Commentary: Time is ticking – forty-eight days and counting – So many try to cloak it, but a piece of truth about America will be revealed on Election Day

By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,

The Summer has been roaring by it seems, and in just forty-eight days the General Election will be upon us. Not as much a prediction as it was a passing comment in a discussion with one of my brothers last year, I shared my suspicion that Trump would implode prior to the election – doing himself in with his antics, criminality and lies. An implosion, however, is one thing. If he regains the reins of power and then explodes with his war of retribution, our democracy could be doomed – that’s quite another thing.
Despite his personal criminal convictions, two of his corporations found guilty of tax fraud, his personal liability for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, two impeachments (dealings with Ukraine and incitement of insurrection), and never ceasing bald-faced lies about the 2020 election results which sidelined him – many polls claim he is statistically tied with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The margins are thin and whenever that happens, a certain segment of our society dusts off the old playbook – Jim Crow 2.0 kind of stuff – rules, restrictions, new requirements, inventing boogeymen, pushing fear and intimidation – as they seek to control the outcome of the vote – control the voice of the people. Nothing is more anti-democratic, but for too many in America today, it’s no longer about democracy – it’s about power parlayed through culture-wars, grievance and racism.
The primary driver is something that is rarely discussed in our mainstream media: In 1960, this country’s population was 88.6% white, per the Census. Sixty years later, in 2020, the white population had dropped to 57.8% – a nearly 31% decline. White conservatives and Trump’s MAGA cult – two different groups despite some cross-over – surely don’t like that, just as they didn’t like having a Black president. They want things how they want things.
For those that have read Project 2025, it is painfully obvious that superiority – with all its attendant whitewashing, is the aim. The browning of America be damned, “this is our country,” is their true creed.
The outrage of so many Americans after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of white law enforcement – oodles of them white – manifested in marches and protests and demonstration across the country focused on racism, policing and civil rights. The Atlantic said, “In the weeks following Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death in Minneapolis, the country saw an astonishing shift in public opinion. The number of Americans saying that Black people face serious discrimination, holding unfavorable views of the police, and supporting the Black Lives Matter movement spiked in the weeks after his murder. But since that peak, views have tempered somewhat, with support settling below the highs of that summer.” Social empathy certainly, lasting reform – not so much.
Yet there was something that can make us feel better about the upcoming election and preserving our democracy. According to www.fivethirtyeight.com in 2022 the highest Congressional approval rating was 23%. Think that over – these are the folks that the American people are choosing to represent us. They passed S.4573, the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 (ECRA). The bill reformed the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and amended the Presidential Transition Act of 1963. The measure passed the House 225-201 and the Senate 68-29. In the briefest of summary – “closing some loopholes and resolving ambiguities that the Trump campaign tried to exploit in 2020,” per The Brennan Center for Justice.
If only that settled things in terms of fairness, equity and the voice of the people. Would that have been asking too much in a democracy? According to www.thehill.com in 2022, “since 2020, 19 states have created 33 new laws to make voting more difficult,” and you already know we are on that list. They claim that New Hampshire, Mississippi and Arkansas are now the three most difficult states to vote in. All kinds of things are going on, especially in conservative-led states, to gum-up the voting works – moronic things like Mississippi Senate Bill 2358 last year – you can’t keep a straight face – Act to Prohibit Ballot Harvesting. Yet there is no evidence of ballot harvesting, whatsoever.
A very recent example, per the Atlantic on August 26, 2024, “the Republican National Committee has launched a new legal attack on the rules that govern federal elections. Supported by 24 states, the RNC is seeking, on an emergency basis, a Supreme Court ruling that the United States Congress lacks the constitutional authority to regulate presidential elections – congressional elections, yes, but not elections held to select presidents. The author of the article, Bob Bauer – former White House counsel to President Obama – says, “Even if the Supreme Court rejects this plea, the GOP will advance its cause of sowing doubt in the electoral process all the same.”
“In 2023, 14 states approved 17 voting laws, according to the progressive nonprofit the Brennan Center for Justice, that will be in effect for the 2024 general election, making it “harder for eligible Americans to register, stay on the voter rolls or vote as compared to existing state law,” per www.Forbes.com on April 5, 2024. Yet in the same article they state, “twenty-three states enacted 53 laws to expand voter access last year.”
And so here we are, forty-eight days and counting. Forty-eight days until a critical barometer of the truth about America is revealed. It sure seems like a time for divine spiritual intervention. Last Sunday the Farish Street Baptist Church choir, under the eminently talented Jerry Smith, sang “Leaning On The Everlasting Arms.” Sure sounds like a very good plan!