Fearful for the future of our country

For the past several weeks I have been contemplating an opinion piece that would have begun with “I am ashamed of my country.” Believe me, as a native Montanan who was raised by patriotic and loving parents, became a graduate of the University of Montana’s Air Force Reserve Officer Training Program, and retired after 30 years as a veteran and senior member of the United States Air Force, I am aware of how astonishing that statement may seem to many, especially those who seem strangely wedded to the national disgrace embodied by Donald Trump and his acolytes.

After listening to some of the evidence collected by the Jan. 6 Committee and elsewhere, I have decided that a more appropriate approach would be “I am fearful for our country’s future.”

Make no mistake, I am ashamed of the degree to which our national body politic, to include several current office holders, has been willing to accept misogyny, pathological lying, narcissism, homophobia, aversion to truth telling, abject racism and wanton gun slaughter of innocent children. The Trump political machine has more in common with an organized criminal mob than any normalized political organization.

My transition from “ashamed” to “fearful” has been propelled by the fact that at the end of the day, despite Trump’s highly organized and widely supported attempted coup against our democracy, our republic held firm.

We have many to thank for that victory. All 50 states and our territories held firm thanks to the efforts of Democrats and Republicans charged with administering their state’s electoral processes. Our election workers, despite unbelievable efforts to undermine their efforts with fear and threats of violence, did their jobs. The senior leadership of the military held the line. Our federal judiciary, to include many judges appointed by Trump, upheld the law and all but laughed out of court Trump efforts to change our nation’s electoral legitimacy. Senior officers of the Department of Justice rejected Trump’s repeated requests to subvert the law.

We need to thank those courageous Americans who upheld the legitimacy of the election. They were a mixture of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents — national heroes all.

Thus, I close with two thoughts. First, I fear that absent considerable engagement from all of you, we will not have the ability to withstand a similar assault, and it appears that such an assault is in the making. Vote!

Second, if despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you support the notion of “stop the steal,” you are without a doubt a traitor to our country.

Don Loranger, Major General (USAF, Ret.), Missoula.