Republican Sen. Mike Lee came right out and said it. “We’re not a democracy,” he tweeted. “Democracy isn’t the objective.” While President Donald Trump and his enablers have tried to gloss over their authoritarianism with empty words about freedom and patriotism, Sen. Lee spoke the ugly truth.
It is obvious from the countless attempts at voter suppression around the country that Republicans do not want majority-rule democracy. One ballot drop-off box per county in a state the size of Texas? That is not democracy. Not counting all the votes cast? Lee and Trump prefer it that way.
Divisions deliberately fostered over the last four years may never heal. If this had been a normal election, we could all accept the results and agree to disagree about things like tax policy when it was over. But as the president’s 20,000-plus lies and false statements have grown ever more rancid in the cesspools of social media and Fox News, healing is hard to imagine. The grifters, fraudsters, racists, and outright fascists who have come out of the woodwork will not likely be “assimilated” anytime soon. Trump’s enablers should neither be forgotten nor forgiven; and crimes, such as sabotaging the Postal Service, must be prosecuted.
It is also hard to imagine that the president will ever face justice for his corruption or his role in leaving Americans to die in the pandemic because the stock market or his poll numbers might have suffered if he had spared their lives by telling the truth and taken appropriate action. It is comprehensible to witness a single sociopath go off the rails, but it boggles the mind to see millions duped by a shameless conman, accepting countless lies as the gospel truth. Maybe his alleged tax fraud will be prosecuted.
David A. Sorensen
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Duluth
