Last Fall, America was hijacked. We can argue endlessly about whether the election was fair or not but the fact remains that it was a very close election, the Electoral College notwithstanding. In an age of a wildly turbulent internet which has increasingly become the go-to source for information, masses of our citizens fell prey to an endless variety of misinformation. Misinformation we now know, at least in part, was put there and/or inflamed by a foreign enemy.  Dictators like Putin know how to manipulate the masses.  They understand that the sad truth is that the average person will not only fall prey to misinformation, but will lap it up like a thirsty dog if that information satisfies their personal biases and belief system. Dictators have contempt for the average person and love the uneducated.  Putin was betting on the ignorance, gullibility and mental laziness of the average American citizen.  He was right…and wrong.  He was right in that many, many Americans are mentally lazy and gullible, he was wrong in underestimating how many of us are not.  In spite of his efforts, without the Electoral College, Trump would have lost.  But Trump didn’t lose and this country was hijacked by fanatics.  I don’t use the word “fanatic” lightly.  Isis are fanatics, but at least Isis is not pretending to be something else.  Right now, our fanatical hijackers are pretending to care about our freedoms and Constitution while they systematically dismantle our government.  Make no mistake about that.  In every cabinet post, Trump has put foxes in charge of the hen house.  He wishes to dismantle secular education. He is taking away our environmental protections because he values money over people. He wants women’s rights gone; make no mistake about it. He pretends to be a Christian so he can create a new form of militant fanatical Christianity. He actively tries to cast doubt on legitimate news sources while supporting any source that favors him.  These are the moves of a budding dictator.  He deliberately incites hate in his “base” to keep them focused against the “evil” liberals. He lies to them over and over and they lap it up and pass it around as fact. Why do you think he still holds rallies in red states?  Hitler did that too.  Trump himself has said how much he admires people like Putin and North Korea’s Kim jong un.  He sees himself in the same light. Hopefully, his willful ignorance and hubris will be his downfall. He doesn’t have the brains or education to rise to the level of his perceived “heros”.   Add to that his penchant for lying and the blatant inconsistencies in his behavior and his days are numbered. In the meantime though, we have been hijacked and the majority of us know it. So where do we go from here?  What have we learned? How do we recover our nation?

To me, some of what we need to do will take more time than we have right now. Education for instance, we need a country of educated people, but that won’t help us right now.  We need to make higher education important in rural states not something to be dismissed or considered “elitist”. We need to pay more attention to the needs and mind-set of rural states. We need to bring jobs to rural states, not old jobs, new ones. That too, will take time.  We need to have better heroes, not sports stars and celebrities. We need to once again admire integrity over steroid-induced strength and truth over our false concepts of beauty. We need to stop demonizing groups of people and go after the one’s that deserve short thrift. Short term, we must remove Trump from office and quickly.  We must then systematically remove each and every one of his cabinet appointments.  If we can get rid of Pence and Ryan in the process, even better.  The country is leaning in that direction now, but getting rid of Trump isn’t enough; we also need to undo the damage he has imposed upon us.

We can’t bring back Hillary, doing so would cause outright civil war.  So how do we get our country back? Maybe we hold a short election with new candidates?  Maybe we impeach Trump and live with whoever ends up top?  I don’t know, but we need to do something soon. We need to get our country back.  It’s been hijacked.