The threat to democracy

Come get me, Katie Couric and Eugene Robinson — you two members of the elitist New York-Washington media class.

Come get me.

Whisk me away in a white jacket, and take me to be deprogrammed.

I voted for Donald Trump. Not once, twice. Which definitely, according to Couric and Robinson, makes me a hardcore member of the “Make America Great Again” cult.

Yep, I signed onto “the cult of Trump.” I signed on because I believe what he believes: in individual freedom above the state and its statists, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, a nonactivist judiciary, American exceptionalism, law and order, secure borders, legal immigration, entrepreneurial capitalism, life and God.

I am guilty of this, too: I believe, as Trump does and did, that the Washington, D.C., Deep State and Swamp — the majority of the elected, entrenched establishment and bureaucrats — have been destroying the U.S. for decades. We no longer have at the federal level, as Lincoln implored, “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Come get me.

Not only do I need deprogramming, but, I’ve been told, I have “blood on my hands.”

Donald A. Semisch of Longboat Key told me in two letters last week that I “have been and continue to be an enabler of the greatest liar in recorded history.” “Your hypocrisy knows no bounds,” he said. “You have blood on your hands.”

Another letter writer, a coward who did not sign his or her name, wrote that five of my Observer colleagues and I — all of us described, in his words, as “part of the Trump cult club” — “inspired those evil people who invaded our nation’s capitol. … [M]aybe God will forgive you all, … but we will not.”

And so it goes.

Big-tech censorship spreads by the day, shutting down speech that doesn’t conform with the self-appointed leftist thought police. CNN initiates a campaign calling for the shutdown and stifling of Fox News. The cancel culture has become a raging forest fire, burning down one person after another. Nationally known corporations have joined in, blacklisting and banning Republican members of Congress members who supported an audit of the presidential election results. And, of course, there’s Nancy Pelosi taking the low road — a muddy, sludge-filled path of slime — pursuing impeachment, with Joe Biden, laughably, calling for unity.

Talk about hypocrisy knowing no bounds.

Here’s another one of hypocrisy knowing no bounds: Semisch wrote: “Trump brought our democracy to its knees, and had he been reelected, we would have lost our democracy.”

We heard that for four years — that Donald Trump was “an existential threat to our democracy.” But what does that mean, “we would have lost our democracy”? Someone please explain how the Trump policies of putting American workers first was a threat to democracy.

The sickening irony is what Semisch’s leaders (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Sanders, the Squad, et al.) are doing and who they are.

They spent four years claiming to be fighting Trump’s alleged fascism (Show me: Did Trump shut down free speech via censorship?)

But now look what they are doing — silencing dissent, urging consumers to quit supporting businesses that disagree with them, harnessing the power of their big corporate tech allies to silence disagreement and control public thought, and calling for the deprogramming of Americans who do not agree with their woke orthodoxy.

They are woefully blind to the obvious: They are the epitome of fascism. They are the existential threat to our democracy.

Without free speech, we are doomed to an avalanche of tyranny and servitude. The crush is only beginning.

Come get me, Katie Couric. In the words of Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty, or give me death.”