It is important not to play with the potential outcome of this year’s American presidential election without recognizing how catastrophic it could be. If we think about it as a game, it loses its pertinence and weight; forgetting about its real-life implications becomes easy.
Some elections are perfectly fine to turn into a game. Our government likely would not be much different if Romney or McCain had been elected. If both candidates running for the presidency are principled and rational, the election likely has less gravitas than sensationalist commentators ascribe to it. Low-stakes elections are okay to have fun with.
This year’s is the highest-stakes election the US has faced in recent history.
American politics might disintegrate so much this year that we’ll long for the days when nastiness and polarization and gridlock were our main concerns, because America could turn into an autocracy if Donald Trump wins election this year.
This is not alarmism or sensationalism: Trump has said that he would be a dictator on his first day of office. Trump, who already believes he is above the law, can—and will—simply decide to violate the sacred oath of office on the same day he takes it. Donald Trump will be a dictator as soon as he formally ascends to the presidency.
From there, he’s laid out a policy agenda that involves curtailing transgender rights, firing government employees en masse, ending US involvement in both the Russo-Ukrainian War and NATO, and enacting political revenge on attorneys he disagrees with.
Trump has repeated incredibly derogatory remarks against immigrants; Mike Godwin, the creator of “Godwin’s Law,” has theorized he is “actively seeking to evoke” the parallelsbetween himself and Hitler.
Seventeen of Trump’s “best people”—that is, his former cabinet members—have expressed extreme concern about his fitness for office. These are not political outsiders, or people who could criticize Trump without suffering political repercussions.
Even still, they have called him a “consummate narcissist,” “a threat to democracy,” a “person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators,” someone who “repeatedly compromised our principles” and “has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.” These are people who at one point supported Trump, who worked more closely with him than virtually anyone else, and who have each decided individually the threat Trump poses to democracy is greater than their personal political careers because, as Jeffrey Goldberg put it, the “Republican Party has mortgaged itself to an antidemocratic demagogue, one who is completely devoid of decency.”
And it is more than possible that he wins again. At the time of this writing, polls show that Trump has a lead of 6% over Biden in a potential rehash of the 2020 election.
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I am not suggesting that the Democratic Party is a perfect, or even good, party. I am not suggesting that the Republican Party is an entirely fascist party. Donald Trump, however, has openly espoused autocratic views that he likely knows parallel Hitler’s rhetoric; if he ascends to the presidency again, America could—no hyperbole—lose its status as a democracy.
The prospect of voting for Joe Biden is disheartening for many reasons. He has botched America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan; there have been multiple controversies surrounding his son, Hunter; his stance on the Israel-Hamas War has flip-flopped. But if the only other candidate is a person who has broadcast—and is proud of—his desire to upend American democracy, it is our duty to vote for the candidate who, at the bare minimum, will uphold the Constitution and the oath of office.
It is not right to guess about the potential outcome of this upcoming election as if it is a game, because the fate of America as we know it hangs in the balance.
Never in hundreds of years has the American experiment been this close to dying. It is the civic duty of every voting American to keep it from withering altogether.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.