Are This Year’s Electoral College Electors in Mor(t)al Danger?

Here’s something I don’t see anyone talking about, unless I’ve missed it:

 

Are the folks who comprise this year’s Electoral College in danger and, if so, is it moral danger or mortal danger?

 

I ask this because I know for a fact that I’d be real nervous right now if I were among them…especially if I were one of them on the GOP side.

 

The only way that Donald Trump won’t end up as the next President of the United States is if the members of the Electoral College vote to install Hillary Clinton in the post instead.

 

Yeah, I know. I sense the widespread booing and hissing that this statement causes on both sides of the aisle. Sad but true.

 

But love her or hate her (I am in neither camp), Clinton won the popular vote by more than three million votes.

 

She’s the most qualified. (Trump isn’t even remotely qualified and he has proven that from day one and continues to prove it with every tweet he sends out, every post he fills with old, white racist, sexist, xenophobic, anti-environmental miscreants, and every intelligence briefing he misses. Trump has never held public office, served in the military, or shown a capacity to give a rat’s ass about anything or anybody other than whatever it is that serves his best interests.)

 

Clinton is by far the least reactionary and more measured of the two.

 

Trump’s choices for his administration are scaring the bejeezus out of most thoughtful people.

 

And it seems now that Russia attained its goals by helping get Trump and his minions into power…someone beholden to them. As you’ve no doubt read (but perhaps ignored “because Hillary’s emails”) some of Trump’s confederates are heavily invested in Russia. People in the know say he is. too. And since he didn’t release his tax returns, you and I (not privy to what intelligence agencies have on him) can’t do more than speculate on what he’s hiding (and on what they’re hiding) as to who he’s beholden to.

 

Here’s the problem for this year’s electors, as I see it…

 

If the Electoral College goes moral and decides to support the most capable and proven candidate for President—given the stark choice between the candidates and the consequences of installing racist, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic (and more) Trump and his minions–but votes in insufficient numbers to ensure that the position goes to Clinton so that the final decision goes to Congress, Trump will still triumph, leaving them in history books as having failed their ultimate responsibility: to protect the nation from its worst political impulses. (Congress is held by the GOP–after January 20th by a bunch!–and the powers that be there want Trump or Pence or Ryan or one of the other far right ideological folks who are in line to ascend if Trump gets trounced on December 19th when the Electoral College votes.)

 

But if the Electoral College decides to do the moral thing (a stretch of the imagination but not entirely impossible, I suppose), will the Electors responsible for changing their votes be offering themselves up for mortal reactions–that is, will the electors find themselves being physically targeted by far right crazies?

 

Progressive crazies almost never go after people with guns; it’s the far right folks who go off the deep end. Need proof?

 

Which politicians have been assassinated, or nearly assassinated, for political reasons (Reagan’s attempted assassination was attempted by a love-struck crazy and Ford’s attempted assassination by some of Charlie Manson followers) in the last sixty years?

 

Whose organizations have been bombed?

 

Whose doctors have been murdered under the guise of “the sanctity of human life”?

 

BINGO! Liberals, Progressives and Democrats like JFK, RFK, ML King (a definite progressive but not a Democrat), Harvey Milk,  Gabby Giffords, and others…

 

The powers-that-be (on both sides) appear very afraid of liberals and progressives…afraid enough to want to snuff them out and deny them nominations (Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison).

 

The folks who comprise the Electoral College don’t have Secret Service members protecting their lives.

(I hesitate pointing this out… someone might use it to further their fascist ideological agendas.)

 

Any of today’s electors must be shaking in their boots if they’re seriously pondering the potential fallout of voting their tender mercies instead of along party lines.

 

After all, Trump apparently sees no difference between taking out terrorists and taking out their families; surely, his most ardent supporters will see no  line between taking out fickle electors (and their families) in retaliation for changing their minds based on recent discoveries and evidence that a Trump administration would throw a monkey wrench into the solar plexus of this Great American Experiment for the foreseeable future (Supreme Court nominations, environmental rape, hate crimes, more prisons for more people of color and political and journalistic “enemies”, etc.) (I base these threats on Trump’s own proclamations and appointments, not fanciful speculation.)

 

As much as I want the members of the Electoral College to seriously consider the consequences of toeing the party line on December 19th, I consider the possibility of defections remote at best for one reason and one reason alone: there are very few people willing to risk being assassinated, or having their families murdered, for the sake of their country. Only progressives seem willing to risk “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” in the furtherance of basic American ideals for all Americans, not only for the 1%. The rest are ruled by fear.

 

The decision to give the office of President to the person best suited for it (of the two who prevailed as candidates in 2016) would rile up a lot of people.

 

Better to risk the future of the nation than one’s own future, right? That’s the spirit!

 

(Not the spirit of 1776, of course. The spirit of fear and loathing.)

 

Welcome to the 21st century, where fear is the only thing we have to fear if we want a nation that honors our children and grandchildren and our planet for the next hundred years.

 

I am in pain for our nation and our world. I see no way out of this dilemma unless the people who stand between Trump and the office of the Presidency of the United States put on their big boys’ britches and their big girls’ panties and do what’s right.

 

Fat chance of that, I’m afraid…