As another Halloween approaches, our secularist culture is more and more removed from the annual October 31st Christian religious observance of a “Hallowed Evening;” a Hallowed Evening in anticipation of the next day’s Festival of All Saints.
What remains for most of our modern-day observance of Halloween is a time of horror versions of nightmares on various Elm Streets. As if the real-life nightmares of gun violence, war, and great division in our world are not enough, Halloween has become a time of slasher movies and advertised entertainment venues of haunted things.
But be that as it may, all those examples of how we observe – mostly in good fun and happy diversion – a contemporary trick or treat Halloween, there is a very real haunting spirit among us as a nation in these October pre-election days. The terror of its presence cannot be minimized. Rather, it must be recognized and exorcised.
The Republican Party has been possessed by MAGA Extremism. So many Americans are so captured by its visible warlocks that they have been blinded to the very real horror show that will result should the MAGA witches brew policy be voted into power over us.
It is so very frightening that our immanent presidential election is assessed as “close.” It is a terror that as the people of one nation under God we have become divisible over the very principles that have made us and make us a Republic of Free People.
Many of our citizenry under the spell of the Trump/Vance candidacy are pledging their votes in support of electing those candidates to the most powerful offices in our land. But beyond the enthrallment of personality, is there really support by Trump/Vance voters for the dismantling of our country?
Do thoughtful Trump/Vance supporters actually want to elect MAGA Christian Nationalists who believe they are elected not to represent constituencies but rather to rule over them? Would Trump/Vance supporters actually endorse eliminating the first Amendment of the Constitution in an effort to define The United States of America as a Christian Nation? As a people of many faiths and perhaps no faith would Trump/Vance supporters actually encourage the distribution of Christian Bibles in public school classrooms as Republican State School Superintendent Ryan Walters has mandated for Oklahoma public schools?
Can reasonable people who support Trump/Vance also support using the United States Armed Forces as a domestic police force rounding up immigrant people living in our country? Can reasonable Americans supporting Trump/Vance support the elimination of Social Security, Medicare, and The Affordable Care Act? How many Trump/Vance supporters are themselves supported as a result of these programs? What if a winning Trump/Vance ticket means also getting a tag along gremlin, Vivek Ramaswamy, working for such outcomes?
Absent the spell of Trump/Vance personality enthrallment, would reasonable people cheer on the elimination of the Department of Education, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, and FEMA? Absent the spell of Trump/Vance personality enthrallment, would reasonable people go along with the curtailment of funding for vaccine research and development by the National Institutes of Health?
Absent the spell of Trump/Vance personality enthrallment, do thoughtful Republicans think that the federal judiciary should be directed by a president, feeling aggrieved and abused, to carry out prosecutions of that president’s political opponents?
I am frightened by the spell of Trump/Vance personality enthrallment. It is a spell which is placing a mask of acceptability over the face of a gravely flawed and unfit to lead person. The very real horrific consequence is that otherwise thoughtful minds are rendered unable to recognize the danger of Trump who, if elected, will initiate the ruin of the representative republic of our democracy as enshrined in The Constitution of The United States of America.
A Happy Halloween would be if this spell is broken before November.