It’s October, and the days are getting shorter. Not the sunsets, but the days of America being a beacon of fair and free elections.

For four years the Gotterdammerung of democracy has been slouching toward us, and is now just over the horizon. Invited here by the approximately 40% of the population who have chosen to conflate a demagogue into a demigod.

I have tried to change Trump voters’ minds with no success. I thought maybe words of great thinkers of the past would help.

To the uber wealthy with their insatiable thirst for tax cuts consider Epicurus, “if what you now have does not satisfy you, what you desire never will.” To the Evangelicals, the words of St. Francis, “where there is charity and wisdom there is neither fear or ignorance.”

And to the aggrieved white males you seem to believe the reason they are not healthy, wealthy and wise is do to the actions of whatever liberal bogeyman haunts their fevered dreams? No words suffice. Although Lord Byron described them perfectly over 200 years ago, “thus they plod in sluggish misery, rotting from sire to son, proud of their trampled nature and so die bequeathing their hereditary rage.”

Who speaks to we who still believe in democracy? Probably Tennyson: “tears from the depth of some dark despair rise in the heart and gather in the eyes as we look upon the golden fields of autumn thinking about the days that are no more.”

Barry Allen, Norway