CAMP DAVID, Md. — Editor’s Note – A few inspirational thoughts on Election Day while we hold our breaths and wait for the results to start coming in Tuesday night. Today I will fly my American flag proudly in my campsite in the same mountain woods as Camp David, because I will not concede the flag or American patriotism to these neo-Nazis who run around in pickup trucks flying the flag for an authoritarian dictator wannabe con man like Donald Fucking Trump.

Six years ago after finally moving my mom in Birmingham, Alabama, into a retirement community apartment after being with her for nearly 10 years and hitting the road in a media camper van, I moved my legal residency to Maryland just north of Washington, D.C. I did this for a number of reasons, not least of these the fact that competent Democrats mainly run the government here and the state supports its citizens far better than the Republican-controlled government in my native state of Alabama. They expanded Medicaid here, so with the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, I was able to obtain health care coverage here without having to pay Blue Cross $800 a month. Why the poor people of Alabama put up with this ripoff by private insurance companies is beyond understanding for me.

I offered to help some news organizations here get the stories right, including The Washington Post and Politico, but the management in those news outlets think they are smarter and better than I am even though I’ve been a journalist for about 40 years now, including stints at some of the top newspapers and magazines in American journalism, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News and The Nation magazine. Perhaps I am too old for them, or maybe the problem is I didn’t go to Harvard. Maybe I’m too much of a rebel for the mainstream media now, too outspoken about what I see as the truth of the matter.

Whatever. With the World Wide Web and the internet, reporters and writers like me don’t have to sit around and wait to get a call from an editor in New York, Boston, Washington or Birmingham to produce quality journalism and reach out and find an audience with search engines, email and social media. So I was happy to exercise my freedom of speech and press without being told what to cover and write about and how to write about the things I see with my own eyes.

I had already built an economy for myself on the web. I just needed to ramp it up. We have done that now. One of the ways I made it doing this is by living a low carbon footprint and inexpensive life by spending much of my time in a camper van and even volunteering here and there. Since I love the great outdoors and have long been a fan of the National Park Service, I signed up as a volunteer campground host and learned the ropes in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, then in Greenbelt National Park on the border with the District of Columbia.

It was there I met some some top notch professional park rangers and learned about the town of Greenbelt, established with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt back in the 1930s as an affordable place for federal government workers to live. They built the Baltimore-Washington Parkway as a commuter road, and it is still maintained by the NPS.

At my first Labor Day parade in Greenbelt driving the park ranger truck, I had the honor of meeting and talking with Congressman Steny Hoyer on the street before the big parade started. He and his staff would later help me get signed up for a , when none of the members of Congress in Alabama would help me.

During the summer of 2017, I also met and interviewed the great Senator from Maryland, Chris Van Hollen. I helped convince him that Doug Jones in Alabama had a chance to win in the special election for the U.S. Senate that year, when nobody in DC or anywhere else were giving Jones a chance. He ended up being instrumental in helping to fund Jones’ campaign and a third party group that played a significant role in beating Roy Moore in that race.

When I see Trump, Steve Bannon and the other right-wing Republicans slander the United States of America and its government by talking about “draining the swamp” and a “deep state” conspiracy, I either laugh out loud or get really pissed off, depending on the context and the mood I’m in. It just goes to show that Lincoln was right. “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

When they talk about a deep state, and the term was even used by whistleblower Ed Snowden, what they are talking about is the good people of D.C., Virginia and Maryland who work for all the federal agencies to make the United States government work. We would not be what we are as a country without them, great or not great. If this deep state has a leader, it is Steny Hoyer, who represents all these federal government workers in Congress and is a real leader on local issues as well.

For the incompetent likes of Trump to slander these people and fool the poor people in places like rural Alabama and North Carolina into hating this government is a crime against the ideals of American democracy. The penalty must be defeat at the ballot box on this Election Day, which by the way should be a national holiday and I hope that’s Joe Biden’s first act as president in January.

For now, read and listen to these words from Mr. Hoyer, who I know for a fact is a competent and honorable public servant. The people in other states should be so honored to be represented by men and women like this. Doug Jones of Alabama is such a man. If the Republicans reject him today, perhaps he will end up in a Biden Administration, maybe as Attorney General.

By Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer –

Early in the morning of June 6, 1944, General Eisenhower issued his order of the day to the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who were setting out on the most dangerous mission in defense of democracy, about to experience history’s ‘longest day.’ He wrote: “The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.” Today, the eyes of the world will be upon us. The hopes and prayers of those who cherish democracy and those who still yearn for it are looking to America once more. They are looking with excitement and worry to the tens of millions of Democrats, Republicans, and independents who are banding together to vote for honesty, decency, truth, justice, and democracy.

For four years, we have been tested: by division, by conflict, by those who believed they could break our resolve by going lower and lower and lower still. We have been tested by those who did not know our strength or commitment to the democratic norms and principles — and the common decency and goodwill — that have sustained us for more than two centuries. We have been tested by those who claimed they were defending the idea that America is exceptional yet did everything they could to prove the opposite. Today, ‘We The People’ will have the chance to demonstrate to the world once again that America is indeed exceptional.

We are exceptional because we will not abandon our principles or our ideals. We are an exceptional nation not because we cling stubbornly to a narrow sense of our identity but because we remain open to an inclusive vision of a diverse and pluralistic society. America is exceptional because we choose justice over expediency and because we believe that we are stronger when we stand together.

‘We The People’ — Democrats, Republicans, and independents who together yearn for that America and believe it is not lost — must now come to our country’s rescue in this, its hour of peril. Our fellow Americans and people around the world are watching and praying for our success. Young Americans not yet able to vote are looking to us to save the democracy they stand to inherit.

This will be a long day indeed, and tonight promises to stretch even longer. We may not know the outcome of this election for some days. But what we do know is that those of us who cherish what makes America truly exceptional have worked harder than any believed we could to keep it that way. We confronted challenges greater than we expected. And, over the past four years, we persisted in the face of dangers we never imagined for our nation or the world.

I am confident that, when the dust has cleared, our nation will show the world once again how democracy triumphs. That we will deliver a sharp rebuke to those who would undermine democracy by trying to make us lose faith in it. This time, we go into battle not with arms but with our votes. We will brave neither the crashing of waves nor a barrage of enemy fire but waves of misinformation and a maelstrom of division and despair. Such a hard-won victory will have been well-earned. It will be a victory not for one party but for one country, not for Democrats but for democracy.

As Joe Biden has said, that victory will be only the beginning of a long and difficult struggle. But if we begin that struggle together, “as one nation, under God, indivisible,” surely we shall overcome. Those of us who were repulsed by the dangers of Donald Trump and the threat he has posed to our democracy will now have to commit to remaining engaged and involved. Because what we have learned from the past four years is that democracy only works — democracy can only survive and succeed — if we all play our part. The eyes of the world are now upon us. Let our order for this day be to march forward together and show the world once again why American democracy will not only endure but continue to inspire by delivering the justice, freedom, and opportunity it promises.

By the dim light of candles or flashlights under the darkest sky, our soldiers, sailors, and airmen read the final words of General Eisenhower’s letter: “Good luck! And us beseech the blessing of almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”

Godspeed, my fellow Americans, as we greet the dawn of this long, new day ahead.