Cashier number four

“Cashier number four, please.”  I dutifully walked up to the designated register, ready to present and pay for my purchase. I exchanged greetings with the woman at the register as she rang up my items. As she worked, she looked up and said, “I’m just not sure if I can vote in this election.” Nonplussed, I paused, then took a breath and responded, “I don’t know which way you lean politically, but it’s really important that you vote. You have to vote, you just have to. It matters. Your vote matters.” This brief exchange was unsolicited, unexpected, and worrisome. As November 5 approaches, this is not the time to shillyshally. We all have an invaluable opportunity, and, for the moment, an inalienable right and obligation to take a stand, to make our voices heard, to vote. The former president and his MAGA machine, with fear as their co-pilot, are clearly signaling their intent to chip away at our Constitutional rights and freedoms.  They are on the ground in all states, trying to disallow votes, to cheat, to intimidate, lawsuit after lawsuit. In Pennsylvania, they are targeting voting rules for overseas (our military!) voters. In Montgomery County, they are suing election officials over voting machines. Elections officials are being threatened.  All to suppress our vote. And then there are Trump’s own words. Listen.  In July, he told Christian rally attendees that if they vote for him, “in four years you won’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”  On October 13, Trump called left wing dissenters the “enemy within.” “We have some very bad people…radical left lunatics. And it should be easily handled by…the National Guard, or, if really necessary, the military.” In Erie, PA, describing an imaginary crime spree in Pennsylvania, Trump said crime would be solved “if you had one really violent day, one rough hour, and I mean real rough.”  And in 2022, Trump, alluding to his claim of a stolen election in 2020, said, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”  The time for apathy and indecision is over. Listen to what Trump is saying. No more elections. Military roundup of political opposition. Real rough violence.  Suspend the Constitution. Listen!  Trump is not in jest. He is  deadly serious. The dismantling of democracy and the creation of an authoritarian fascist regime in his own image is his goal. This is not the time to dither, to sit on your hands.  To cashier number four: Please. Remember what I said. You gotta vote. November 5. It’s a date.

Donald McTrump, go away!

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