Imagine this scenario for a moment: Donald Trump was reelected in 2020 and was running again in 2024 without even bothering to stage a debate in the Republican primaries. Students are protesting a genocide the Trump administration is abetting but the police are called in to break up the protests and arrest the students of the most prestigious of American schools. Showing his utter disregard for our nation’s educators, professors too are being arrested, and even female teachers are being thrown to the ground and handcuffed. For peacefully protesting!
The Democrats, outraged, bravely stand with the protestors. 73-year-old Elizabeth Warren, who is running for president in the Democratic Party, is among them. Instead of showing respect for those engaged in the constitutionally guaranteed right of peaceable assembly, disregarding the status Warren has as a legitimate presidential candidate, the police shove a bicycle in her face before arresting her, isolating her, and holding her for 7 hours.
Imagine turning on your TV and seeing all this violence and the utter contempt shown against women and educators and feeling absolutely helpless, because Trump’s government won’t listen to any of your concerns. Instead, they’ll attempt to censor you online and shut down any platform like TikTok that gives an audience to dissenting voices.
Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it? Sounds like The Handmaid’s Tale mixed with a bit of 1984. It’s pretty much what most people expected if Trump had been elected. It was what was being predicted if Joe Biden didn’t win the election. The only problem is it isn’t Trump who got elected but Biden, and it wasn’t Elizabeth Warren who got arrested but Dr. Jill Stein, the former and most likely the next Green party presidential candidate.
So no worries. After all, Dr. Jill Stein is just a spoiler candidate running in a party that will never get the votes required to beat Donald Trump. And we need to beat Donald Trump, because could you imagine what it would be like if he were to be elected for a second time? Why, he would be sending police to break up peaceful protests against genocide. There’d be cops shoving bicycles in the faces of political rivals and throwing respected female professors to the ground before zip-tying them. It’s almost unimaginable. But it’s TRUE! Trump would actually do stuff like that!
I’ll bet Trump would have his friends in the conservative media smear Dr. Jill Stein, too. They’d imply that she was doing the bidding of another nation that was out to destroy America. The Republican Party would be working to get Stein and the Green Party off the ballots of as many states as they could. And despite the fact that Dr. Stein is herself Jewish, I’d be willing to bet Trump and his cronies would accuse her of being an antisemite. It’s crazy, but MAGA has no shame and are not afraid of the big lie.
(Actual random comments online about Jill Stein)
Be careful people. We dodged a bullet in 2020, but all of this and more could happen if Donald Trump is reelected. He is a straight-up fascist, folks, and he cannot be allowed to hold power ever again. Because what could possibly be worse than arresting people protesting a genocide and tackling older women professors?
In 2024, vote like democracy is on the line. Because it is. Vote like you want to stop fascism, because fascism is on the rise. If nothing else, for Christ’s sake vote for a candidate willing to take a stand against genocide.