Thoughts on the Inauguration

In just a couple of hours, the United States will once again be governed by a grossly unqualified, deeply corrupt, easily manipulated conman who slid into the Oval Office on the votes of a minority of Americans for the second time in eight years and who has openly vowed to spend his time enriching his minions, cronies, lackeys, and slaves while using the powers of the federal government to persecute anyone who has ever crossed him – a group that will, given enough time, eventually include everyone.

It's going to be a long four years.

The Founding Fathers understood that republics were fragile things. Historically, they tended not to last very long for reasons that they saw as obvious. Republics have to meet very high requirements in order to survive, and in the end those requirements are not all that compatible with the whims and desires of the powerful.

Perhaps most importantly, they understood that a republic required leaders with virtue, which was defined very differently in the 18th century. We see virtue as a private moral quality today, often having to do with sexual matters though sometimes taken more broadly to mean a person’s individual ethics overall. This would have made no sense to the Founders, who saw virtue as a public quality. Virtue, to the Founders, was the ability of a man (always a man – there is a reason why “virtue” and “virile” are so similar) to rise above his petty, private interests and work for the common good of the whole. A proper leader was one who did what was best for the country, even at personal cost.

The paragon for this, of course, was George Washington. Washington was by no means a perfect person and there are legions of modern critics who delight in pointing this out, often at great length, but he was by the standards of the day virtuous. Twice in fifteen years he walked away from absolute power and returned to his home as a private citizen, and the United States owes him more than we could ever repay just for that precedent. He refused to enrich himself or his friends through his office, and the idea of using the powers of the federal government to persecute his enemies never occurred to him because he was neither contemptible nor petty.

We’ve come a long way since then.

Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump will come to office already disgraced by his actions and character, and he has promised to continue that trend during his regime. He plans a barrage of executive orders for his first day in office, a sign of someone who knows very well his agenda couldn’t survive even a Congress theoretically controlled by his own party and who has little if any use for Constitutional government anyway.

He is, as many of his own former administration members including high-ranking military officers were screaming at the American people to understand before the election, an outright Fascist who plans to rule as an absolute dictator. He has openly vowed to be the worst president this country has ever seen, and 49.8% of the 64% of American voters who bothered to cast their ballots in November will no doubt be cheering him on.

I will not.

I will do whatever is in my power as an American citizen and an American patriot to block his reign of terror. I fully expect that, given long enough in power, his administration will eventually turn its attention even to small fry like me and I will not survive that. Fascists do not tolerate dissent. Perhaps I will simply outlast him, though. Perhaps we may even win in the end, though nothing is guaranteed. But here I stand. I can do no other.

During World War II the United States of America gave medals to my ancestors for shooting Fascists, and I will not disgrace their memory by supporting it here at home now.