I’m stealing/borrowing/catapulting this from my buddy Dave, who’s on the same page, as we see our country taken over be a wannabe dictator, who’s gonna show the world what can happen when a LYING, arrogant, egotistical, criminal, wannabe dictator, in cahoots with Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda machine takes over a democratic country, with the help of SCOTUS (he can’t be held legally responsible for ANYTHING he does), and his Army of Lawyers.
I can certainly relate to the feeling that since half the country voted for a profoundly ignorant and psychopathic demagogue who made it crystal clear that he plans (armed with a “get out of jail free” card from SCOTUS) to “burn it all down” – then we should just bolt the door, close the shades and watch the inevitable destruction of E Pluribus Unum on TV (this revolution will be televised – even if only on Fox/Pravda). It’s hard not to acknowledge the brutal reality embodied in the words of H. L. Mencken when he said, “Democracy is the system where the people get what they want, and get it good and hard.”
Believe me, I’ve endured many periods of dark, existential angst since November 5th. And yes, a big part of me wants to just pull the covers over my head and spend the next four years hunkered down in survival mode – hoping that this uber-reactionary, meanspirited and vindictive Trumpist revolution overplays its hand to the point where a clear majority of Americans decide that they want their country back from these nihilists, hatemongers and Christo-fascists. The fact that I may not live to see this (whether it takes four years or forty) depresses me to no end. After a lifetime of living through and participating in the tumultuous but seemingly inexorable progress (“The moral arc of the universe…”) towards securing long-sought and fundamental individual rights and legal protections for ALL Americans – to see it suddenly all go up in the smoke of a mob of torch and pitchfork-wielding fascists and bigots is simply soul-crushing.
But then I think back to the “Good Germans” of the 1930s who were equally appalled by the rise of Hitler. The similar trajectories (political, legal, economic, ethnic and demagogic) between Weimar Germany and our Trump Redux America are so clear and bright that, IMHO, only the deep historical illiteracy of most Americans keeps them from being more widely remarked upon. But then it’s still only 1935 or so in comparing these parallel timelines. The real atrocities (the legal and economic attacks on the free press, the Stalinist mass purges of “subversives” from business and academia, the troops and “militias” in the streets, the mass roundups of “Those People” into vast, barbed wire-enclosed “processing centers”, et al.) are just getting started.
I don’t know how we can effectively combat this national descent into madness. But I have to believe that the first step is simply to “bear witness”. To not look away, to not bury our heads in the sand and hope it all blows over. To pay attention, day in and day out, to the myriad assaults on our cherished American Ideals and to speak out with passion against these assaults as we go about our daily lives – to friends, family and any other venues where true patriots (not the flag-waving, jingoistic, hatemongering ones) are found.
Yes, there may be risks in doing so, but we cannot simply submit in silence. From the annals of history, that much is perfectly clear.
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