Making Our Votes Count for America

As the November 5 presidential election draws closer, reviewing our recent history, if only as a reminder, can give the perspective we need to cast our votes, not as Democrats or Republicans or belonging to Red, Blue, or Swing States, but as Americans.

In 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton to become the 45^th President of the United States, winning the Electoral College by 304 to 227, even though Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million.

In 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump to become the 46^th President of the United States, winning the Electoral College by 306 to 232 and the popular vote by almost 7 million. Trump refused to accept the verdict of the American people and incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021, by his armed supporters at the U.S. Capitol, a date which will live in infamy alongside Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941.

Four years on, and for the third time in a row, Donald Trump is running as the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States, this time against the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. We are reliving the old saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Antisemitism, Islamophobia, dehumanization of immigrants and conspiracy theories continue to fester in our country. To the more than 67 million viewers watching the Harris-Trump debate on September 10, the former president asserted the debunked claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets. At a news conference three days later, he threatened to enact the largest deportation of migrants in the nation’s history if elected. Mike DeWine, the Republican Governor of Ohio, said this about Haitians in his state: “Springfield is having a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation. Some of that is thanks to the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs. They are there legally. They are there to work.”

America has rarely been as polarized as it is on the eve of the 2024 election. Partisan politics is crippling us. We are grappling with the same foundational values of our nation such as democracy, the rule of law, checks and balances, and the peaceful transfer of power as during Trump’s presidency. Add to these other issues like reproductive freedom (supporting legal abortion despite the moral reservations some of us may have about it), climate change, affordable healthcare, housing and clean energy, gun control and artificial intelligence-generated misinformation, and we understand why the 2024 presidential election may be among the most consequential elections in living memory.

The contrast between the views of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on these and other issues couldn’t be starker, available online and in print to discerning Americans weighing who to vote for, especially the undecided and the callously indifferent among us. As Taylor Swift wrote in her Instagram message endorsing Kamala Harris to her fans, “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.”

The presidency is not only about policies and procedures or tariffs and trade but also about civility and morality, honesty and integrity, among other character codes. We will do well to remember and act on Ronald Reagan’s vision for America: “We shall be as a city upon a hill.” We will do well to remember Abraham Lincoln’s words from his first inaugural address in 1861 as a Civil War loomed: “We are not enemies but friends … touched by the better angels of our nature.”

Lincoln’s words did not prevent a Civil War from erupting and dragging on for four ruinous years, with a death toll of over 600,000 Americans, about 2% of the U.S. population then. While a modern-day Civil War may be far-fetched, attempts by anyone to overturn the 2024 election if the results are contrary to expectations by inciting another insurrection can cause an unbreachable and permanent rift among us that can dangerously weaken our Republic.

So, when we vote on November 5 or earlier by mail, not just as a right but as a sacred obligation, we must summon the courage and the wisdom to place joy over anger, humility over hubris, compassion over cruelty, law over anarchy, science over ideology, democracy over authoritarianism and most of all, country over party.

Memorial Day 2024: Our Duties and Responsibilities

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/25/opinion-memorial-day-the-gettysburg-address-and-the-november-2024-election/

Gettysburg Address offers special significance for Memorial Day

In this fateful election year, Abraham Lincoln’s words of courage and compassion can transcend political divisions

By HASAN ZILLUR RAHIM

May 26, 2024

On Memorial Day, we remember our fallen soldiers.

For several years I have visited California’s oldest secular cemetery, the Oak Hill Memorial Park in San Jose, every Memorial Day to silently express my gratitude to those who sacrificed their lives so we can bask in the sunshine of freedom and democracy.

Veterans and politicians make moving speeches and observe a minute of silence on this hallowed day as the U.S. flag flutters in the breeze, rustling the surrounding sycamore trees. Doves are released as symbols of unity and peace. Small flags line rows and rows of headstones of 14,000 veterans with names that connect the living to the dead: Joseph Milligan of Tennessee (World War I), Charles Harding of Colorado (World War II), Andrew Montello of California (Korea), and on and on.

This year, I will do something different. I will carry a copy of the address President Abraham Lincoln delivered at Gettysburg, Penn., on Nov. 19, 1863, and read it as I walk alongside the graves at Oak Hill. More than 160 years later, Lincoln’s timeless words speak to us with an urgency we must heed.

In particular, two topics demand our attention in this fateful election year. First, as much as we would like our democracy to be strong, it is, in reality, a fragile entity, as the Jan. 6 insurrection showed. Unless we are vigilant about safeguarding it, democracy can succumb to autocracy. Second, the most powerful tool to ensure the flourishing of democracy is to exercise our sacred right to vote. Ignoring or neglecting this right can open the gate to tyranny. Complacency is the enemy of democracy and good governance.

As Lincoln saw it, the Civil War tested the very survival of the nation “conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Slavery, the antithesis of equality, was the evil of his time, and until it was eliminated, even at the horrific cost of a North-South war, Lincoln knew America would not endure.

We may not have slavery today, but the challenges are as daunting. Despite making modest progress in race relations since Lincoln’s time, the undercurrent of racism in many facets of our lives continues to undermine America. And political division over issues such as reproductive freedom, affordable health care, an unfair tax code, gun violence, volatile borders and climate change also threaten the integrity of the Constitution and the survival of our nation.

I request my fellow Americans on this Memorial Day to conscientiously read the Gettysburg Address. It comprises just 272 words and took Lincoln only two minutes to deliver to the gathering of 15,000, yet it has the power to evoke the noble and the transcendent in each of us, a nation of almost 335 million.

The courage, compassion and vision inherent in the Gettysburg Address should persuade us not to think North or South, Blue or Red, coastal or inland, or working class or elite when we vote in the November election but instead, to think America.

As in Lincoln’s time, “the great task remaining before us” today is keeping our nation whole. We can do it by resolving that those who “gave the last full measure of devotion … shall not have died in vain.”

So while we enjoy the biryani and the barbecue on this Memorial Day, let us set aside some time to reflect on the Gettysburg Address so we can dedicate ourselves to the “unfinished work” that our fallen soldiers and veterans “have thus far so nobly advanced.”

Lincoln concluded his address with the hope that democracy “shall not perish from the earth.” While that remains our goal too, we must first ensure with our votes in November that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish” from these United States.

Hasan Zillur Rahim is a mathematics professor at San Jose City College.