A FATEFUL HINGE INDEED!

"As long as you have the wisdom to keep this country as the sanctuary of liberty, wherever [people] worship freedom they will turn their faces towards you." Edmund Burke

It is, and should be, debated how true that is or how true it's ever been. Not only for the USA, but for the English-speaking world as a whole. We should be able to debate that, and other political questions, with both passion and civility, always with the awareness that our opponents may well have something worthwhile to say. How difficult that's been for at least since the Clinton administration speaks unhappy volumes about the crumbling of our freedoms--and who's doing nearly all of the crumbling!
But let's set that aside for the moment as, in two days' time, we come to a seriously fateful hinge.
I see the great 'gifts' that the English-speaking peoples have given to the greater world as these: first, the equality of all before the law and no one, not even the Crown, (let alone any president!) being above it.
Second, representative democracy and the idea that, given enough truthful information and time to digest it, we are all capable of participating in it. Third, that democracy is also a process, one which might never be completed but is all the more worth pursuing. Fourth, that certain freedoms (I think FDR's Four Freedoms is an excellent summing up of them) are the God-given rights of every human being on the planet!
To all of you who have yet to vote in this election: whether we in the English-speaking world will have a rebirth and expansion of those freedoms or whether we, having turned our backs on what we gave the world and, indeed, the truest sources of our own greatness, will decline into richly deserved obscurity and contempt, is now on all of you. Yes, you.
You cannot not decide this time. Indeed, 'not deciding' is a way of doing just that--opting for the way towards obscurity and contempt. Whether you like it or not (and I'm pretty sure most of you don't) this question hinges on your choices on Tuesday.
If you do your duty to your country, your civilization, your language and our common faith and vote straight Democratic, then you will point the way towards a rebirth of the spirit of freedom and equality for all of us. You will be a sign to our cousins across the Pond (in England, not Scotland as they've stayed canny and sane) to continue to recover their senses. You will be a wonderful source of frustration to foreign autocrats who still dream of making themselves emperors and a beacon of hope to those who know how much further democracy has yet to travel.
But if you are feckless and either vote for so-called 'Republicans' or try to dodge the question by not voting, you will open further the path which leads to the varieties of English becoming actual separate languages and thus to the end of anything called 'the English-speaking peoples'. The autocrats around the globe will be cheered as they point to us and say, "See? Didn't we tell you so? They were always in it only for the money and the excuse for exploiting poor folks like you." They will say this in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and, yes, Riyadh as well. Not only that, but it will shake democracy elsewhere.
Shills for autocrats and slave-masters will say all the louder, "See? Freedom is zero-sum. More freedom for them (fill in the blank) means less freedom for you."
'France' originally meant, 'land of the free people'. How does it feel to think that French might then be freedom's primary language? Or, maybe, Spanish? Those two languages, especially French, love logic, so maybe they can save freedom if we turn our back on the gifts we've given the rest of the world.
Maybe with the help of the still-sane Scots--renewing an old medieval alliance.
Some will remind us, we've been here before, and they'd be right. But there are two signal differences between now and when one-party Jim Crow rule was reinstated across the South: first, back then, most of the world didn't have its eyes on us. Second, the parts of the world that did, most of them actually thought the peckerwoodies were doing the right thing! Neither applies now.
In any case, the choice is on you. Either towards a future which can still be bright for more of us if we do our part, or back towards an already-failed past. And let me remind y'all in passing that the 'Republicans' have no solution for inflation either. All they want to do is further enrich the already obscenely rich and satanically greedy as they try to take your benefits from you!
Choose wisely on Tuesday. Vote straight Democratic. At all governmental levels from local to federal.