(A News and Sentinel Op-Ed - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

Following the 2024 election results, I suspect a lot of News and Sentinel readers aren’t going to be surprised to hear from me, though they may be a bit surprised at how I begin my submission. The first thing on my mind when the fog cleared a couple of days after election night was how many mistakes the Democrats managed to make.

To begin with, President Biden should have bowed out of the race a lot sooner than he did and allowed for the party to have had an open primary where they could choose a candidate they could really get behind. Kamala Harris wasn’t all that popular when she ran in the 2020 race and exited early in the primary. A candidate the party had a substantial chance to choose undoubtedly would not have lost all battleground states to Trump who, as of this writing, has only garnered a little over 622,000 more votes nationwide than last time around. Harris, on the other hand, to date, has garnered over 10 million fewer votes than Biden did.

Aside from ever-present misogyny and racism, some other explanations for this include the Democrats (once again) tacking to the right by parading out Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and talking tough on immigration and going full Zionist by backing Israel’s genocidal campaign unequivocally with no end in sight. This nonsense never has worked and never will. The elusive so-called “centrist” or “moderate” voter is as mythical as Medusa. We’ve heard for years about these folks who are “socially liberal but fiscally conservative.” All that means is they might be OK with abortion access or gender-affirming care but not with union contracts, thriving wages, universal healthcare or well-funded and resourced public education. They’re no more likely to vote Democrat than the most extreme MAGA loyalist.

People talk about left-leaning (or ostensibly left-leaning) parties like the Democrats appealing to libertarian types to pull them from the Republicans to the only other truly electable choice of party. All being libertarian means, true to its Ayn Randian origins, is you’re fine with tyranny as long as it comes with a .com instead of a .gov website. These folks aren’t interested in what’s best for the working class or for anyone beyond them and theirs.

Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism and being anti-Zionist is not synonymous with being anti-Semitic. Continuing to fund and condone the atrocities the Netanyahu regime has committed for over 13 months isolated and ostracized Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian communities and those who stood in solidarity with them all over the country. It was a, if not the, major reason many of these over 10 million former Biden voters didn’t cast a vote for Kamala Harris, and it was entirely and easily avoidable.

Now for the part I imagine people saw coming. A great book that’s available at the Parkersburg and Wood County Public Library by author Steve Benen called “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past” sums all this up far more effectively than I can with op-ed word limits but, to put it as succinctly as possible, fascism is no longer fringe in the United States.

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” wrote George Orwell in 1984. “It was their final, most essential command.” To quote from Benen’s book, “Trump and his team welcomed, received, benefited from, and lied about Russian campaign assistance. Many key players from Trump’s inner circle were charged, prosecuted, and convicted. These conclusions were bolstered by multiple, bipartisan investigations, conducted across several years.”

This was early days before Trump was impeached the first time for withholding military assistance approved by Congress to an ally in need (Ukraine) as part of an illicit campaign extortion scheme; before he was impeached a second time for inciting an insurrectionist riot and attempted coup that has led to over 1,400 rioters charged, over 900 convicted, and constituted the worst attack on the seat of national government since 1814. 140 police were injured and five would end up dying, four by suicide, after the attack. The Confederate flag flew in the Capitol building, something not even achieved by the confederacy during the Civil War. Trump also faced felony counts for this insurrection, part of what were initially 91 felony charges (reduced to 88) across four indictments. As we all know, he’s been convicted on 34 of these counts in New York, which now makes him the First Felon.

We also know that the remaining felony counts were for illegally taking and misusing classified documents and blatantly trying to undo the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia. All of this in addition to needing to be bonded on half-a-billion dollars in sex abuse and fraud civil penalties, with the judge in the E. Jean Carroll case finding that there was ample evidence to call what Trump did to Ms. Carroll rape. Ms. Carroll was one of at least 26 women who have publicly accused Trump of either rape or forced groping without consent or appropriate behavior like deliberately walking in on nude pageant contestants, since the 1970s.

The threats Trump poses now are gargantuan. The following are just a few examples: massive contributions to loss of global climate stability, possibly placing us irreversibly on the way to being unable to safely inhabit Earth; loss of protections for our air, water, soil, and public health; a federal government that reinvigorates the fight against reproductive healthcare, including not only abortion but contraception and even IVF; mass human rights abuses and economic calamity caused by mass deportation schemes and threats (and possible realization) of crippling tariffs, just for starters; loss of secular government, leading to losses of freedom both of and from religion.

There was no legitimate economic argument, real or perceived, to have reelected this criminal conman. His totally inept mishandling of a global pandemic should have been reason enough not ever to allow him near the Oval Office again. Instead, the propaganda machine worked exquisitely. Joseph Goebbels would be proud that his tactics, albeit modernized, live on. I’ve written this on Veterans Day. How sad that WII veterans’ sacrifices were ignored by almost 75 million voters here at home in 2024, despite the loud and clear warnings of distinguished service members like retired Generals Mark Milley and John Kelly.

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Eric Engle is a Parkersburg resident.