An Open Statement to South Carolina’s Nine Presidential Electors

 

Presented at the Democracy Spring and Electoral College Petition “Stop Trump / Defend Democracy” Event at the South Carolina State House on December 19, 2016

 

To the Esteemed Electoral College Members of the State of South Carolina:

 

—South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Matt Moore
—Brenda Bedenbaugh
—Bill Conley
—Moye Graham
—Terry Hardesty
—Glenn McCall
—Jerry Rovner
—Shery Lanford Smith
—Jim Ulmer

 

I address you with all due respect and formality, as you are presented with an extraordinary responsibility at a point in history that will be judged invariably for centuries to come. I am convinced that the Fate of our Republic rests in your individual and collective determination.

 

On December 19, should you select the name Donald Trump as our next President, everything you hold dear about the Institution of the United States of America, the generations-long desire by all concerned citizens to Perfect our Union, will, with certainty, come to a grinding halt.

 

A Trump Administration will plunge our nation into an abject decline—and will threaten centuries of effort to build and maintain Civilization. As a student of ancient and modern history, of this I am convinced—and it is why, since September 2015, I have been issuing statements in national publications about Donald Trump, as such:

 

Donald Trump is wholly despicable. Period. He is a Gordon Gekko, xenophobic barbarian who is hell-bent on destroying Civilization.

 

I felt no compulsion to issue such a statement during the two-term Administration of President George W. Bush, whom I consider to be the worst President in our national history.  Nor would I have felt compelled to make such statements should John McCain or Mitt Romney have prevailed in their Presidential bids.

 

Donald Trump began his campaign with attention-getting overtures of fear-mongering and racism.  What began perhaps as a dramaturgic, professional wrestling stunt has now morphed into Pandora’s Political Box, its lid ripped clean. The Joker is now the Juggernaut. While many are to blame, into your hands is placed the Republic’s final hope for a better way.

 

Citizen to citizen, this is my plea—a plea that is now a permanent part of your personal historical archive. Whatever your decision, my open statement will accompany it into the annals of history.

 

Here, finally, are words I published on December 9, 2015.  I beseech you to contemplate them on this most historic of days:

 

What is the point of reminding ourselves, time and again as we have for the past century, that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it—if we don’t actually act when that history unfolds right before our very eyes?

 

 

As for me:

 

I refuse allegiance to the Trump Administration,
And to the Plutocracy for which it stands;
One narcissist, under Mammon,
Unconscionable, with bigotry and fascism for all.

 

 

{Originally published on the website Forward Progressives on December 19, 2016. The website recently closed down without maintaining an archive.}

 

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