“But what can I do?”

            “All you can.”

            Fatalism is turpitude, not fortitude. War enlists everyone, not just soldiers. Pacificism is treachery when the enemy’s swarming.

            I’m chaffing myself here, not you. You may be doing all you can to save America from Trump, in which case, hat’s off. I’m not. I yammer plenty. I risk boring you by repeating (for me a capital offense). We send modest contributions to candidates. I inveigh, gasp, growl, howl, roll my eyes, grind my teeth, congratulating myself for my vehemence. But am I – face it – doing all I can? If I truly believed my fiery rhetoric, wouldn’t I be doing more?

            America is waking to the threat of Trump. Each day more folks with brains are gulping “oh shit!” and vowing to resist. Polls induce heebie-jeebies, showing Trump outpacing Biden. Few companionable conversations are Trump-free. We accept war as metaphor, but not fact: a likeness, not a likelihood. We can’t believe this is happening, we say – and say – and say. But what am I doing?

            We humans are clever at denying the distasteful. We huddle in the subjunctive: the world might be coming to an end, then again it might not. We don rose-colored glasses and bolster ourselves with bromides: “It may not be so bad…” We proliferate excuses for inaction – tomorrow we’ll get cracking – or maybe the day after.

            I do not believe Trump will be reelected. I believe this November 5 the Republican Party will be drubbed, ushering in a new – brief – progressive era when we can repair various defects in our body politic.

            Color me hopeful. Only hope, the saying goes, “makes a good breakfast but a bad supper.” My excuses for inaction abound. I’m busy writing. We’re retired. Aren’t we doing more than most? I’m only one guy, etc. I will not be to blame, I insist – but so? If we lose democracy, blaming won’t bring it back.

            The problem is not just America’s. Twenty years ago, 46 percent of the world’s people lived in countries deemed “free.” Today that number is 20 percent. Democrats turn autocrats turn dictators – in Hungary, Turkey, China, the list lengthens. Trump promises to be a “dictator from Day One” (just kidding – can’t you take a joke?). Everywhere – not just here – freedom’s on the ropes.

            The threat is dire. What can we do? A few suggestions.

·      Know a Trump voter? Either bend their ears with facts or cut them if they won’t listen.

·      Contribute to candidates – till it hurts.

·      Keep yammering – till friends clap their ears.

·      Excoriate, exclude, risk relations: anyone not for us is against us.

·      Do NOT buy a gun or fantasize about escaping to New Zealand. If America doesn’t fix ourselves, the free world will be in a fix.

·      Do NOT relax into the embrace of hope.

Americans of my generation are unaccustomed to sacrifice. Our span, 1951-to-present, has been a period of prosperity and peace. Our wars have been minor and evitable, our downturns potholes on the highway to success. Bad things happened but fewer, in hindsight, than the historical norm. We came to believe in our luck, never dreading our national survival.

Trump is our first existential threat – and we’ve been slow to rouse. “It can’t happen here” almost guarantees that it will. Overconfidence loses ballgames and empires.

            “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Edmund Burke is supposed to have said. He didn’t, but whoever did, right on. We’ve less than ten months to forestall democracy’s demise – what can you and I do to save ourselves?

            All we can.