Call it remedial vigilance. In a nutshell, let’s play catch-up. Here in the land of the free, the indicted, and the still-at-large, Big Blonder rode to power on two of Benito Mussolini’s pet slogans. One, “Drain the Swamp.” Two, “Make [This Country] Great Again.”
Since that’s panned out so horrifically, let’s not mention how Trump campaign manager/inaugural speechwriter/Trump-sprung (from stir) kleptocrat Steve Bannon has been a long-time fan of the Euro-fascist Brothers of Italy- and of Il Duce Himself. Or how Trump’s inaugural rant smeared Hillary Clinton supporters for chimerical “carnage” that supposedly needed to be crushed so our nation could endure. (Even the forked-tongued tusker George ‘WMD’ Bush called such drear, dystopic, incendiary deceit “weird s***.” Sad.)
It gets worse. In 2019, Trump claimed power to do “whatever” he might wish. The following year, on 9/23, he Trump-eted that, in a pinch, he’d “get rid of the [electoral] ballots” that, on 1/6/21, might not suit him.
In other words, ‘watch me win-or-coup.’ (What could possibly go wrong?)
Well before Trump, preserving this nation looked to be no lead pipe cinch. As Ben Franklin warned, vote-legitimized governance may not prove easy to “keep.” Fast forward. A decade before J6, even the hard-right Washington Times called Erik Larson’s bestseller In the Garden of Beasts (set mainly in 1930s Berlin) “a cautionary tale.”
That is to say, a true account that reeks of history that’s liable to repeat. Stressing the timeless pervasiveness of powerlust, Larson quotes a writer/actor who, in 1933, fled Berlin for his own native England. Visiting the fraught metropolis postwar, Christopher Isherwood finds it “gutted… like the skeleton of a whale…. [I]t was all as raw and frank as the voice of history that tells you not to fool yourself; this can happen to ANY city, to anyone, to YOU” (emphases added).
“Cautionary,” alright. Going forward, you, this writer, indies, never-Trump righties, and all who remain loyal to Uncle Sam (as opposed to Big Brother Donald) can’t even begin to invoke due caution without grasping, fathoming, and defeating the clear and present threat to our nation’s survival. (Sad.)
Better late than never, let’s face it. A former holder of our highest office has deployed an unholy trio of fascist fundaments. One, a carbon copy of Hitler’s “Big Lie” technique (yes, the Reich called it precisely that). Two, Hitler role model Mussolini’s mantle of lawless dictation.
Three, solidarity (and/or close kinship) with the Almighty. On one hand, the Nazis’ military uniforms’ belt buckles declared “God With Us.” On the other hand, Trump anoints himself “The Chosen One”- and, of all things, the Jewish Messiah. (As ever, at our peril do we fall before a false, fake god.)
Enough. Better late than never, in a do-or-die last ditch, let’s resolve to do all it may take to survive as a vote-legitimized, freedom-friendly republic. (By all indications, we need to up our game. Substantially.)
Lest we forget: on 6/30/1934, Hitler donned the full-on Ruler’s finery that scads of Americans (overtly or effectively) now revere. It wasn’t pretty (and ended badly). In the Garden of Beasts recounts that well-informed sources put the death toll (that day alone) among Hitler’s real, potential, and arguably chimerical political foes at some 500-1000.
And the rest is history. It includes the undead Trumping of America. On 3/12/22, at a Fascist-style rally in Florence, SC, our Orange Ogre told his followers to prepare to “lay down their very lives” to quash the mythical Beast called “Critical Race Theory” (and, by extension, to vitiate everything not part and parcel of Trump’s entire self-elevating, putsch-pushing Cause).
Be it resolved: his vile, vicious venom comprises far more warning than the German people received (pre-6/30/34) from their (perforce) lauded Fuhrer.
Ten-hut. That’s NOT some conspiracy theory or partisan pap. It’s the pure, simple, ‘unspeakable’ truth that our sole remaining non-despotic major party needs to declare over and over and over. With our throats now very much on the line, how about we do so full-throatedly?