You can’t make this up | Eastern North Carolina Now

    You can't make it up that a cartoonish Donald Trump, who has been impeached twice and indicted twice already, continues to campaign on lies and vitriol, while promising vengeance and retribution if he is elected again. You can't make it up that a person with zero character or integrity is so esteemed. Even his acolytes and surrogates spew lies and garbage, some even touting that to get to Trump they would pull out guns to protect him. Yikes! How does this continue unimpeded? Where are gag orders? Are we going to just let it happen that institutions and even the Constitution are shredded before our eyes?

    You can't make it up that angry parents at school board meetings, legislatures and governors across America are banning books at an alarming rate. Whitewashing history and obliterating knowledge of gender and sexuality differences does nothing but render us unprepared for the life we live in an increasingly diversified world. You can't make it up that in Utah, the Bible has been banned. It is too filled with incest, prostitution, and rape, they say. Let that sink in for a minute. Let's rob our future to pay for power in the here and now. You can't make that up. Ever.

    You can't make it up that Senator Thom Tillis was censured by North Carolina MAGA Republicans, while McNeely and Robinson, who spout off unbelievably ugly and bigoted words, get a pass. When compromise and negotiation, listening to others, as Tillis seems capable of doing, are reduced to thuggery and bullying, nobody is going to win in the end. You can't make it up that forcing your will against the will and rights of other people isn't akin to rape. There used to be laws against that. Who, if not a person like Thom Tillis, can speak across divides and reach for solutions, not just participate in the outrage and noise stirred by the MAGAs and the Freedom Caucus?

    You can't make it up that we live with existential threats, any of which could lead us to extinction. Nuclear War. Climate that is going to change regardless of whether people think it is real or not. Artificial Intelligence pioneer, Geoffrey Hinton, says that AI is an existential threat. As we ban books and dumb down our population, AI is collecting data at a rate humans do not have the capacity to do. With no ethics built in, AI may take control of not just our jobs, but our lives. Hinton says this is happening quickly. We may have less that fifty years to find a way to curb this problem. We who cannot even compromise a way to control TikTok will likely let AI happen with no controls. Welcome to the world, Hal. We've been waiting for you for years. Our Alexa's and Robot Roombas will soon be running all over us.

    With all that is going on in the world, now is not the time for disengagement, indifference, or apathy, lest we fall to a place from which we cannot recover. Yes, registering and voting are essential, but writing letters and finding places to voice dissent in civilized ways is increasingly necessary. We will lose life as we know it - maybe that's what forty percent of us want - unless we wake up and get involved in setting the ship straight. If all the forces at play continue to roll over an electorate, we can kiss it all goodbye. You can't make this stuff up.

    Lib Campbell is a retired Methodist pastor, retreat leader and hosts the website: avirtualchurch.com. She welcomes comments at libcam05@gmail.com.