Trump is a traitor. Say it every day. None of this is normal. Don’t forget it.
The only reason we’re not all in the streets carrying torches and pitchforks is because we don’t want to lose everything we have. “What if I get arrested? What will I do? I can’t lose my job, I have kids, I have mortgage payments, I have responsibilities, I can’t go down that rabbit hole. Not now. His supporters are insane, they’re liable to do something crazy. Then what would we do? We just need to make it to the next election.”
I know that line of thinking too. It’s what leads people to foolishly support candidates like Joe Biden based on misguided perceptions of “electability.” As if voting for someone based on how you think millions of other people might vote is ever a good idea, especially when you think many of them are certifiable. As if playing it safe against Fascists is an effective strategy. How did that work out the first time? The absurdity of it all is penetrating our souls. It permeates every breathe, like the waiting period after a medical test that could tell you whether or not you’ve got a death sentence disease.
And yet we carry on. Dutifully. We watch as Trump kicks children dying of cancer out of the country. We watch Americans butcher each other with atrocious weapons and we send our kids to school wearing bullet proof backpacks, where they’ll participate in active shooter drills. We watch Trump mock wind mills while another hurricane barrels towards our shores and the Amazon burns and Antarctica melts. We watch as Trump shamelessly and illegally tries to profit from his office by forcing his own private resort on the next G7 Summit. We watch as he tries to make it the G8 Summit by being the only one pushing to invite Russia in, of course with zero preconditions. We watch as Putin returns the favor by denying Visas to our own Senators. We watch as he pursues his scorched earth agenda, seemingly doing everything in his power to make the world less safe, less tolerant, less fair, likely hoping to seize on the first opportunity to declare Martial Law. And then it will all be over. And we will have no excuse. Naomi Klein warned us about this. We watch as so many Americans somehow continue to support him. We stand dumbstruck at the sheer terror of it all, like looking in a mirror and seeing another person.
We all know deep down why he’s doing these things. It’s no secret that our president is in Putin’s pocket. And yet we impotently do nothing as a nation. Let that sink in. We have entered our nightmare scenario: a true Manchurian candidate occupying the most powerful office in the world. This is not a movie. This is not a drill. This is real life. None of that is hyperbole, unfortunately. Trump has the nuclear codes. Trump has the nuclear codes. Trump. Has. The. Nuclear. Codes. Meanwhile, Congress is in the midst of a 6-week summer recess. But let’s be honest, even if they were in D.C., nothing would get done anyway because so much of the country is complicit in Trumps’ treason.
We think things like, “is this what McCarthyism was like?” Or, worse yet, “is this what it felt like in Germany before the Nazi’s took power?”
Yes. Yes, it is. We have to stop looking for our saviors. Obama explained it to us on his way out: there is no savior. We have to save ourselves.
How do we do that? Zero tolerance for anyone who supports the current occupier in the White House. Every so often a generation is challenged to defend our way of life. No one ever asks for that title and there are no guarantees of success. What will define us is whether or not we rise to the challenge.
The conversation needs to stop being about our shock at the Trump administrations’ latest atrocities. While we guffaw over these things, they are on the attack. The conversation should be one thing and one thing only: Trump is a traitor guilty of treason and his supporters have betrayed us. Say it every day. None of this is normal. Don’t forget it.