159 Years Ago Lincoln Saved America

“…On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it — all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war — seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came” -Abraham Lincoln, 1865.

Second Inaugural Address. Abraham Lincoln. 1865.

As polls close in the first of the states on this election day, you cannot help but think that the more things change in America, the more they stay the same. An election overshadowed by the impending Civil War due to social upheaval could be said to sum up both 1860 and 2020. 159 years ago a newly elected President Lincoln entered office as a man. Four years later, when he spoke these words during his second inaugural address, he was something else entirely. Lincoln held together this “most glorious experiment” called America through its most perilous time, both politically and existentially. He sacrificed himself for it and did not gripe or shift blame; he simply persisted with such strength of will that he became far more than just a man. Far more than just a President. Lincoln, in his conviction in the belief that the principles America was founded upon transcended all else. That is both our greatest strength as a nation when it is taught and fostered; it is also our hemlock. This holds as true today as it did then. What happens when that shift occurs?

Election night may turn to days, possibly even weeks. Will America endure? As it has endured; or will it finally be so scorned and vilified it has no choice but to acquiesce. Not to the “better angels of our nature” as Lincoln asked; but to this darkness that leads through fascism, fear, terror, and oppression to snuff out the fire that has been the American Spirit for 244 years by corrupting the lens through which our national spirit and values are viewed?

There are two answers to that question, as binary in their values as 0 and 1.

A vote for President Trump is a vote for America. It is a vote to remember and revere the memory of every single American who has come before that gave their lives to preserve those better angels of America’s nature. Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

A vote for Biden is a vote for a systemic shift from partisanship to full-fledged fascism. For the President’s whole first term they used political mechanisms and turned them into open, flagrant political weapons simply because they didn’t like him, didn’t feel like he deserved it. They used the FBI as their personal Gestapo and used the House of Representatives to convene their kangaroo court to issue Articles of Impeachment. In March of 2020, it culminated with the introduction of a terror, a viral terror that they had a vehicle to ride all the way to revolution: a bitter and embarrassing media; that has ultimately become complicit in the greatest heist in American History, they hijacked the American Spirit. Turned it into a humanitarian crime of generational proportions; they stoked the flames of racism and called on the base of their disenfranchised flock to riot and create unrest.

All as a common tool, a simple screw in the Democratic tool belt. Why? To what end? To try and make this election not about who is best suited to keep America on the rise after years of the planned dormancy of American influence that was the goose-step marching orders of the Obama administration. They may or may not succeed in what could become something that could not have even been conceived in Lincoln’s worst nightmare: Americans being ashamed and full of disdain for being American.

We shall see. Interesting how it is yet again a Republican standing between the Republic and the abyss. The more things change I suppose, the more they really do stay the same.