“Those Democrats”
It’s everything the Trumpers warned us about. Joe Biden is pursuing a massive spending bill, threatening to increase the US debt but more importantly, to reduce the income gap between the “one percent” and the rest of the nation. Many state legislatures, the last remaining bastions of Trumpism, have risen up to protect the government from too many people voting. They don’t want the “masses”, especially of color, to determine who our leaders are.
“Those Democrats” want the whole country to be vaccinated to stop the spread of COVID. How dare they demand that we ALL participate in something that would protect our National health?
They – the Democrats – want to take away our guns, or at least some of our guns, a few, or even just our ability to fire hundreds of rounds a minute. How will we be able to overthrow the government if we can’t have our high capacity magazines? You can only fight off the police with “Blue Lives Matter” flag poles for so long.
Democratic Revenge
And now the greatest fear of all: the “Biden” Justice Department is prosecuting the “un-pardoned” Trump associates. They searched Giuliani’s office and home last week. They treated Rudy, America’s Mayor, just like that traitor/lawyer Cohen a couple of years ago. And there are even assassinating the character of dynamic young Congressman Matt Gaetz, dragging his name through the mud without bringing an indictment. Pardoned Roger Stone has re-entered the fray to defend his young friend. Even MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough came to Gaetz’s aid. He compared the poor man’s treatment to the Hillary Clinton investigation.
It’s all a matter of perspective. Or what news source you choose.
“Trump World” is fighting back. Finally, the 2020 votes in Arizona and Michigan are being honestly investigated by the “Cyber Ninjas”. Those “good guys” have finally got their hands on the actual ballots and out of the corrupted Boards of Elections. They are bound to find what “everyone” already knows: that Trump really won the election, and that the Democrats somehow subverted multiple Republican-run state Boards of Elections.
Enough of that.
Historic Perspective
I am reading a book about Virginia Hall. Hall was an American woman who led an extra-ordinary life. She grew up in the Roaring Twenties, and left America to live in Europe. Hall worked for the US State Department there, and watched the rise of Fascism and the inability of Democracies to control it.
With the beginning of World War II, Hall did everything she could to support France, and then when it fell, she went to Great Britain. Ultimately, she went to work for the Special Operations Executive and became an “operative”, a liaison going into Nazi occupied Europe to work with Resistance groups. That’s the same work that my mother did during the war.
I am struck by the reaction of Ms. Hall to the rise of Fascism. She watched as Hitler and Mussolini, and the Fascist government of Petain in France subsumed the surrounded democracies. They did it with the “Big Lie” (actually originating with Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels). Hall’s response was to do anything she could to defend the world she loved against the absolute evils of Fascism. She was willing to risk her own life when she could have just gone back to America and safety.
Fascists
The echoes of the 1930’s Fascism reverberate in our own time.
It’s not just the obtuse Fascism of the “Proud Boys” or the “Oath Keepers”; the leaders of the January 6th Insurrection. It’s the voter suppression we see in the several Republican led states that want to make sure their opponents don’t win again. It’s the use of fear: of vaccines and gun controls and the “Big Lie” of election fraud. And it’s the screams and chants against Mitt Romney from his own Republican Party in Utah this weekend, or the outcry over Liz Cheney. Both dared to deny the “Big Lie” and vote for impeachment.
Donald Trump was just a symptom. The United States, the home to the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society and Father Coughlin, is no stranger to racism and Fascism. The Roaring Twenties, the era of jazz and speakeasys and women’s rights that produced the courageous Virginia Hall (and Babs Dahlman) also was the “high tide” of the Klan and rampant gangsterism here in the United States.
We’ve got bigger worries than an ex-President in Florida.
