When I moved overseas and began reading international newspapers and talking with people it quickly dawned on me the degree of patriotic propaganda we are exposed to in the U.S. starting as a child. Someone said to me "once an expat always an expat". It's took me decades to fully understand that statement. Living overseas opens one's eyes. My grandson told me when the family moved to Shanghai, China in 2009, when he was 12 years old, and he started at the international school he quickly discovered we aren't as well thought of or as smart as we think we are. I was impressed while visiting with the diversity of children at their school when they invited me to read in a classroom. I was also impressed when traveling by train to other Chinese cities with the friendliness and polite behavior of the people and their affluence is very evident. After six years they moved to Germany for three then moved back to China. When he was 19 he said he didn't want to live in the United States. He doesn't.

A short time back a young guest writer for the Huffington Post told the story about her parents coming to America from Vietnam. She realizes there is so much racism and inequality in the United States. As she writes:
"My generation, however, is perhaps the first to see America in decline, crumbling right before our very eyes. More than a third of young adults in America believe there are better countries than the U.S. I'm one of them".  She says- "let's be honest, Trump is a symptom of the rot, not the rot itself". "I want to go somewhere where health care is considered a right, not a privilege, and where a gun isn't considered more valuable than a human life. Somewhere where my freedom isn't predicated on how much money I can funnel into the economy. Where true justice doesn't feel improbable, even impossible". "By leaving America, I'll hope I'll be able to continue that quintessential American pastime, which feels so impossible right now: to dream, and dream, and dream".

In many aspects she's correct, my son moved to France to finish his Industrial Arts education and married a French girl, then became a French citizen and when he became sick and died of Cancer his health care was a given. I visited the hospitals and doctors and contrary to what Americans believe much of the health care and doctors are just as good and in some cases better. My daughter had a much better doctor in Germany than she had in Florida.

I've had enough of the current political reality TV political S*** show. I'll take Democracy and freedom over dictatorship but dreams can turn to nightmare. My experiences are ones few people in America have witnessed or would comprehend and they by far outweigh opinions. I've always made a promise to myself not to compromise my values but at 80 I'm worried of being too old to leave. If things go wrong I'd want to sell my beautiful home in the foothills and move to another country. Done it before! But I'm afraid at my age looking for the sky under freedom might not be feasible if my health should decline. We've discussed me moving around for six months at a time to different countries. I never could have imagined being born and living my life in an essentially free country then ending up being trapped behind the wall of dictatorship. This is a tragic event in which another visionary foresaw. Plato distinguishes five forms of government: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. He writes that governments devolve respectively in this order from aristocracy into tyranny.

It seems Americans have become complacent and apathetic thinking all will be fine. Many in other countries over the ages have found themselves in the same predicament to their misfortune. Plato covered the downfall of Democracy extensively in his teachings. September 2020 - "For weeks, Belarusians have filled the streets of their cities to insist that their votes are sacred. Beatings, grenades, flash bangs, arrests, torture, and disappearances by the state have neither deterred them nor driven them to violence. Some commentators have said that the United States is not yet Belarus. This is true enough, though we are closer than seemed imaginable just a few years ago. The real question is whether Americans have what it takes to be Belarusians".

This was before the election.

So, here is something to think about. Let's say you are one of those with ideological or religious views. Are you willing to give up democracy for your short term gain? I think you are but anyway here are the options:

1. Listen to the demagogue and choose the path that leads us into dictatorship. This will NOT be a short term circumstance and will set the stage for the lives of you as well as your children and grandchildren. No turning back.

2. Choose a candidate you may not fully like but who'll at least resume some normalcy and protect democracy. He probably won't push through some of the policies you like or even those you don't like - that's democracy. After some legal changes are made to protect us from Trumps type of authoritarianism in the future you'll have a chance to vote for your favorite candidate next time. I hope you don't choose another Trump monster. At least there will be a next time. Our future depends on it. Please don't take things for granted. Oh yes, it really does happen.

November 2020 After the election.
Biden and Harris won the election. A battle was won but the war is probably lost. Trump had more votes than the 2016 election which means we still risk our democracy's collapse in four more years. We'll have to sit and watch as the American people tear down their own democracy in favor of autocracy. (dictatorship or authoritarianism for those of you with limited knowledge of the language).

"Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Christian nationalist response to the 2020 election is that we've seen this movie before. The “stolen election” meme won’t bring Mr. Trump back into the Oval Office. But then, the birther narrative never took President Barack Obama out of office, either. The point of conspiratorial narratives and apocalyptic rhetoric is to lay the groundwork for a politics of total obstruction, in preparation for the return of a “legitimate” ruler. The best guess is that religious authoritarianism of the next four years will look a lot like it did in the last four years. We ignore the political implications for our democracy at our peril."
Katherine Stewart is the author of "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism".

"In 2016, users of the term “fascism” (for Trump) were criticized as fear mongers. Four years later, those not using the term were seen as cowards and enablers. It is not to say that the Trump experience proves that US democracy is too strong to be toppled by a “strongman” – or any other type of “American exceptionalism” argument, which is usually steeped in national chauvinism and international ignorance". amen

"From an international perspective, though, Trump is just one more example of the many populists on the right who have risen to power around the world: Narendra Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, my home country (of the author). These people win elections but subvert democratic norms: by criminalizing dissent, suppressing or demonizing the media, harassing the opposition, and deploying extra-legal mechanisms whenever possible (Putin’s opponents have a penchant for meeting tragic accidents). Orbán proudly uses the phrase illiberal democracy to describe the populism practiced by these men; Trump has many similarities to them, both rhetorically and policy-wise".

Angela Merkel's faith in America was deeply shaken when Donald Trump won the US presidency in 2016. The German Chancellor who grew up behind the Iron Curtain was quicker than most to perceive his threat to the kind of US global leadership that has traditionally underwritten European security. (The same iron curtain I climbed on in 1978). Had Hillary Clinton won in 2016, Merkel may well have opted not to run for a fourth term. But she would not retire with Trump in the White House, seeing him as a peril to the West, its common values and security.

I also perceived the threat as soon as he began his campaign.

Washington Post Editorial Board
But the question “is not whether Mr. Trump has degraded the presidency,” it continued. “The question is how much long-term damage he has done. Will future presidents now feel free to use the pardon power — or the other vast powers of office — with such nakedly crooked motives? How many will calculate that they can make corruption appear to be patriotism as long as enough of the country wants to believe the lies they tell?”

The board, a frequent critic of the outgoing president, said that “at least for a couple more months” in Trump’s America “guilty is innocent; lies are truth; traitors are patriots.”

Alexander Kirshner and Claudio Lopez-Guerra
Democracies do not sprout spontaneously, like red poppies in a field. They are established by brave democrats: people who struggle, sometimes paying the ultimate price, against the forces of authoritarianism. This is how democracies survive, too. There is no such thing as the inevitability of democratic rule once it is in place. It has to be defended.

Joseph Goebbels famously said: "It will always be one of the best jokes of democracy that it gives its deadly enemies the means to destroy it." But Goebbels was wrong. Well-designed democracies need not turn the other cheek when confronted by aspiring autocrats.

Trump has clearly attempted to subvert the democratic process. He appointed a postmaster general who made it harder for voters to mail in their ballots on time. But his most egregious actions have followed election day, once it was clear that he had lost. Though there has never been any evidence of substantial electoral fraud, he explicitly pushed election officials to subvert the outcome in various states where the race was close. This was an unmistakable, illegitimate effort to stay in power regardless of the election’s result. That he failed does not mean he should be allowed to seek the presidency again.

This article includes some quotes from several authors. These are highlighted with quotes or credit is given with their name.

Some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters intimidated voters at the polls. Heeding calls to “stand by” and “go into the polls and watch very carefully,” they deployed, sometimes armed, in Black and brown communities under the guise of ensuring no fraudulent votes were cast.

In the run-up to Election Day, Mr. Trump dispatched an army of litigants to enlist the courts in curtailing access to the polls. Since the election, his legal team has tried repeatedly to halt ballot counting and toss out legitimately cast votes that most likely favored Mr. Biden.
Susan E. Rice- former national security adviser.

Trump tried his best to rig the election. When losing he figured it had to be rigged. How else could he have lost his rigged election.