Even if Biden Wins-Trump Won’t Go Away

Trump is not the type of person who goes away. He will run again in 2024. Even if he does win and actual leaves the Whitehouse he’ll be on the campaign trail in 2024 run for Trumpism even if the republican nominee in 2024 repudiates Trump ideology, which at this point seems unlikely as potential 2020 republican nominees, who had been silent began backing unfound claims of voter fraud only 20 minutes after the President’s sons called for 2024 potential Republicans nominee’s to back the president’s unfound claims of fraud.

This is upsetting to write but it is important to remember and I assert it is a feature of a function democracy. Trump represents a minority I vehemently disagree with, but our society provides the avenue for him to campaign political as long as he wants. We won’t the protesting and engaged in politics. The danger is when they disengage from the process and burrow deeper into conspiracy theories like pizzagate, sharpie gate and Qannon. Democracy may be fragile, but it takes more than a sharpie to break it because we as society still count the pieces of paper even if the ink bleed through a little.

The system is still working. Despite the hypocrisy hearing them chant “count the votes” and “stop the count all at once” is music to my ears. It means we still believe the votes have power. That there is nothing more important than the number of votes. That means once it is all said and done when the republican secretaries of state certify the votes and the electoral college casts its votes that the voters will prevail.

Yes the process is messy and slow, but to paraphrase the Churchill quote democracy is the worst form of government in existence except for ever single other form of government there is.

The price of democracy is vigilance. It is a new system and it doesn’t work very well but it allows for campaigns with little to no bloodshed. We must remember that campaign had a military connotation until recently.

I used to live in Mozambique and every election was accompanied by the threat of violence. The opposition ran the general of side that lost the civil war, had committed atrocities and had been funded by apartheid South Africa until it fell. He lost every time and after he lost the was often a low intensity war in his home province for months or years. After the last election you could only travel on the high way through with a military convoy and they were routinely attacked. Still, he ran every four years until he died and a peace accord to a civil war that mostly ended in 1992 was only signed this year.

Still during the election itself the military campaign generally became a political.*

Trump will keep campaigning no matter what because that is what he is, if he does that does not mean democracy has failed and the nation has lost its soul. It just means the fight continues.

Trumpism was never going to end on November 3rd. Just like the structural problems that have made 2020 catastrophic won’t go away on January 1st.

Keep working, keep campaigning and keep writing.

Democracy is worth the frustration and continued struggle even when it fails to repudiate racism and racists. The alternatives are all much darker and much worse.

*Note this conflict is unrelated to fighting in Cabo Delgado, a province in the Northern part of the country, linked to Islamic State. The previous conflict was between socialist forces and a counter revolution backed by the white supremacy government in Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa.