Ben Franklin's wise words for facing the prospect of a Trump presidency, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

There are two different often used definitions of the word hang. One is to hang something or someone. You can hang a picture on the wall or you can hang someone on a gallows. The most recent time the word came into politics was the hanging chads in the 2000 election. Now when you refer to hanging it evokes memories of the Jan. 6th insurrectionist yelling "hang Mike Pence" and the gallows constructed in from of the U. S. Capitol.

The other meaning is more colloquial even though it goes back to something Ben Franklin said. It is the word as used in the modern context of hanging out with your friends. In this sense you are hanging together. You can also hang loose or you can hang tight. These have opposite meanings.

At the official signing of the parchment copy on August 2, John Hancock, the president of the Congress, penned his name with flourish. “There must be no pulling different ways,” he declared. “We must all hang together.” According to the historian Jared Sparks, Franklin replied: “Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” (Smithsonian Magazine)

Who among our wise and daring patriotic Founders could have predicted that after a hard fought battle with the British where the Americans truly hung together a new free nation would be born. It would go on to survive a civil war intact and triumph over its foes in two world wars. Could they ever have imagined that it would reach a perilous point where a more incompetent leader than King George IV was having a 50/50 chance of ruling the country like a king. 

Consider: George's rule was tarnished by scandal and financial extravagance. His ministers found his behaviour selfish, unreliable and irresponsible and he was strongly influenced by favourites. Wikipedia.

Could Hamilton, Adams, Washington, and Franklin ever have predicted that this man would have lost an earlier election, claimed falsely that he really won, tried to overtune the following election, incite an attack on the Capitol, and then not disavowing the insurrectionists during the attack building a gallows and calling for the hanging his vice president?

I'm not partiuclarly superstitious. Even so I am hesitant to outright say that I think Kamala Harris will win lest I have some kind of supernatural power to jinx it. I expect that Kamala and her advisors don't want to project any kind of overconfidence lest voters who put off voting until election day decide that the weather is lousy and they have to do the laundry so since she doesn't really need their vote they stay home. I do think she will win.  Perhaps I have to think this because I am horrified at the propsect of Trump winning. 

I want to believe that enough American people will see Trump for who he is and reject his vision of America. I want to believe that they will see that he and his most committed supporters are evil. I know this is a loaded term. If calling Trump's supporters the D-word, deplorables, or the G-word, garbage, evil is the apropos E-word.

In 1996 Daniel Goldhagen wrote "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust." I see many of Trump's supporters as being poised, like those ordinary Germans, to follow his orders no matter how evil. They will round up the people from other countries who he has demonized and send them to internment camps so they can eventually be sent out of the country. They will  wholeheartedly yet heartlessly follow the blueprint laid out in Project 2025. I can see no other word to use for this than evil.

This is the first election where democracy loving American people have to prepare for surviving an election, literally surviving with their way of life intact and for some civil servants, their livelihood at stake, should one particular candidate win. 

I have said this before but it has particular relevance because Trump didn't care about the chants of "hang Mike Pence" and that a gallows for him was contsructed in front of the Capitol on Jan. 6th. Considering his sadistic fantasies like putting alligators in the Rio Grande and having soldiers shoot migrants in the legs, it would be in character for him to visualize Pence on the gallows.

Many of us are justified in fearing that if Trump becomes president he wants to hang us, not merely metaphorically, but in any way that he can. He wants to censor the press, purge federal agencies of people who aren't loyal to him, and even turn the Justice Department against his enemies. 

Truly, as one of our greatest and wisest patriots, Ben Franklin, said when the country was about to declare independence and face a war with England "we must all hang together or we will all hang separately."

Then after the Americans won The War for Independence and drafted the Constitution  Franklin was asked "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" His response was "a republic, if you can keep it." Of course he was describing the constitutional democratic republic which the United States has been up until now.

Can we keep it? Incredibly the answer to this depends on who you mean by the word "we."

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Addendum: This is from Dana Milbank's Washington Post column today, Who Are We, America?

Americans have heard what Trump has said in his own words. He believes he has the authority to implement “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He’ll implement the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” He would give those who attacked the Capitol in the deadly Jan. 6 riot “pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.” He would tell Vladimir Putin’s Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that, in Trump’s view, don’t pull their weight. He wouldn’t “give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate,” which virtually all schools have in place to prevent deadly childhood diseases. He’ll send a message to criminals with “one rough hour, and I mean real rough,” of vigilante attacks. He speaks about his political opponents as “the enemy from within” and believes they “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.” He has suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s top soldier, deserves to be executed.

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