Despite the volume of objections offered up here to your commentary, Josh, I must say that I appreciated your perspective immensely. My background, while certainly not as illustrious as yours, is similar. My graduate degree is in Adult Education, and I have a B.S. in Human Resource Management (School of Business and an A.A. in Public Relations Journalism (University of Connecticut-Storrs, and Austin Community College, Texas).
My initial reaction to the author’s analysis of Democrats vs Republican fans of Trump was disbelief. But from that I became annoyed and indignant — primarily because the assessment was far right of a liberal assessment of what the climate is in the USA today, and what the author expects will be happening in November.
My impression is the author assumes that we liberals are going to get our “richly deserved come-uppance” in November.
But what is more likely, and potentially dangerous, is the possibility of confrontational encounters that could mount to the level of a civil war, if we don’t all keep our heads and think before we shoot.
We have a president who does a lot more than stand before us daily lying his face off. He also foments rebellion and angry retaliation, and he does it deliberately. Donald Trump is not simply a bigot and a liar. He is an authoritarian with a grudge. Furthermore, because of his overweening Narcissism (which is a symptom of his self-righteousness, which I think is predicated on his childhood life experience with a father who bullied and humiliated him a regular basis) — and like most narcissistic personalities, he sees himself as the “King of America”. But Donald Trump cannot be satisfied with his temporary leadership role for just one term in office. He wants the title in perpetuity, if he can pull it off.
Authoritarian despots often have mentally disturbed personalities — they see themselves as above the law, and unapproachable. This country is facing the possibility of the dissolution of our democratic form of government. It CAN happen here…as it has happened in other countries over the history of human history.
This man MUST be removed from office in November. We don’t like to contemplate the overthrow of our president through impeachment because that invalidates our Democratic form of government. We prefer to follow the prescribed method for removing a man from the presidency — through the popular vote. That’s all well and good, but it is not particularly effective when dealing with a narcissistic tyrant who has no respect for the rule of law or the Constitution.
At the moment, we are all at an impasse, and we need to build the strength and momentum to deal with this man by discussing this problem in dialogue…discussions like this one…to deal with this lawless tyrant through the electoral system. We really MUST vote to remove him. And we cannot allow ourselves to throw insults at one another or make angry accusations that are not based on facts or clear awareness of what he has done, and what he intends to do if he is re-elected in November.
Our constitution needs to be re-evaluated and upgraded for our time. We are a long way from 1776, and it is high time we have a constitutional convention to update our democracy by updating constitution. But we will not be able to do that if we allow the despotic tyrant we now have in the White House to remain in control of all our houses of government and our military.
He must be removed. Furthermore, the necessity to remove him is not truly a partisan issue. Our democratic form of government is in jeopardy — Donald Trump is an authoritarian and he has a personality disorder. Tyrants often have some form of personality disorder. They do not relinquish their grip on a political state willingly. They must be removed through the united efforts of everyone who has a stake in keeping their freedom and their country united. We all need to stop arguing about the pros and cons of this necessity, and face this issue squarely.
In the same way that the early Americans were forced to declare their freedom from the control of the English monarchy, we must remove Donald Trump from the office of the presidency in November. It took a constitutional convention to establish the Declaration of Independence and the authorship of the Constitution. It took the bravery of George Washington to step up and take responsibility for seeing that through.
We are facing a presidential election in November, and that is the perfect moment for a new leader to step forward to take the reigns — and to initiate a constitutional convention that could serve as the means to update our constitution, articulate the new values and requirements of leadership for our nation, and remove Donald Trump from the seat of power which he covets in perpetuity.
In the meantime, we need to run this race with patience and not with hot heads.
