Open Letter re US 2020 Presidential Elections

 

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Dear Fam­i­ly and Friends,

Thank you for check­ing on us dur­ing this post-elec­tion time in the US. I know that you and the rest of world are watch­ing with con­ster­na­tion, won­der­ing how on earth the US has end­ed up this way.

We are phys­i­cal­ly fine but I must admit that even though Biden is lead­ing, I feel dis­turbed about sev­er­al things.

First is the real­iza­tion that one-half of this coun­try sees the world and thinks very dif­fer­ent­ly from me. Sim­ply put, I can­not under­stand how the elec­tion results should be 50–50 Trump-Biden, giv­en the hor­rors Trump has done in the past four years. I see a Mar­cos or a Hitler in Trump, but appar­ent­ly 50 per­cent of this coun­try sees a sav­ior in him.

The oth­er thing that per­turbs me is how Trump et al are alleg­ing elec­tion fraud when in fact, it was Trump and his admin­is­tra­tion who did every­thing they could to sup­press votes.

For instance, his man, Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Louie DeJoy, bla­tant­ly set about destroy­ing sort­ing machines, remov­ing mail box­es, and insti­tut­ing changes in the postal sys­tem with the goal of slow­ing down the deliv­ery of elec­tion bal­lots, know­ing full-well that a pan­dem­ic is rag­ing and many would avoid in-per­son vot­ing but rather mail their bal­lots. DeJoy also defied Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court order requir­ing postal inspec­tors to make sure mail bal­lots were sent on time.

When vot­ers start­ed using the offi­cial drop-box­es instead of the USPS, then the Trump admin­is­tra­tion attacked that as well. Obsta­cles were cre­at­ed to pre­vent vot­ers from cast­ing their votes. Repub­li­cans put up fake bal­lot drop­box­es for instance. There was a case of a fire in an offi­cial drop­box.  The drop­box­es had to be pro­tect­ed; vot­ers some­times wait­ed near a drop­box they used to insure the bal­lots were picked up properly.

From get go, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has been try­ing to sup­press votes. There has been vot­er intim­i­da­tion as well, with car­a­vans of his sup­port­ers block­ing Biden ral­lies or voters.

Despite the fact that numer­ous Repub­li­cans endorse Biden, cit­ing how dan­ger­ous Trump is, half this coun­try still look up to him.

There are many oth­er dis­turb­ing things that have occurred. Trump’s incom­pe­tent han­dling of Covid is a major mat­ter of course. He has tried to sup­press cor­rect infor­ma­tion about Covid cas­es and deaths. He has attacked Fau­ci and oth­er sci­en­tists. He has politi­cized the use of face mask. He has maligned doc­tors say­ing they inflate the num­ber of Covid cas­es for finan­cial gain.

He made changes in the admin­is­tra­tion of Voice of Amer­i­ca so that it’s now Trump-ran and is Voice of Trump at this point. He issued a new exec­u­tive order that would strip civ­il ser­vice pro­tec­tions from career fed­er­al work­force and mak­ing them vul­ner­a­ble to being fired at will.

The shenani­gans of Trump and his admin­is­tra­tion are end­less and the goal seems to be to install him as a dic­ta­tor just like Mar­cos, except the leader of the US is more pow­er­ful and poten­tial­ly more dan­ger­ous who affects the whole world. Trump has destroyed alliances with Euro lead­ers, while cozy­ing up to autocrats.

And let’s not for­get that he won in 2016 because of Russ­ian help, and that he is very cozy to Putin, invit­ing numer­ous Rus­sians to his inau­gu­ra­tion, meet­ing Russ­ian offi­cers in the Oval Office, meet­ing with Putin with­out Amer­i­can inter­preters, talk­ing to Putin on the phone, and so on.

We – more than 50 per­cent of this coun­try – saw these and more and we vot­ed. We strate­gi­cal­ly planned to secure our votes, by vot­ing ear­ly, by using the offi­cial bal­lot drop­box­es if we felt the USPS was going to be unre­li­able. Amer­i­cans in oth­er coun­tries mailed in their bal­lots. Many of us tracked our bal­lots to insure these were received. In short, we used the only pow­er we have left to speak our voice about the direc­tion and lead­er­ship of this coun­try by voting.

Those votes are pre­cious. Amer­i­ca holds those bal­lots sacred. The right to vote is sacred.

When Trump and his fol­low­ers scream, “Stop count­ing votes” — this is an attack on Democ­ra­cy itself.

He and his fol­low­ers are like “grass cut down which will with­er” (to quote Psalms 37:2), but the noise they make is like the gnash­ing of teeth. How­ev­er, do not be alarmed by their law­suits and intim­i­da­tions. The demo­c­ra­t­ic process is unfold­ing. It will take time but Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca will tri­umph. Putin’s pup­pet Don­ald Trump will be ousted.

There is anoth­er thing that both­ers me though, and that is the fact that a sys­tem that sup­ports auto­crat­ic rule has been set up by the Repub­li­cans pri­mar­i­ly and wel­comed by 50 per­cent of this coun­try. I ask myself, if not Trump, who next will they support?

Please con­tin­ue to pray for this country.

Cecil­ia

Tags: ##election2020 #vote­blue #vote­tosavedemoc­ra­cy