Dear Descendants . . . Who Are We As Americans? (October 22, 2024)

[It has been over a year since I last posted on this blog.  Much has happened in that time including the birth of two more granddaughters and the death of my mother.  I have been working on what I still hope will become a book on the Tew family of Rhode Island including as many of the descendants of Richard and Mary (Clarke) Tew who came to Rhode Island in 1640 as I can find and document. The birth of my most recent granddaughter has made me pause to consider that two weeks from today the nation will elect its next President and I should once again make clear for my granddaughters and future descendants where I stood in this election. In doing this I must repeat that this is NOT a blog to advocate or debate politics. It is a family history blog as much as it is a place to discuss genealogy topics more generally. As such, posts often contain my personal opinions and these occasional letters to my descendants are intended to share and explain my experience during various momentous events that happened in my lifetime.  Others are free to disagree and they should record and preserve their thoughts and beliefs for their descendants to read and judge just as my descendants will do.] 

 

As this is written, the nation is two weeks away from electing the next President of the Untied States.  It is without question a historic election where we will either elect the first woman President or a man who served one term, was defeated for a second term, was twice impeached, stands as a convicted felon on 34 counts, was found civilly liable for sexual assault of a woman, and yet is now a major presidential candidate for a third time–namely Donald J. Trump. The contrast in this election could not be more stark and real.  The outcome is going to speak volumes about who Americans really are!

I have written about Mr. Trump in the past including after his victory in 2016. On November 9, 2016, I wrote . . .

 

"I emphatically did not want Mr. Trump to become our President. I contributed, organized, advertised, volunteered, and voted to try to prevent it from happening. But Mr. Trump won in the electoral college and so he (by his own words) will not contest what he repeatedly called a "rigged" election. . . and neither can we or should we. We must have a peaceful transition of power if we are to preserve our democracy and our country. It was a hellish campaign. The absolute worst of my lifetime. And we as a nation are going to have to reconcile to it and live through the repercussions -- indeed the entire world will have to. Donald J. Trump will be our President for at least the next four years. Fifty or a hundred years or more from now this election will be distant history. We have no idea how the Trump presidency will turn out. We can only hope that it is a net positive for the great majority of Americans, who comprise a true melting pot of various people. History and results will judge the winner of this momentous election . . . and our descendants will judge us with the hindsight of decades or centuries regarding how we stood at this time and in this place."

But I also wrote in that same blog post: "They say that when a person actually assumes the awesome power and responsibility of the presidency of the United States it changes him. He has such power and responsibility that it alters his perspective and his deliberation before deciding on a course of action that will affect an entire nation. Our history is replete with examples of presidential evolution in office. For the greater good of this country we can only hope that Mr. Trump is transformed by the high office to which he will ascend and that he deliberates carefully and circumspectly as he moves forward!"  

Sadly, this was not the case with Donald Trump.  He did not evolve in office. Mr. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady to President Bill Clinton, U.S. Senator for New York, and Secretary of State under President Barack Obama (our first President of color).  Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with almost 3 million more votes than Mr. Trump, but she lost the Electoral College and thus narrowly missed becoming the first woman elected President. Donald Trump never held an elected or appointed office of government service, never served in  the military, and was a self-proclaimed, uber-successful businessman (despite multiple bankruptcies).  Prior to 2016 he was  known largely only for his television persona as host of a so-called reality show "The Apprentice" where he glaringly would proclaim "Your Fired!" to hapless contestants. 

On Election Day 2020 (November 3rd) when Mr. Trump ran for re-election against Joseph Biden, I wrote on this blog as follows:

"I voted for Joseph Biden. Contrary to the hope I expressed in my post dated January 9, 2016, Donald Trump has not evolved and grown in office these last four years.  He has been impeached and has continued his blustering, bullying, name calling and very un-presidential ways.  But more importantly he has led an administration of corruption, incompetence, and when it comes to the handling of the COVID pandemic (of which you will undoubtedly know more about the ultimate outcome than we do as I write this) he has failed at the paramount duty of a president -- to keep the country and its residents safe.  A litany of all the ways that I believe these descriptions of Mr. Trump's performance in office are so, would be too long to post here.  Your history books will have examined and judged the validity or deficiency of my beliefs; what matters for the purpose of this post is to tell you clearly that I voted against Donald Trump for what I believe to be the sake of you, my descendants, and for the sake of a continued healthy democracy in this country.

The next several hours of this Tuesday, November 3, 2020 will probably not give us a definitive result in the presidential election because the country is so divided on the question of whether or not Mr. Trump and his party deserve another four years in office that hundreds of lawsuits have been filed and threats have been made about contesting the results once they are in.  I sit right here, right now, refusing to believe that the American people writ large will ultimately look at the last four years and re-elect Mr. Trump and his party back into power.  I fervently hope that this proves to be true, but if not then you all will at least know where I stood and that I did what I could to prevent another four years under what I consider to be the most incompetent, self-absorbed, and self-promoting president in my life thus far."

Donald Trump lost his re-election attempt in 2020.  He lost the popular vote by over 7 million votes and Joseph Biden won 306 electoral votes to Mr. Trump's 232 electoral votes.  It was a solid defeat, but Donald Trump immediately began claiming the election had been "rigged" and "stolen" from him.  To this day he has never conceded that he lost the election in 2020.  Despite more than 60 lawsuits to try to prove his allegations, Mr. Trump continued his efforts to overcome the clear results of the election.  He and the party he created–the ReTrumplican party–have promoted the "Big Lie" about unproven fraud in the 2020 election ever since.  Donald Trump became the archetypical "sore loser" and worse.  He and the pusillanimous members of his cult-like Re-Trumplican party instigated and now excuse the January 6, 2021 assault of the U.S. Capitol in an effort to disrupt the peaceful transition of power. [See my blog post of January 8, 2021 Dear Descendants: The Events of January 6, 2021] It was an insurrection for which scores of people have been prosecuted. Mr. Trump now refers to the day as a "day of love" and refers to the insurrectionists who were convicted or pled guilty and were jailed as "hostages."  And yet, after all this, the effete vestiges of the so-called GOP (Grand Old Party) nominated Donald Trump to be their standard bearer again in the 2024 election for President of the United States!

The list of the unpresidential actions and repercussions of Donald Trump's behavior over the last four years is too long to enumerate here.  He stands now as a convicted felon awaiting sentencing.  He has proven himself to be an extremely flawed man who unabashedly spews lies like confetti at a some celebration and he divides the country at every opportunity. He has introduced a level of obscene language into the political discourse at levels never heard before.  He throws violent language and exhortations around freely with no regard to the havoc it wreaks. His juvenile name-calling is expected at every turn and he now refers to Democrats as "the enemy within"  and openly states he will seek to jail them if elected and use the "National Guard or military" if necessary.  He is a clear and present danger to the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, and the grand experiment that is American democracy. His own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, has stated that Donald Trump is "fascist to the core." He must not be elected to the presidency ever again. . . and yet it appears that two weeks from today there is a possibility he could once again become President of the Untied States. 

I want you, my descendants, to know that I have already participated in early voting.  After donating to her campaign and buying lawn signs to promote her election, I cast my vote for Kamala Harris to become the first woman President of the United States. The aftermath of another Trump presidency would be just too catastrophic to contemplate.  We stand on the cusp of the possible demise of the American democracy as we have known it if Donald Trump is elected again, but more importantly his election will show that America is not what it professes to the world to be.  

Who are we if we elect a man as flawed as Donald Trump to the most powerful position in our country and the world?  I hope that two weeks from today we never have to find that out!

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Copyright 2024, John D. Tew

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