Voters who sit on the sidelines attack our senses — while dishonoring the fallen

Hard as it is to believe, it’s fair to say most people in America have yet to give the looming elections in November the attention we believe they deserve.

I say “we” because if you are putting eyes on this piece, you are invariably feeling locked in with no place of real importance to go except the nearest voting booth where we will be joined by yet unknown numbers of the lethargic American electorate to determine once and for all whether we continue with our Democratic experiment or take a torch to it.

I both envy the willingly ignorant who blissfully ignore the dark clouds that hang menacingly overhead, while also trying my very best not to hiss at them and hold them in complete disdain.

How freeing it must be to bounce through life dealing with its garden-variety challenges without giving a single care in the world to the pure evil that threatens to lay us flat in just a matter of months.

How comforting it must be to make the intentional decision to never worry whether a demented, vengeful, orange wannabe king and his bought-off Court will ascend to power, run roughshod over our everyday lives, inhabit our bedrooms, poison our environment, feed the rich, and incinerate our imperfect, scarred Democracy that has persevered and evolved through 254 years of war and racial strife, while slowly building toward a place where all people are actually treated equally instead of dealing with the faulty assurances that come with being simply created that way.

How damn privileged do you have to be to steal a ride on the wings of slow and steady progress without ever doing any of the hard work to help ensure our greatest ideals continue to soar?

So I nervously tap my feet, and my keyboard while waiting for tens of millions of Americans to start giving these elections and these precarious times we live in the attention they so richly deserve.

As always, I harbor absolute disdain for our corporate media, which should be doing nothing but reporting on the incredible dangers facing us, and making it crystal-clear what’s at stake here.

I’ve come to the decision that they don’t deserve to survive no matter what happens in November. Literally every day they prove just how pathetic they are in their faulty, casual framing and coverage of the most dangerous times in America since World War II.

Thanks to some great writing and reporting in The Atlantic, we have learned this week that our European allies are absolutely terrified about the prospects of a second Trump presidency. According to the piece, “their anxiety is massive.”

Of course, they are on the frontlines of this fight, and stand to lose everything if the most powerful country in the world decides to not only cut and run, but actually crawls alongside and cowers in fear in front of our brutal enemies like Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

I am sure you will find some reporting on this buried on Page 14 of The New York Times if you look for it … Or maybe it’ll get eight seconds on the evening news. Either way, it’s obviously no competition for all those alleged disgruntled Independent voters they breathlessly talk to in these Pennsylvania diners.

Thursday marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy, France, where a heroic team of America’s greatest-ever stormed the beaches of that picturesque coastline in a Herculean effort to bravely quiet Adolf Hitler’s murderous and hateful thunder.

Anybody who has ever been to this breathtaking place invariably says something approximating this: “My God. How in the hell did those brave souls accomplish THAT?”

The ruthless, arrogant German military had the numbers, the high ground, and were dug in. They had every military advantage at their disposal to lay waste to whatever came at them.

Except the Allies had all the heart, and overcame horrific obstacles, while literally crawling over their dead and wounded to take those damn beaches, and finally secure a foothold in this critical theater of operation.

Thanks to their unmatched bravery, millions of lives were saved and alliances were built and fortified that protect us all to this day from those who mean us harm.

Rows and rows of white crosses stand at attention across the rolling hills of Normandy bearing the names of the courageous troops who did not live to talk about what happened during one of history’s most consequential and breathtaking battles.

These crosses have been meticulously cared for over the decades to remind us of their ultimate sacrifice.

They are the people Trump has called “suckers and losers.”

Following World War II, the victorious allies created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the most powerful alliance of freedom-loving countries ever assembled, because the legacies of the men and woman who died and were wounded protecting us deserved at least that much.

If one of us is attacked in the alliance, we are all attacked. We fight as one.

This partnership has only grown stronger under Commander in Chief Joe Biden’s leadership, which I suppose is what angers anti-American Republicans the most. We are stronger, more prepared, and digging in against Putin and his Republicans’ design to lay waste to NATO.

The lunatics in Trump’s chaotic, evil orbit are telling us with relish that they will end it all. They undoubtably have debts to pay to Putin, sure, but it is even worse than that: They have absolutely no respect for America, or the brave men and women who have given up their lives to defend her.

The citizens who have fought to protect America and her allies deserve better than the mealy-mouthed, tepid support they are receiving right now from millions of America’s adults who would rather spend half the day staring at their cell phones and grousing about God knows what on social media than giving this country and what she is staring down the attention it deserves.

Their stunning disregard for what is coming at America in perhaps her most important moment is gross and impossible to comprehend.

If these self-servers somehow just don’t think this attack is worth their time or attention … If our corporate media would rather not dig in, do their jobs, and sound the alarms … Then the very least they could do is dredge up the minimum amount of decency to remember and honor the brave people who fought and died to give them their right to their unmitigated gall.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.)

(That is a dramatic AP photo of American soldiers, sailors and Marines under German attack as they come ashore in Normandy during Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944. Everything they fought for is on the line this November.)