With just a little more than two months to go until the 2020 election, things feel more like 2016 with each day that passes.
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Herd mentality has set in, leading to outsized confidence that we will resoundingly knock Trump out of office with the election.
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Even as violence currently spreads on our streets, no one can imagine how Trump’s sinister agenda and gross incompetence could lead to anything other than a decisive defeat, presumably followed by a smooth transition of power.
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People hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see.
This failure of imagination happens as everyone has lulled themselves into denial over the threat posed by a deeply divided country.
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As people cheered on Biden's Democratic National Convention speech as the best speech of his career (a claim that seems biased by the fact that it was also the most publicized speech of his career), they forgot that much of the country remains in a different camp.
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Because of the divisions in our country, the following appears to be the most likely outcome for 2020: we will have a heavily discredited election, and neither of two competing groups in the population will accept the results if they are not in their favor.
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In any society, having two large groups with entirely opposing viewpoints on the validity of an election—even if one is objectively right and the other is objectively wrong—is a dangerous setup.
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The 2000 Bush versus Gore election foreshadowed our predicament today.
Only, now, many more years of political disillusionment have accumulated, at the same time as we find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic and economic crisis, all layered on persistent racial injustice.
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Just as Trump had no bottom in 2016, he still has no bottom today—only that the bottom in 2020 is bound to be far worse than the bottom in 2016.
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Just as Trump exploited divisions in 2016, he will again exploit divisions today—only that this effort in 2016 was about winning the election, while the effort today is about retaining his grip on power, possibly indefinitely, and ruling with oppression.
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Few people can fathom these possibilities, and, as a result, we have not appropriately strategized for them.
But what will Trump’s bottom be today? Well, he has already directly told us of two lows he will go to.
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First, he will use a combination of tactics—including an attack on the Postal Service and the possible deployment of law enforcement officers to the polls—in an attempt to steal the election.
Second, and related, he will foment violence to remain in power and possibly even to start a civil war, as exemplified by his deployment of federal paramilitary forces to our cities and his campaign’s recruitment of the “Trump Army.”
Many of those in denial over the foregoing realities remain fixated on pursuing exclusively election-based strategies to defeat Trump—a problem that I have dissected in another thread.
Just as in 2016, when so many were in denial that Trump could win enough votes to achieve victory through the Electoral College, now they are in denial that Trump could employ any other means outside of the traditional electoral methods to hold on to power.
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All told, 2020's greatest challenge is no longer even about whether we have enough votes to defeat Trump; it appears likely that we do. Instead, the greatest challenge is about whether this majority of votes will matter in the face of Trump’s assault on our democracy.
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Thus far, widespread denialism among citizens appears to be playing directly in to Trump’s agenda.
“He’s just a reality TV star,” people say, adding, “He is too incompetent to pull off a coup.” Others proclaim, “He can’t do THAT—they would never allow him to go that far!”
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In the backs of their minds, many of these folks believe, “In any case, it won’t happen to me.”
The translation of all of this: our society is willing to risk everything, just when everything is at sake.
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But based on what concrete evidence should we expect Trump to be stopped now, by our traditional governing institutions?
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To date, Trump has proven plenty competent in destroying our institutions, separating children from their families and locking them up in cages, spreading racial hatred, teargassing protestors, dismantling the USPS, and deploying paramilitary officers, to name a few things.
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To outside observers, our country’s path is obvious. Suyi Davies Okungbowa (@IAmSuyiDavies) summarized it on June 7 using words better than I could ever find.
Admittedly, the assessment here is dark. But let me be clear: we still have time to change our trajectory and to turn the tide against Trump.
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If we spend the next several months engaged in mass peaceful protest—the ultimate solution throughout history in resisting oppression—we can change our fate, giving ourselves a second chance to rebuild our many broken systems.
U.S. society is collapsing. The social fabric is being torn apart. The political system is fracturing. The country is headed toward civil conflict.
Now, more than ever, we must come to terms with the multiple factors driving this implosion.
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The choice for our society is stark: a collective future, or a collective death.
Thus far, our failure to address the complex dynamics underpinning the country's collapse has amounted to choosing societal suicide.
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If we ever wish to reverse course, we must adopt a different approach — which, most fundamentally, means that we must first come to more fully understand the many causes of our social collapse.
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In public health, nothing is more sacrosanct to us than the trust of the populations we serve. That trust — so hard to gain, so easy to squander — underpins all of our efforts to eradicate disease.
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It makes the difference between well-being and illness, between life and death.
Our work is scientific. It is not political. It is not judgmental. Our only task is to stamp out disease wherever it may be.
We meet the people we serve where they are, however they come to us.
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That is why we should all be disturbed by this recent statement at a White House press briefing.
The statement — perhaps the most illustrative of many similar comments throughout our society — is antithetical to public health.
Over the past fifteen years plus, nuance and depth have vanished from our social discourse, and scientific evidence and rational thought have been displaced by video clips, soundbites, and one-line blips.
This trend has proven perilous.
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With each day that passes, the decay of our social and political conversation — the replacement of thoughtfulness with reactivity, of civility with disrespect — poses a greater threat to the continued existence of our society.
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Many people know this.
But even as the threat shows no signs of receding, few show any willingness to confront the cultural decay head-on — and to address our role as active participants in the process.
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Today, as we commemorate twenty-seven years since the horrifying acts of the Rwandan genocide, and as we continue the fight to both prevent and stop atrocity around the world, I would like to recount the heroism of Mbaye Diagne.
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A soldier in the Senegalese Army, Diagne served as an unarmed military observer in Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, first working under the Organization for African Unity and then under the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda.
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On this day in 1994, after Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her husband were murdered in their home at the start of the genocide, Diagne risked his life to rescue their five children, who remained in hiding.
As I wrap up my PhD dissertation—which centers on matters of governance, accountability, and health—I would like to share one woman’s story that has inspired much of my work.
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For some of my followers, the story might stretch the boundaries of the imagination.
But the common threads of humanity transcend all boundaries—and stories like this one have informed my work on everything from African healthcare systems to U.S. democratic restoration.
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The story takes place back in 2012, on the day that PHP, the health and human rights organization that I co-founded, was launching the Omukazi Namagara Program, its expanded maternal and neonatal health initiative in the Ankole Region of Uganda.