Is Our Democracy On The Cusp Of Doom?

What we have here 

is a failure to communicate. 

Where have we heard that before?  Our favorite newspapers, TV news shows, radio shows, and magazines usually gave us the straight scoop on things we needed to know.  Sure, they would turn the microphone over to a political wordsmith and the truth would get a little fuzzy, but nothing we couldn't absorb with a modicum of confidence.  We could always separate the wheat from the chaff on our own.

However, about four years ago, a liar of unimaginable tonnage came onto the scene.  He reinvented the art of spreading bullpoop that surpassed any John Deere Manure Spreader ever built. His final four-year tally of fact-checked lies was  30,573.

Most believe he was simply a "liar by design."  

It appears his end game was to turn the American people against  our national media.  His approach was to convince everyone that their only way to learn the truth was to hear it only from him.

If you are a follower of George Orwell's "1984" as I am, you will remember how Big Brother took over the minds of the masses with these words:

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.  It was their final, most essential command."

The past four years have closed the eyes and ears of the liar's supporters, but opened them for the rest of us.  His lies sank into their brains like a knife into hot butter.  For the rest of us, however, we tried to communicate to them that they were being duped, lied to, gas lighted, and victims of being run over by a bulldozer.  But, for more than four long years. they were swallowing the ungodly-tasting stuff by the mouthfuls.

We not only can't convince them they've been lied to, but we can't even communicate with them. 

Many scholars have said America is about as divided as we were in the 1860s.  President Abraham Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and have free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided." 

 

This was Lincoln's response to Sam Houston, who proclaimed, "A nation divided against itself cannot stand." 

While our problem is not "half slave and half free," I believe we have a problem that is critical to our survival.  We must bring the far-right movements in the Republican Party back to a place of rational and civilized thinking, or our democracy will be doomed. 

And what is most worrisome is that they appear to have made it their goal to drive our democracy into the dust bin of history.  For what? A new and untethered right-wing party from the dark side that will more likely resemble a cult than a political party?

That would certainly end any chance of communicating, because you'll never be able to communicate with a cult!