A Virtual Church

Pedal to the metal

August 29, 2024

These last few weeks before the most consequential election in my lifetime are our last opportunity to decide what kind of country, what flavor of leadership, and who we are going to trust going forward. The pursuit of a “more perfect union,” where rule of law and peaceful transfer of power, drive us toward our shared values of character, truth, and justice. Will we succumb to the lure of authoritarianism, or maintain our Declaration of Independence dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans?
 
A world view of rising authoritarianism reveals how life is under the autocrat. Maduro in Venezuela lost his election by a 70-30 margin. Yet his refusal to leave office is creating chaos in his country. He claims the election was rigged. Talk about a sore loser! 
 
Viktor Orban, who quashed democracy in Hungary, holds faux elections, just like Putin. He loves to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Peas in pods like to hang together. 
 
Josh Rubin, in a recent Washington Post article, reported the story of Saudi American journalist, Saad Ibrahim Almadi’s arrest in 2022, for posting dissent of Mohammed bin Salmon on social media. Almadi, age 72, was sentenced to 16 years in a Saudi prison. He will likely spend the rest of his life there. Autocrats can’t handle “a whiff of dissent.” Ask Alexey Navalny about that. Oh…wait. Putin had him killed.
 
MSB, the charming, handsome, young Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, acting as de facto ruler, has shown that behind that façade of advocating for modernization in his country, there is a streak of cruelty that runs through his heart. We all remember the story of Jamal Khasoggi, the Washington Post journalist who, on a trip to finalize a divorce in Turkey, was murdered in the Consulate in Istanbul, dis-membered and thrown away in an old suitcase. His murder happened on October 10, 2018.
 
Our president did very little at the time to address this horrible wrong. In fact, this scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours game resulted in almost no reprimand, instead a $2 Billion funding of Trump son-in law Kushner’s private equity fund as soon as Trump left the White House. Kushner defended Khasoggi’s murder, calling MSB a “visionary leader.”
 
I have only mentioned bit players on the autocrat stage. There is not enough time to cover Putin in Russia, or Xi Jinping in China. Punishment of critics and silencing of a free press seem to be at the top of the autocrat playlist. Civil rights, women’s rights, free elections, rights of minority groups are always under attack. 
 
There has been a simmering pot of fascism just under the surface of American culture since the 1930s, and perhaps earlier. Every twenty years or so the anger boils through. Senator Joe McCarthy was the face of it in the 1950s. It is rooted in fear, racism, and antisemitism. 
 
We remember the Charlottsville marchers in the “Unite the Right Rally,” August 11 and 12, 2017. We saw white men marching, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” Neo-confederates, Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups, the Ku Klux Clan and other white supremacists, along with home militia groups marched with torches of fire and flames of hate. The president said, “There were good people on both sides.” That’s like saying the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021 were on a routine Capitol tour. 
 
I don’t know what world you live in, but people who run down others with automobiles and batter the police with flagpoles are not “good people.” And don’t tell me it was ANTIFA. I saw this stuff with my own eyes. 
 
Donald Trump has already said he will jail his opponents, silence the press, except his propaganda network, deport as many immigrants as he can, and shut down anyone who criticizes him. He is not just a danger to the US; I think he is a danger to the whole world order. 
 
Sadly, Project 2025 will not be squashed, even if Trump loses. It will just be put on a shelf for the next wanna-be autocrat. The 43% of Americans pulling for the overthrow of democracy will work to grow their ranks until the day when democracy does fall. Then they will find out what a dictatorship actually looks like. 
 
The idiom “pedal to the metal” means to move at top speed. We need urgency in spreading the word that this election is of life-threatening importance. We need to elect a democratic president and vice president. We need to bolster our congress, Senate and House of Representatives, our state Governors, Councils of State and Legislatures with democratic leaders. We need pedal to the metal legislation to slow the autocrat train. We need pedal to the medal congressional action to slow an out-of-control Supreme Court. 
 
I like taking things slow most of the time. But in this case, time is short. Rev it up. Let’s get’er done. 
 
Lib Campbell is a retired Methodist pastor, retreat leader, columnist and host of the blogsite www.avirtualchurch.com. She can be contacted at libcam05@gmail.com