Opinion

Poor Elijah: The tyranny within us

By Peter Berger
By Peter Berger

What do Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the mayor of Wichita, and Dr. Fauci have in common?

The improbable answer, or what should be improbable in the United States, is they’ve all been the target of credible death threats because they disagree with Donald Trump about the virus. The threats have been unapologetically encouraged and even instigated by the President of the United States.

Displaying his customary lack of both remorse and concern for others, America’s President denounces Dr. Fauci as a “disaster” and an “idiot” because he won’t pretend we’re “rounding the corner” on a virus that by Thanksgiving will have killed a quarter-million Americans.

Referring to Governor Whitmer, Donald Trump returned to the theme of his incendiary tweet to “liberate Michigan,” marching orders that helped initiate the conspiracy to kidnap and execute her. His supporters answered his rally incitement to “get your governor to open up your state” by chanting, “Lock her up.” The President of the United States smiled and concurred, “Lock them all up.”

The “all” he wants arrested includes Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, plus a CNN reporter for failing to identify Joe Biden as a “criminal” based on Russian disinformation fed to Rudy Giuliani by an agent of Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin is the President of Russia. He poisons his political opponents.

Donald Trump is the President of the United States. He just orders the attorney general to find a reason to lock his opponents up.

Putin holds elections that guarantee to elect him.

Trump only wishes he could.

Instead he spreads the lie that the only way he can lose is if Joe Biden rigs the election. All the while Donald Trump deploys the courts, the post office, toadying sycophants, and intimidation at the polls to rig it himself.

He is the first President to refuse to promise a peaceful transfer of power.

He is the consummate liar.

He is the fake news.

He mocks the disabled.

He winks at Nazis marching with torches.

He gleefully orders American soldiers against American citizens.

He is ignorant and unconcerned about his ignorance.

He seizes powers but shirks responsibilities

He demands personal loyalty but betrays our allies.

He touts law and order but is himself a lawbreaker.

He charges others with corruption but is himself the most corrupt.

He assaults the First Amendment free press and is himself the enemy of the people.

We have spent the last four years treading lies. Arch-liar Adolf Hitler explained his theory of lying in Mein Kampf. Hitler recognized that most decent, ordinary people tell small, commonplace lies, which equips them to spot small lies when other people tell them. Most decent, ordinary people, however, are easy prey to “colossal untruths” because they simply can’t “believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” In short, the secret to persuasive lying is to tell outrageous lies shamelessly and often. The most important big lie is that the other guy’s the liar.

I’m not saying Trump is Hitler, though some likenesses, besides lying, are striking. Both men believe themselves infallible. Both are ruled by delusions of grandeur and haunted by paranoia. Both turn “the other” into the enemy. Trump has even adopted a fist pump salute. In 1945 Hitler declared that the German people, having lost the war, “deserved to perish.” In 2016 Donald Trump announced he “will never, ever forgive” the American people if he loses.

I don’t believe all Trump supporters are racists. I know too many decent people who voted for him. But when I watch Trump rallies, the resemblance to the adoring mobs in old Nuremberg newsreels is striking, too. Many of those men and women were simply looking for a better life and a greater Germany. Sadly for them and for the world, they didn’t know the worthlessness of their Leader’s promises or how the newsreel would end.

Long ago Mr. Lincoln predicted the rise of an American tyrant. He warned us our greatest danger wouldn’t come from a foreign enemy but from within, that there would spring up among us some man “possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition,” whose own “distinction will be his paramount object.” This man would “strike the blow and overturn” our republic, the government by the people that has stood as “the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom throughout the world.”

Mr. Lincoln prophetically exhorted us that when that tyrant comes, “it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.” Mr. Lincoln reminded us that “gratitude to our fathers,” “justice to ourselves,” and “duty to our posterity” require that we thus defend our republic.

He teaches us, now as then, that we can fall only if we fail to oppose this tyranny within us. He likens that failure to national “suicide.”

If Donald Trump prevails, our children will lose the nation we have known.

Joe Biden is a decent man, competent, experienced, and compassionate. But when I mark my ballot, I won’t just be voting for him. That’s because Donald Trump isn’t just running against Joe Biden.

He’s running against George Washington.

He’s running against Adams, and Jefferson, and Madison.

He’s running against Mr. Lincoln.

I’ll be voting for them, too.

Who will you be voting for?

Peter Berger has taught English and history for 30 years. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.

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