I have never seen anything like this in the USA in all my life, a little Nuremberg rally on federal property (The Ronald Reagan Building) celebrating a victorious Presidential candidate.
After more than 18 months of stoking this kind of stuff, Trump's recent disavowal and distancing himself from these folks rings hollow and is far too little far too late. Cynical opportunism is every bit as bad as active endorsement or collaboration with Nazis. The only right response is opposition from the very beginning.
It appears to me that the leadership of the Democratic Party will slip back into old habits, into the familiar and comfortable role of a minority party. What we need is an opposition party and a resistance movement to face down the policies of the coming supremacist regime.
We will have to do this ourselves with or without the help of any political party.
We can take heart from the past. We beat this kind of crap abroad, and we can beat it again at home!
If we want to live in a democracy, in the liberal cosmopolitan country that so many generations worked and fought and died to create and preserve, then we will have to fight for it again as they did. Remember the graves of Union soldiers, Second World War soldiers, and soldiers in the struggles for labor rights, civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, for the rights and dignity of all the marginalized and disenfranchised. It's time again to fight as they did and to endure to the end.
No peace with fascism! Liberty and Justice for ALL!
EXTRA:
We can also take heart in the knowledge that the plurality of voters in 2016 did not vote for Trump; that but for the electoral college and in every other part of the known universe, he would not be President-Elect. Hillary Clinton's margin of victory in the popular vote is now past 2 million and growing. Her margin is larger than that of both John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter who both won their elections to the Presidency. Trump's mandate is as hollow as it is wide and shallow.
If Trump isn't a usurper, then he might as well be.
I have refrained from commenting on your posts for awhile but as this horrible thing has happened to all of us I hope YOU and those who can fight will. I don't think there is any hope left, but I wish you all luck. I am to old and have fought all my life and have no fight left, so I have given up. I fear for the children I know and love, my grandson and the children of good friends. They will suffer from the horrible things Trump and his cronies will bring on this country and this world. I am no longer an American, if those who vote can vote for this hate and stupidity, it is NOT my country anymore.
ReplyDeleteYou're too old, Tristan? I doubt you can beat my dad ("Remember ... Second World War soldiers") who, at age 96, has to rally to beat Fascism---AGAIN!!!
ReplyDeleteRe "We can also take heart in the knowledge that the plurality of voters in 2016 did not vote for Trump": sadly, I think it not at all unlikely the country will fall into the model of 2001. If you can remember back to that fateful year, George W Bush, minority popular-vote President, was the subject of not inconsiderable mocking & scorn, all through the Spring & Summer of that year. Then 9/11 happened, and ALL that went away.
Now I'm not being conspiracy-minded, just realistic: the U.S. being hit by terrorism again isn't a question of If, but When (and How Big). But I'll be DAMNED if see any "Rally Around Our President" for the guy who pushed a f#cking Muslim ban!
The "uniquely unqualifed candidate" can be nothing more than a "uniquely ILLEGITIMATE President". No mandate---no deals! #NotMyPresident
I think you may be right. Even a relatively small terrorist attack could be magnified into a Reichstag Fire pretext for martial law or an Enabling Act.
ReplyDeleteAs for fighting 70 years worth of struggle all over again, part of me is ready and even eager for it, and another part of me is exhausted just thinking about it.