Decades ago, before AI, a brilliant MIT electrical engineering scientist named Claude Shannon published a ground-breaking article entitled “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”. A year later, in 1948, he published a follow-on article called “The Mathematical Theory of Communication”. What a difference a word makes!

Now the America voting public faces a test, it’s the test of our flawed democratic system.

The test has been set up for us by the Democratic and Republican National Committees who failed to nominate proper Presidential candidates (though as time goes on, it appears Kamala Harris may be rising to the occasion.) The test has also been set up by the Founding Fathers of our Constitution who failed to resolve properly the issue of small versus large states, and so left us with a winner-take-all state-by-state election process — and the catastrophic no-majority-rule electoral college mess. The test has also been set up by Donald Trump who uses the 1984-like Ministry of Truth phrases like hate is love, war is peace, freedom is slavery, the virus is harmless, the crowd is the largest in history, a lie is truth, and so on.

He does this ‘reverse the meaning’ trick all the time. The amazing thing is that he gets away with it. Where are the Republicans who should be publicly countering his truth is untruth propaganda? Romney? Christie? Haley? Graham? Especially, where is George W. Bush? Not present. It’s party before country with him. And Mitch McConnell. Also not present, also party before country. So Trump gets away with it.  

And it is effective, not just with his base but with many others. He repeats and repeats his untruths until, like in 1984, people believe, especially young people.

Trump’s Ministry of Untruth is just one of the ways he is behaving exactly as a would-be autocrat (i.e., dictator) would behave. He threatens people who oppose him. He Identifies people as “the enemy within.” He casts doubt on the integrity of elections. He threatens to abolish whole sections of government like the Departments of Education and Justice. He is going to ‘protect women’; yeah, right. He enables people who insultingly call whole nationalities ‘garbage’. He threatens to deport a million or so families, providing no details or ways of doing it — or paying for it. If he does it, you can bet it will be a humanitarian disaster.

He reminds me often and vividly of the news shorts about Hitler that we used to see in movie theaters in the late 1930’s and early 40s. Heil Trump!

He is going to give positions to Elan Musk and RFK Jr. RFK, who wants all vaccines off the market but likes false conspiracies, Trump says, will become the health czar. Folks, this is serious stuff!

There are those, mostly Republican politicians, who say “not to worry.” They say Trump doesn’t really mean it, that he won’t do that. They say he’s not an autocrat, and won’t govern as a dictator. Many of these people have previously criticized him, some bitterly, but have now changed their tune. They think he might win, and they want a job.

Even some Democrats and people I know are not worried about what Trump will do if elected. They believe the system held four years ago and will hold again. But now we don’t have Mike Pence, the tiny thread that saved us in 2020.

Trump is clearly an autocratic threat to democracy, and those who don’t believe it, or don’t care, are naïve, to say the least. Some who defend or ignore his behavior are looking to benefit from his policies, which they say they like. They may be hoping for a job, or lower taxes, or less regulation. Or maybe, more likely, they wish for an end to the social change that is upon us.

There are a lot of them, the Trumpers. I and many others just can’t understand them. It’s so obvious to us that he is a danger; he is chaos, stupid, and arrogant (to say the least.) Yet nearly 50% of Americans are taken with his 1984 ‘’truth is untruth’ rhetoric. It’s a kind of mob psychology, a kind of mass hysteria. You can’t reason with a mob.

How did we get this way? Well, it started, I believe, when Hillary Clinton failed to visit Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2015, and then also called the working people of those and other states ‘deplorables.’ So it began. Now Biden has called all Trump supporters ‘garbage.’ So it will continue.

It’s not just a test, but it’s the test. No matter who wins, the trouble will continue. Even if our democracy doesn’t survive it. If Trump loses, there will likely be violence from his supporters. Maybe even a ‘blood bath’ (his words.) But all us little people can do is vote, and hope, and pray. Maybe America will pass the test.

Just Sayin’.