Fascism: Trump and Hillary

During the 2016 Presidential campaign, I knew the election of Donald Trump would be bad for this country, but I never really understood the long-term consequences.

During the 2016 Presidential campaign, I knew the election of Donald Trump would be bad for this country, but I never really understood the long-term consequences.

During the last 10 days of the election, Jim Comey decided in his infinite wisdom to call a press conference about, what else, Hillary Clinton’s infamous emails. He had already held a conference after reviewing the emails, stating that although it wasn’t the best decision, there would be no charges. When I compare the atrocities that Mr. Trump has inflicted on this country now, to Hillary using her personal email server for sensitive information, that was small potatoes–there is no real comparison. But on that fateful day, Mr. Comey, the grandstander that he was, jumped the gun and declared that he had found additional emails on her assistant’s laptop. I can remember how angry and betrayed I felt at the time and almost wrote her off–I actually considered not voting for her. But shortly afterwards, upon further investigation, he realized that those old emails that had already been discovered and were not new ones. He held yet another press conference to take back his false findings. Except guess what—the damage had already been done and almost nobody heard the retraction. All Trump supporters heard was that Hillary was crooked, as Trump referred to her. He always had and still has to create names for people and the Crooked Hillary moniker stuck.

Hillary was actually on target to win the election. The original Comey findings were far enough away and were fading from people’s memories especially since no charges were filed. He in essence gave a her a dressing down, but her campaign was gaining traction again. Then Comey put the final nail in the coffin and since most people never heard the retraction, they disregarded it and it made no difference.

I will never forgive Comey for single-handedly putting Trump in office. I realize that was not his intention at the time, and he was no fan of Trump, but his need for the limelight destroyed Hillary’s chances. That stupid and not thought-out decision to hold a press conference 10 days before Election Day was so consequential. If Trump had not won, democracy in his country would not be in the precarious state it is in now. If Hillary had won, Trump would not have been able to put three ultra-right wing conservative judges on the Supreme Court. These right-wing Justices have forever altered the landscape of this country by taking away rights that we thought were rock solid. By overturning Roe vs. Wade and the right to abortions, a constitutional right given to women almost 50 years ago, they opened up the flood gates for the removal of other rights we thought we had. What’s next—mark my words they will be gunning for removal of gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, and other’s. What about interracial marriage—I don’t think so because Clarence Thomas is married to a white woman. If overturning Roe was not bad enough, the intentional cruelty of not allowing any exceptions, is a low that I never thought SCOTUS would go to. What about rape, incest, life of the mother in danger—that is just off the table. With their ruling, it was all or nothing. The sad reality of this is if a 13 year old girl gets raped by a relative, she will be forced to carry that baby to term. She will have to either drop out of school, or go with a big belly and be subject to shame and ridicule. Her whole life will be forever ruined. This ruling is so damaging and dangerous to woman because abortions will not stop—they will just become more dangerous. We will now be returning to the days of DIY abortions with coat hangers, and strange concoctions taken to abort, or back-alley unsafe abortions which often result in sepsis.

This is just the beginning. This country has never been the same since Trump took office. Now there is book banning, and not being able to say the word “Gay” in schools. What’s next, book burning? Is this the United States or Nazi Germany? More and more rights are being rescinded by many states. I fear if the Democrats lose the House and Senate, we will lose our democracy. We are headed down the road to Fascism if we all don’t wake up and vote Democratic. But I fear we are too late and the pendulum is already swinging to the right and we may be at the point of no-return.