What if you lived in a country where the national debt had climbed to over $19 trillion (actually $19,519,932,367,847)? Where the annual deficit in the current year was projected to be $590 billion? Where the monthly cost of interest on the debt was $1 billion? Where the president and his party had done absolutely nothing in eight years to address the problem, and indeed had added over $8 trillion to the debt? A country in which the president and his party declared they would never make any changes in the entitlement programs that were the main drivers of this enormous debt?

What if you lived in a country where the president made a treaty with the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism in which he conceded every point of negotiation including a path to nuclear weapons and additionally delivered billions of dollars in cash to this belligerent nation? Where the president’s foreign policy of appeasement had enabled the rise of ever more virulent religious terrorists in the Middle East; the invasion of Ukraine by Russia; a Syrian civil war with 500,000 dead; Iranian hegemony over Iraq; a failed state in Libya; and an increasingly bellicose China. A foreign policy, which earned the universal distrust of this country by all of its allies?

What if you lived in a country where the president had chosen to ignore immigration law and to rule by executive edict on immigration matters? Where over 200 local governments daily obstructed the enforcement of immigration laws without any consequences. Where the government was promoting a social agenda that resulted in a movement that abetted random violence against police officers? Where administrators at the country’s universities, pressured by government agencies, restricted the free speech of students and deprived thousands of students of their constitutional rights to due process? Where mobs of students ousted college officials and shouted down those with whom they did not agree.

What if you lived in a country where the president, constantly ignoring the people’s representatives, enacted legislation through regulatory agencies and used unconstitutional executive orders to circumvent the will of Congress? A country where the only check on this lawless conduct had been the Supreme Court, a restraint on the president’s power sustained by a slim one-vote majority? And now, the next president would fill the single, all important, deciding vacancy on the court?

And finally, what if the president’s hand-picked successor and nominee of his party vowed not only to continue the policies of the current government but also to expand these policies?

Now comes an election. Would you vote to continue the current state of affairs and indeed to accelerate the process? Or would you vote to change the national government? If you lived in the country described, what would you do?

Bob Boyd
Murrayville