This time it was the terrorist attack was during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. The shooter was a slightly built 21 year old man, who has bought his weapon legally. He acted alone and he’s under arrest.
But before that it was Uvalde, and before that Buffalo, and before that so many shootings at schools, malls, theatres and places of worship that most of us have lost count.
Because of the terrorist threat, my downtown parish church is now guarded by policemen wearing ballistic vests and armed with Glocks. Parishioners seem to have pretty much accepted this situation as the new normal. And that’s a very bad sign.
Accepting terrorism as the new normal is something that we simply must not do. Because if we do, we lose and the fascist movement takes another step forward to its ultimate goal - to terrorize us into giving up our freedoms for the supposed safety of a fascist state.
These shootings may seem to be separate events, but they are a disjointed part of the larger objective. Yes, the shooters in these mass killings can be dismissed as troubled individuals. Individuals whose hate feeds on the anti-social madness deliberately spread by social media. But these individuals are really pawns in a deliberate wider campaign of terror. The individual actions of these shooters are not something apart from the insurrection at the Capitol, nor the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and their ilk who continue their own forms of terrorism.
Why is nothing being done to stop this? It’s not being stopped because some so-called conservatives, at the state and national levels, want the terror to continue. At the national level, they are in our House and Senate, and in the highest court in the land. Acting separately, but with the same goals in mind, the Senate blocks legislation to address the fascist violence, while SCOTUS has begun rolling back our hard-won freedoms and planning for more.
The only real solution begins with realizing that fascism has taken root in the Republican party.
fascism - a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and race and stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. - Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
We the People must act to defeat the fascist terror campaign; a campaign intended to end in fascist rule. We must remove the fascists from places of power. We must do that at the ballot box when we can; by arrest and trial when that’s warranted, and even by impeachment of justices when that option is open to us.
We cannot let fascist terrorism continue to win.