Democracy on the Edge on this Freedom Holiday

Freed woman statue in Austin, Texas, image by Jennifer Rangubphai, from Wikimedia Commons.

On the eve of the relaunch of the Trump presidential horror show, I’m worried.

Polls, which have caused him to rail against not just CNN, but also Fox News, are showing that President Trump’s campaign has struck the iceberg and is fast taking on water. Maybe Trump can suck down some of his GOP cronies with him.

But it’s June. Polls now don’t mean much. If we’ve seen anything in this bizarre year of 2020, it’s that reality shifts rapidly in these turbulent times.

Paging Julie Nolte her videos in which the Canadian comic explains the pandemic to her past self:

So, Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists, independents, sane Republicans: Don’t let your guard down. This is the orange monster who lost the popular vote by millions in 2016 and still got the ticket to attempt and fail to lead the Free World. He could do it again, if his enemies are divided and complacent--and division and voter suppression are his strategies.

And wounded Trump is clearly dangerous Trump. As racial unrest has roiled the nation, Trump has played divider rather than any kind of unifying figure. For example, he set a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Juneteenth. Public pressure forced him to change to June 20, and he acted like he is the Marco Polo of holidays, bringing Juneteenth to the light of day when one of his Secret Service agents explained it to him.

It was news to the president that his own White House has released a Juneteenth statement every year. I encountered the holiday as a young reporter in Missouri in the early 1980s, and it was a deficit of my white Iowa education that I had not heard of it before—but at least I’m not so naïve that I need it explained to me more than a generation later.

Then again, Trump has repeatedly shown that, whatever happens on Tuesday, he won’t remember it on Thursday even if there is a video.

And once again, the monster-in-chief is hogging the media oxygen at a time when too many of us can’t breathe. Whether it’s due to official violence or a respiratory pandemic, the breath of life is in too short of a supply. Truth is being constantly chocked by nonsense and violence.

I worry. Wounded Trump has issued not very veiled threats of violence against protestors in Tulsa on the eve of his rally. He has celebrated a holiday of emancipation by disrespecting attempts to petition for redress of grievances. Let freedom ring?

Meanwhile, big issues still face us. The virus has not gone away, nor will it magically disappear. Global warming, despite a massive economic downturn that reduces pollution, hasn’t become a problem of the past. Racial injustice is a tough reality for us to figure out how to equitably fix. The world economy faces challenges that it would be difficult for an intelligent leader to face, let alone one who both knows next to nothing and is convinced his is the best brain in the room. (Donald, no, just no).

Masks, which are a key to slowing the spread of a new, potentially deadly disease, are politicized. Clumsy fake videos that seek to discredit CNN are tweeted by our Dear Leader. The Supreme Court has the gall to read the law and attempt to apply it, which causes nuclear Don to go to DEFCON Rage.

A friend of mine posted recently on Facebook one of those anti-media memes. I don’t recall the picture, but the text was “when did the Media become our enemy?”

They never did, but we’ve learned to easily label the news media as an it rather than a them, and to think of “it” as a singular, enemy force for writing or covering things we don’t like.

The media became our enemy when we decided that it was too hard to face hard truths. And we have a lot of hard truths that badly need facetime. We’re being led down multiple paths of disaster.

So here is my Juneteenth wish. May this holiday, that celebrates the news of freedom reaching the edges of the failed Confederacy not be too overshadowed by the insane rejection of reality that threatens to shackle our democracy once again. Let freedom be free. And the price of freedom is not just bought by soldiers who die in our wars, but also in the work of citizens who pay attention, discern facts, face hard truths and then vote.