Next Tuesday, November 5 is Election Day!
I have voted in every primary and general election since I turned 19. I’ve voted for Republicans and Democrats. I’ve been registered as a Republican or a Democrat at different times in my life. There have been elections where I’ve been delighted with the outcome and elections where I’ve been seriously disappointed. For others I’ve been unenthusiastic. But I have always voted.
For more than five years I served first as a Minority Inspector and then as a Judge of Election. I wrote myself in for Minority Inspector because at the time I was concerned about how elections actually worked. This was back when Pennsylvania had the old mechanical machines that didn’t produce a paper record. But it only took one primary election’s training and experience for me to realize that there were so many safeguards built into the system that it would be impossible for a candidate to rig an election, especially a national candidate. When Pennsylvania switched to electronic voting machines, I was even more sure that it was not possible to rig elections. Most people aren’t aware of this, but just in Pennsylvania alone, each of the 67 counties can choose its own election system from a group of 17 approved voting systems. That would mean that to hack the vote in Pennsylvania alone would require a candidate to know how to hack 17 different systems and then somehow acquire access to the appropriate system in each of the 67 counties. Now multiply that complexity by 50 different states. Ain’t happenin’.
Why do I mention all this? Because I think I have enough experience and expertise to say without hyperbole that this is the most consequential election of my 70+ years of life.
We are faced with a choice between a decent, well-educated, experienced woman who has served four years as our Vice President and a completely self-involved horror of a man who is a convicted felon and was named the worst president in American history in a survey of major American historians. Kamala Harris believes in the rule of law, the value of each individual American and the founding principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The other candidate believes in nothing except his own right to steal as much money as possible from this country while creating as much division and degradation as possible. Not to mention his clearly deteriorating mental state.
There’s really not much of a choice here. Whether you are Republican, Democrat or Independent, I suspect that most of my readers believe in the principles of democracy and don’t want to see them subverted or completely destroyed. And so I urge all of you, if you haven’t voted already, to vote next Tuesday for Kamala Harris.
But she can’t stop this all by herself. She’ll need help from a Senate and a House composed of decent, honest people who haven’t been bending the knee to a would-be authoritarian. Remember that on January 6, 2021, 8 senators and 137 representatives voted to overturn the results of a free and fair election. None of them should be returned to Congress. While some senators will not be up for election this year, all the representatives will and we need to make sure that none of them come back. These are members of a Congress that, once the Republicans took control in January 2023, have accomplished virtually nothing of value for this country since then.
As many Republicans with integrity have pointed out in the last month or so, it is not necessary to agree with Kamala Harris on every policy. In fact, one of the values of a functioning democracy is the ability of citizens of good intent to propose and debate a wide variety of solutions to the issues that face our country. But the opportunity to debate is not available to those who live in a dictatorship. There is only one solution and that’s the solution of the dictator, generally the one that puts the most money in his pocket. And his yes-men (and they’ll be almost exclusively men) will not dare to disagree. As for your ideas and proposals? They’ll never be heard. Or, in the words of the Republican nominee, “so what?”
But wait, some of you might say, that will never happen. You’re getting worked up over nothing. He didn’t do that before. First, I would disagree that he did not do that before. There was a gigantic amount of corruption during the previous term along with two impeachments.
Second, and the main reason I chose to write this blog, is that in our own little part of the world here in Lower Saucon Township, we have seen all of this disgusting MAGA behavior over the past several years.
Do you remember what it was like when the previous Council held power? Do you remember how your opportunity to share your views was severely curtailed, limited to just a 3-minute period prior to any discussion of agenda items so that you had to guess what they were planning on doing and hope that your comments were on point? Or wait till after the agenda and have 3 minutes to bring up all of the issues that were sidestepped during the Council meeting? Do you remember how many of our community’s preferences were ignored? The library? The pool? The compost center? Remember how our community’s preference not to expand the dump was run roughshod over it? No matter how many people showed up at the meetings? Remember how your money was wasted on legal fees for frivolous lawsuits to push through those items that we didn’t want?
How did it feel to be ignored, belittled, shouted down? Remember how hard we all worked to band together to make sure that that group lost its majority? Remember how we all celebrated in January at the installation of the new Council?
Unfortunately, because of the term structure of the Council, we could not vote out all of the previous majority and the two that were left quickly made it clear that they were more interested in obstruction than in working on behalf of the community.
So now we live with name-calling, insults, obstructionism, defamation, lies, disinformation. We have 4, 5, 6, 7-hour council meetings or more. They have their own little group of claquers who waste our time with inane and uninformed comments on every agenda item. [If you don’t know what a claquer is, it’s a French term that originated in the 1830s. They were people who were paid by theater owners or concert producers to attend shows and cheer and shout loudly to indicate support or opposition for the production or concert. Since they were generally ignorant people, they were given directions on when to cheer or boo at certain times in the evening. If you’ve been to or watched any council meetings this year, you know who these people are.]. All of this behavior is designed to disgust normal citizens who are concerned about our township, resulting in many no longer attending council meetings.
Doesn’t all of this behavior sound remarkably like what we’ve witnessed from MAGA? Insults, lies, name-calling, wearing the general population down in the hope that they’ll stop coming or objecting to this behavior? The question I get asked most often by LST residents is “why do they act like that?” The answer, of course, is that they can. When presented with the opportunity to agree to civil, polite behavior in council meetings, they refused. They seem to think that there are sufficient LST residents who approve of this behavior that they will not pay a price for it. We’ll see.
So if self-involved lowlifes can behave like this at the township level and create so much damage and obstructionism, imagine what can happen at the national level, especially when supported by narcissistic oligarchs and billionaires. The growth of this country will grind to a halt. And the principles of democracy will be obliterated. That’s why it’s critical that those 137 representatives and as many of those senators as are up for re-election lose their seats.
Next Tuesday the choice is ours. Do we want a country led forward by new leadership, following the Constitution and the rule of law and returning our public discourse to civility and respect for our fellow citizens? Or do we want obstructionism and narcissism and corruption writ large under a convicted felon and his billionaire cronies? Is that what you think the Founding Fathers had in mind? Is that what you want for your children, as apparently at least one of our obstructionists does since he’s gotten his son chosen as a junior councilperson? Wouldn’t you be embarrassed to have your children or grandchildren see you behave this way? Is this how we want future generations to lead our country? Just exactly which totalitarian country has a better lifestyle than we do? The answer is: none.
Next Tuesday, please vote and please choose wisely to preserve the longest democracy in history.
A Personal Note
Saucon Shenanigans has been on hiatus since mid-May. I have been dealing with some increasingly more difficult health problems that culminated with surgery right before Labor Day. While I’m recovering well from the surgery, my surgeon suggested that the best way to guarantee a positive outcome was to maintain a positive attitude. As any of you know who have watched Lower Saucon Township council meetings this year, that is not the place to go in order to have a positive outlook on life. So for my own mental and physical health, I have stepped back from Saucon Shenanigans. It’s only because of the importance of this general election that I’ve decided to produce this one issue.
However, I fully intend to be back in peak form by the beginning of 2025. That will be a year for local elections, including for the two positions on the council held by the two obstructionists. November 2025 will be the first chance to turn them out of office. I’m looking forward to keeping you informed on all the shenanigans that I’m sure will be on full display in the upcoming year. Until then…