All across the country, businesses have boarded their shops in anticipation of civil unrest.
This is what Donald Trump has brought to America.
The handwriting is on the wall. If Trump successfully steals an election that, by all accounts, he’s going to lose by a wide margin, the country will explode. People are prepared to take to the streets in numbers that will make this summer’s George Floyd protests appear small by comparison.
And they’ll be right to do it.
The nation has been engulfed in what political analyst Steve Schmidt has called a “cold civil war,” for months. We have seen it play out in Michigan’s state capitol and in the streets of Portland, Ore., and Kenosha, Wis. We saw it over the weekend, when caravans of Trump supporters overwhelmed and shutdown freeways. We see it all over social media, as Trump and Biden factions vehemently argue with each other in cyberspace, supercharged by Russian trolls and bots.
There has already been record voter turnout, and history tells us that Democrats win when turnout is high. In response, Republicans have embarked on an all-out campaign to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as they possibly can, probably taking down a few of their own along the way as collateral damage.
But their efforts have backfired spectacularly.
In state after state, voters have waited in line for hours to cast their ballots. The GOP’s attempts to silence Americans’ voices has galvanized the electorate instead. By late last week, more people had voted in Texas -- despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s attempts to shut them down -- than in all of 2016. Hawaii, the state where Barack Obama grew up, has broken its all-time turnout record.
America is a democratic nation, a nation with a representative form of government, and we didn’t sign up for this rampant chaos and division. When the country installed a reality-show host as president, it did so because 46 percent of voters thought he would shake things up in Washington, not execute a hostile takeover of the entire federal government for the financial benefit of his friends and family.
Trump, himself, is preparing for the worst. He is installing new non-scalable fencing around the White House this week. His desperate attempt to cling to power and avoid likely prosecution has created a powderkeg in the capital city, where his unpopularity among the liberal-minded populace is at an all-time high.
Our nation’s future is at stake. All indications are Joe Biden will win in a landslide, provided this is a free-and-fair election. Due to Trump’s efforts to discredit the process, from sabotaging the post office to his false accusations of fraud, the result will not be seen as legitimate by some, no matter who wins. The difference is, only one side has been actively and aggressively trying to ensure an illegitimate result.
This country is on a knife’s edge. The peaceful transition of power has been a staple of this nation since George Washington stepped down after two terms in office and yielded to John Adams. Four years later, Adams became the first one-term president when he willingly stepped aside for Thomas Jefferson. That tradition has endured for more than two centuries.
And that tradition will not end this week. Going into election day, nearly 100 million Americans already have voted. A decisive majority of us are delivering a message to the president and all his complicit enablers and acolytes who have permitted this reprehensible man to run roughshod over our institutions and principles.
Donald Trump does not decide who runs this country. The American people do.
All attempts to subvert our verdict will be met with extreme defiance.