to say, “ Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It’s time for that to end.”
When we are faced with trauma we are also faced with a choice. The one we are naturally humanly wired for most is the choice to strengthen our innate bonds with one another as one humanity; one united organism.
“E pluribus Unum”, as we know, found on the back of many coins in addition to being part of our Great Seal of the United States means “from many comes one.”
These are our marching orders, direct from the great Founders of this Great Nation. THIS is our moment in history to save our democracy. When we fight together, we win. It’s tradition.
It’s in our collective, tribal memory.
Do not miss this most important moment of all of our lives. It has, for certain, arrived.
I look forward to seeing you all today at our Grassroots Of Democracy weekly Saturday “getting-the-work-done” session. We are currently working on a couple of very impactful and important projects. We need all hands on deck. Please join us. Email grassrootsofdemocracy@gmail.com to express your interest and to receive the Zoom information.