Moving beyond 45 is possible: Americans can do it

Iam appalled and I have to speak up. This is the most serious crisis to our Democracy of my lifetime, which spans close to 75 years.

We have an outgoing U.S. president actively promoting insurrection based on completely false claims, with zero evidence of voter fraud in a fair and honest election in which he, Donald Trump, lost by 7 million votes and 306-232 in the Electoral College. This is fact. Biden won. Trump lost. Period. Note the word “insurrection.”

This make-believe fairy tale that Trump won the election that is somehow believed by a whole lot of voters is an out and out attempt to deny the most basic tenet of our republic, which has served for our country for 244 years. That is our sacred right to vote.

Trump and his supporters are for all intents and purposes attempting insurrection against the government of the United States of America. This goes way beyond “sore loser.” This is treason and should be treated as such.

Each of the 126 members of Congress who have sided with this ludicrous insanity should be expelled from Congress and charged with treason, because that is exactly what it is.

I do not feel safe with them in our Congress, because they are, in effect, traitors who are attempting, at Trump’s command, to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

I will never feel safe again, as long as they are in office. Why are they doing this? So Trump can become dictator and “president for life.” (His words, not mine.) Or maybe, as some have suggested, they are simply terrified of Trump. So what are we to do? What can we do?

We have an aberrant president with a seemingly hypnotized base ready to march off into hell for their great leader. So again, what are we to do? If that isn’t enough, we are in the middle of a pandemic that has taken nearly 300,000 lives while Trump plays golf and writes tweets. We have to do something. At noon Jan. 20, Joe Biden will take the oath of office as the 46th president of the United States.

He then has all the powers vested to him. He is a good man. He will almost certainly know what to do. That seems like a very long time from now, with this treasonous would-be dictator still in power until that day and his nutty base running around making trouble.

It seems all we can do is wait and get an attorney general or Biden himself to get these cowardly congressmen headed out the door and charged with insurrection.

They should never be allowed to run for office again.

We all need to sit down and take a good, hard look at how all this came to pass. How this man, friend of autocrats and dictators, won over his large base. Are there really that many racists? I doubt this. White supremacists? I doubt this. Militia members? I hope not.

Surely this is the fringe, and most of you are decent people. I need to hear this, because I am afraid that we are headed for a very bad place. Tonight, as I write this, there is talk about breaking away from these United States and forming another union. Apparently there are people out there who are serious about this.

Part of me says, “Go ahead. I’m tired of your whining.” Maybe we would all be better off if this happened. My better angels have a different solution. Let’s stop and listen to each other. Americans have weathered through many difficulties, and if we really set our minds to it, we can overcome this and 45 will fade away into a dim memory.

Bo Brumble is a writer who lives in Santa Fe. His book, When Boxing Mattered, is soon to be published. He is a sometime artist, boxing writer and hopefully a good neighbor.