When Abe Lincoln speaks, listen

‘America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” It’s amazing. Abraham Lincoln had never met Donald Trump before he said that.

I’ve checked and those words are not in the Gettysburg Address, but they are worth remembering, repeating, believing, and taken to heart today. I think President Lincoln would agree with me that we are, in fact, in a civil war. No battlefields, no artillery, no uniformed soldiers, but a deadly war for the soul of America.

I try not to sound like a hysterical, unhinged knee-jerk Democrat when I write or talk or even just silently think about the current election. I can’t. If Mike Pence, or Nikki Haley, or Chris Christie were the Republican nominee and won, I’d shrug my shoulders, grimace, curse, knowing my migraine would soon go away and our democracy would not.

Lincoln’s fears of our democracy “faltering,” destroyed from within, are coming to pass today with the inspiration and ludicrous leadership of another former president. They share a title but have nothing more in common I can spot. Lincoln cared for our country. Donald Trump cares only about himself.

Can you imagine Abe Lincoln saying it is OK to have an opponent or critic shot, as Trump’s former aides have quoted. It probably shouldn’t surprise me. Trump, inside of government and out, has led a destructive charge on democratic institutions, as well as on many good people at work serving our country.

He's gone after the F.B.I., the Justice Department, courts, and judges. He is Abe Lincoln’s nightmare come true and he should be denounced for what he is, not praised, lionized, deified, or even just accepted.

Here’s how a Time magazine cover story describes a Trump-led future: “an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.”

It reports, “He plans to use the military to round up, put in camps, and deport more than 11 million people.” What would that do here in Iowa? Families torn apart, farms left unplowed and uncared for. It would make our misguided efforts of incarcerating. “just” 125,284 Japanese Americans in 75 internment camps paid vacations.

Trump would “permit Republican-dominated states to monitor pregnancies and prosecute people who violate abortion bans. He will shape the laws by refusing to release funds appropriated by Congress (as he did in 2019 to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to smear Hunter Biden). He would like to bring the Department of Justice under his own control, pardoning those convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and ending the U.S. system of an independent judiciary. “

I think President Lincoln would consider that alone more than “faltering.” But what is more distressing is Trump’s constant attack on the integrity of our elections, democracy in action.

I have never confused Chuck Grassley with Abe Lincoln, but we need him to speak up today in Lincoln’s absence. It would guarantee his permanent special place in American history: a truthsayer in time of need.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.