Paul Sassone

On any day of any week of any year you can read on the internet that we are living in End Times, that this is the year the world will end.

I always scoffed, as probably do you.

But now I am not scoffing.

There is something apocalyptic about this year’s campaign for president.

I have been observing presidential elections since Johnson — Lyndon, not Andrew. These presidential campaigns have been hard-fought and often nasty.

What they haven’t been is violent.

Yet, here is Donald Trump saying of a protestor, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” Or defending a supporter who did punch a protestor in the face and said next time he might kill him, “He obviously loves this country and maybe he doesn’t like seeing what’s happening to the country.”

Trump tells his supporters that violence is a legitimate weapon in a political campaign. This is something new for presidential candidates.

And not only do Trump’s followers put this into action; the urge to violence has infected some of those who oppose Trump.

They are threatening violence if Trump is the Republican candidate for president, just as Trump supporters are threatening violence (egged on by Trump) if Trump is not the Republican candidate for president.

What seems to be brewing in America is an unwillingness to accept losing, to abide by the rules when they go against you.

But this is the bedrock of American democracy. Some have said that democracy cannot exist without the willingness to accept losing.

That’s really what majority rule means — I hate what this candidate stands for. But he or she won the election and we all just have to live with it.

But what happens when people refuse to accept the result of an election that goes against them? Violence?

That’s what happens in other parts of the world.

It’s called civil war.

We already had one of those. And hundreds of thousands of Americans died. That civil war started with talk of violence and ended in violence.

Is another civil war in the offing, a political End Times?  Highly unlikely. Most Americans still subscribe to democracy, still are willing to abide by majority rule.

But this violence in the presidential campaign — actual or only threatened — is leading to someplace bad.

Think, folks, think what we have as Americans and what we can lose.

It’s not too late.

Dial back on violence.

–Dial back on violence End Times–