No Matter What Lies Ahead, I Maintain Hope

I am extremely anxious, but I have hope and I keep remembering we have been here before. We’ve had Eugene Talmadge here in Georgia. He was a fascist and racist. We had Father Coughlin. We had Gerald L.K. Smith. We had Charles Lindbergh. We had Joseph McCarthy. We’ve had . . . Our generation, going back to Kennedy, has not had this form of existential crisis that we have endured these past few years and face right now. Yes, the path has led to this. We look to McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, and others for the foundations, but this year, as we did in 2020, face an existential moment where we, as individuals and a collective, must answer this question, “What future do we want for our nation? A future that includes everyone, or a future that rules with an iron, fascist fist?”

I have said it countless times over the last few years that we’re seeing fascism and that this election is really about what we want for our country and the future of this nation for our children. Over the years, I have heard countless individuals say, “If I was alive in Nazi Germany or Europe during World War II I would have resisted. I would have fought.” Well, history tells us that these narratives of resistance were not as wide-spread as we’d like to believe and that most people fell in line. They “obeyed” in advance, when the Nazis telegraphed their plans, to protect themselves. Timothy Snyder’s first…