AN OPEN LETTER TO MARION COUNTY DEMOCRATS:

     I am approaching my 75th year. I obtained my voting privileges when I was 19 years old, thanks to a young college student of the time named Earl Blumenauer and a lot of young people eager to end the Vietnam War. During that time I have been a proud Democrat. There were some pretty good Republicans in those days that I willingly voted for: Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield, Bob Packwood, Wayne Morse. But the Republican party was not my party because of people like Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Sen. Barry Goldwater, and Richard Nixon of Watergate fame. Those were, sadly, the high point of Republican politicians. In more recent years we have watched Republicans become increasingly autocratic, influenced by Newt Gingerich, the Tea-party, and finally, MAGA. 
     For all of that time I rarely went public with my distaste for that other party, the party that has sought to erase the progress that our party had achieved by strenuous negotiations. But these are not normal times. Never before have I feared that the next president could conceivably turn what remains of our democracy into an authoritarian kleptocracy. I have not always liked some of our more recent Supreme Court rulings, but I never felt that a billionaire was placing his fat foot on the scales of justice. Until now. I have never witnessed members of that other party openly accepting campaign cash from people connected to a hostile foreign government. Racism in more distant times was not openly admitted by Republicans until now. We could at one time talk about American exceptionalism without its openly fascist connotations. Not so today.
     We are very possibly on the precipice of becoming a failed democracy. I hope every one who reads this votes in the upcoming election to restore those endangered democratic principles. If you are a believer, I hope the diety you admire is the diety of Jimmy Carter, and not Donald Trump.

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