Our own ‘war’ is a fight for democracy. Too many Americans are on the wrong side | Opinion

If you ask me to name a great president and spotted me the T-R-U-M, I will immediately respond “Truman” — “P” would not be that fifth letter.

But here we are again, at the precipice of a new year that may very well rival 1968, if not 1860, for sheer tumultuousness. A person, whose every gathering is a mini-Nuremburg rally. A person for whom the quote “Great liars are also great magicians” was written.

How we got here is open to speculation. What is important is that we are here, and there is no getting away from it.

Jan. 20, 2025 will be the most important day in our nation’s history. I am declaring this more than a year out. Of course, the 2024 presidential election will be important just as it was in 2020. But Jan. 6, 2021 changed all that.

Election Day is not the most important date for this democracy; Inauguration Day is.

Going into the 2020 election, historically, there never were four re-elections in a row. The 2020 elections kept that record intact. Now, we are concerned with whether 2024 will be a repeat of 1892. Will Trump pull a Grover Cleveland? Cleveland was stronger than Trump during his first term, just as Benjamin Harrison, elected in 1889, was weaker than Joe Biden in his term.

What is the difference? Rabid foaming-from-the-mouth followers for one, who, incidentally have never made up the majority American voters. To be fair, extreme leanings on both sides are dangerous.

But this will all come to fruition in November 2024. What happens leading up to then may be most concerning.

Let me return to 1968. In late January, Tet shocked American beliefs. In February, Walter Cronkite told Americans the war in Vietnam was lost. In March, LBJ said he would not accept renomination.In April, Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis. In June, RFK was gunned down in California. The Soviet Union went into Czechoslovakia. The North Koreans seized our intellegence ship the USS Pueblo. Olympic medalists’ raised in protest on the podium. And in late December, Apollo 8 astronauts read from Genesis as the Earth is seen for the first time rising above the moon’s horizon, bringing hope for the new year, 1969 (which provided its own miracles with a moon landing and the Mets.)

We will need a miracle in 2024. The volume has been turned up to a deafening level. No one hears anyone else. Conversely, the orchestra is being led by a bandleader who waved the baton of sedition, insurrection and lies.

Now the possibility exists of allowing him back into the White House to finish the job. Regretfully, it has played out like Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Courage is lacking. Didn’t candidate Nikki Haley decline to say, until facing backlash, recently that slavery was a cause of the Civil War?

That’s leadership?

There may be a need for change — though that, too, is debatable — but not toward a person who doesn’t give a damn about our Constitution. We have been warned and still to many of us rush headlong toward authoritarianism.

Philosopher George Santayana has been quoted as saying: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Metaphorically speaking, “the dead” may be the democracy this nation has enjoyed since its inception.

The “war” is what is coming over the next 12½ months.