In the wake of the 2024 election results, I suspect many News and Sentinel readers won’t be surprised to hear from me, though they might be a little surprised at how I begin my submission. The first thing that crossed my mind when the fog cleared a few days after election night was how many mistakes the Democrats managed to make.

For starters, President Biden should have dropped out of the race much earlier than he did and allowed the party to have an open primary where they could choose a candidate they could really support. Kamala Harris wasn’t that popular when she ran in the 2020 race and dropped out early in the primary. A candidate that the party had a substantial chance of electing would certainly not have lost all the battleground states to Trump who, at the time of this writing, had garnered just over 622,000 votes in plus nationwide than last time. Harris, on the other hand, has so far garnered more than 10 million fewer votes than Biden.

Besides the ever-present misogyny and racism, some other explanations for this include the Democrats (again) veering to the right, doing Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and talking tough about immigration and going full Zionist, unequivocally supporting the genocidal campaign of Israel. the end in sight. This crap has never worked and never will. The so-called elusive “centrist” or “moderate” the elector is as mythical as Medusa. I have heard for years about these people who are “socially liberal but fiscally conservative”. All of which means they might be fine with access to abortion or gender-affirming care, but not with union contracts, booming wages, universal healthcare, or well-funded and resourced public education. They are no more likely to vote Democrat than the most fiercely loyal MAGA.

People talk about left-wing (or seemingly left-wing) parties like the Democrats appealing to libertarian types to pull them away from the Republicans in the only other truly electable party choice. Being a libertarian means, true to its Ayn Randian origins, that you’re okay with tyranny as long as it comes with a .com website instead of a .gov site. These people are not interested in what is best for the working class or anyone beyond themselves and theirs.

Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism and being anti-Zionist is not synonymous with being anti-Semitic. By continuing to fund and condone the atrocities the Netanyahu regime has perpetrated for over 13 months on isolated and ostracized Arab, Muslim and Palestinian communities and those who stood in solidarity with them across the country. It was a major reason, if not the biggest reason, many of these 10+ million former Biden voters didn’t vote for Kamala Harris, and it was completely and easily avoidable.

Now for the part I imagine people saw coming. A great book that is available at the Parkersburg and Wood County Public Library written by author Steve Benen “The Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and Republican War in the Recent Past” summarizes all of this much more effectively than I can with opinion word limits, but to put it as succinctly as possible, fascism is no longer marginal in the United States.

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” wrote George Orwell in 1984. “It was their final, most essential command.” To quote from Benen’s book, “Trump and his team welcomed, received, benefited from and lied about Russian campaign assistance. Many key players in Trump’s inner circle have been indicted, prosecuted and convicted. These conclusions were supported by multiple, bipartisan investigations conducted over several years.”

This was in the early days before Trump was first indicted for withholding congressionally approved military aid to an ally in need (Ukraine) as part of an illegal campaign extortion scheme; before being indicted a second time for inciting an insurrectionary riot and coup attempt, which led to the indictment of more than 1,400 rioters, more than 900 convictions and was the worst attack on the seat of the national government in 1814. 140 constables were wounded and five finished. until dying, four by suicide, after the attack. The Confederate flag flew in the Capitol building, something that was not even done by the confederacy during the Civil War. Trump also faced felony charges for this insurrection, part of what were originally 91 felony charges (reduced to 88) in four indictments. As we all know, he was convicted of 34 of these charges in New York, which now makes him a top criminal.

We also know that the number of remaining offenses were for the illegal taking and misuse of classified documents and the flagrant attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state of Georgia. All this, in addition to having to be bailed out for half a billion dollars in sex abuse and civil fraud penalties, with the judge in the case, E. Jean Carroll, finding that there was ample evidence to call what Trump did to Ms. Carroll rape. Ms. Carroll was one of at least 26 women who publicly accused Trump of either rape or forcible groping without consent or appropriate conduct, such as deliberately walking contestants in nude pageants, since the 1970s.

The threats that Trump is raising now are huge. The following are just a few examples: massive contributions to the loss of global climate stability, possibly placing us irreversibly on the road to being unable to live safely on Earth; loss of protection for our air, water, soil and public health; a federal government reinvigorating the fight against reproductive health care, including not only abortion, but contraception and even IVF; the mass human rights abuses and economic calamities caused by mass deportation schemes and the threats (and possible realization) of crippling tariffs, just for starters; the loss of secular government, leading to the loss of freedom both from and of religion.

There is no legitimate economic argument, real or perceived, to re-elect this criminal criminal. His totally inept handling of a global pandemic should have been reason enough to never let him near the Oval Office again. Instead, the propaganda machine worked tremendously. Joseph Goebbels would be proud that his tactics, albeit modernized, live on. I wrote this on Veterans Day. How sad that the sacrifices of WII veterans were ignored by nearly 75 million voters here at home in 2024, despite loud and clear warnings from distinguished service members like retired generals Mark Milley and John Kelly.

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Eric Engle is a Parkersburg resident.