Rarely has American democracy felt so precarious as we wait for November 5th. Will voters decide that Donald Trump, WHO thought on the suspension of the Constitution, is he capable of protecting it? Will they ignore the warnings from Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, and other former officials and ex-generals, on the GOP candidate fascist trends? Will the loss of bodily autonomy, a right that women have had for nearly fifty years, be the breaking point?

Even though America seems more tense than ever, the country’s values, for me, have always been uncomfortable. America was once run, at least in part, by Republicans who imprisoned my grandfather Howard Fast for refusing to name names when he was targeted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. At the same time, it was also a refuge for thousands of Jews fleeing a global wave of anti-Semitism. This includes my great-grandparent, who arrived here in the 1880s to escape the pogroms of the Russian Empire. They were storytellers and truth tellers (many of them were also alcoholics).. But while America was safe for my ancestors, it was not safe for all minorities. In fact, it was politically perilous for indigenous peoples, as well as the men, women, and children who were enslaved in the antebellum South, oppressed during Jim Crow, and who have since faced decades of continued racism.

Why am I pondering my family history – and that of America – just days before the 2024 election? Because the country has long been imperfect, but it has long strived to be better. Electing Trump would be a rejection of the nation’s upward trajectory.

While Trump promises to “make America great again,” a slogan he borrowed from Ronald Reagan, his current agenda runs counter to that of his predecessor. called “the shining city on a hill”. While Trump calls America “trash for the world,” Reagan granted amnesty for nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants. As he left the presidency, Reagan spoke of America as “a magnet for all who need freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who hurry through the darkness home” – words that would be completely out of place in the current context. GOP MAGAfied.

My family, like so many other families, rushed in the dark to a new home. But if Trump returns to power, America may no longer be a home for the millions who have turned to the light. “We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country, and we’re going to start in Springfield and Aurora (Colorado),” Trump said. said in September, alluding to his immigration plan which includes deportation squadrons, deportation campsAnd the end of birthright citizenship.

On Sunday evening, Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden, which made comparisons at the 1939 German-American Bund rally where speakers brandi Nazi banners and complained about the “Jew-controlled press.” It’s been 85 years since then, but Trump’s team has somehow managed to maintain this toxic tradition. It included “actor” Tony Hinchcliffe, WHO joked about black people carving watermelons and called Puerto Rico “a floating island of trash in the middle of the ocean”; Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, WHO thoughtful lovingly about the turn of the century, a time when only white men could vote; and Trump’s childhood friend David Rem, WHO claimed that “those fucking illegals… get what they want.” And Stephen Miller, which would surely have a place of choice in a second Trump administration, declared“America is for Americans and Americans only.”

America has already seen what Trump is buying: in 1919 and 1920, J. Edgar Hoover deported a few hundred people, including Lithuanian activist Emma Goldman, during the Palmer raids. At the time, THE New Yorkers wroteThe Anti-Alien League was “alarmed by the growing presence of ‘people of Asian races'” and sought “to restrict birthright citizenship in the United States to children of parents of a race eligible for citizenship,” i.e. white people. It’s not just the vibe of Trump’s agenda, but the vision itself. We know this because literally dozens of Republican voters held up signs at the Republican National Convention stating that said things like “mass eviction now!” »

I grew up thinking that Reagan was the most destructive force the Republican Party could produce, and later I saw George W. Bush led the country into war under false pretenses. Yet none of them outright rejected the broader notion of what the country is. Neither openly thought of ending the American experiment, nor vowed to be a “dictator» if he manages to return to power.

As I watched Sunday evening, I thought of the rest of the country, of my fellow Americans, of the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants. We are about to face a test – a question, in fact: Can we reject nativism, racism and the dysfunction that is Trumpism? Are we not better than that?