It\u2019s 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 \u201cone percent\u201d 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\u2019t want the \u201cmasses\u201d, especially of color, to determine who our leaders are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThose Democrats\u201d 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They \u2013 the Democrats \u2013 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\u2019t have our high capacity magazines? You can only fight off the police with \u201cBlue Lives Matter\u201d flag poles for so long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And now the greatest fear of all:\u00a0\u00a0the \u201cBiden\u201d Justice Department is prosecuting the \u201cun-pardoned\u201d Trump associates.\u00a0\u00a0They searched Giuliani\u2019s office and home last week. They treated Rudy, America\u2019s Mayor, just like that traitor\/lawyer Cohen a couple of years ago.\u00a0\u00a0And there are even assassinating the character of dynamic young Congressman Matt Gaetz, dragging his name through the mud without bringing an indictment.\u00a0Pardoned Roger Stone has re-entered the fray to defend his young friend.\u00a0\u00a0Even\u00a0MSNBC\u2019<\/em>s Joe Scarborough came to Gaetz\u2019s aid.\u00a0\u00a0He compared the poor man\u2019s treatment to the Hillary Clinton investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s all a matter of perspective. Or what news source you choose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTrump World\u201d is fighting back. Finally, the 2020 votes in Arizona and Michigan are being honestly investigated by the \u201cCyber Ninjas\u201d. Those \u201cgood guys\u201d have finally got their hands on the actual ballots and out of the corrupted Boards of Elections. They are bound to find what \u201ceveryone\u201d already knows: that Trump really won the election, and that the Democrats somehow subverted multiple Republican-run state Boards of Elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enough of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am reading a book about Virginia Hall.\u00a0\u00a0Hall was an American woman who led an extra-ordinary life.\u00a0\u00a0She grew up in the Roaring Twenties, and left America to live in Europe.\u00a0\u00a0Hall worked for the US State Department there, and watched the rise of Fascism and the inability of Democracies to control it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201coperative\u201d, a liaison going into Nazi occupied Europe to work with Resistance groups. That\u2019s the same work that my mother did during the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cBig Lie\u201d (actually originating with Hitler\u2019s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels). Hall\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The echoes of the 1930\u2019s Fascism reverberate in our own time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not just the obtuse Fascism of the \u201cProud Boys\u201d or the \u201cOath Keepers\u201d; the leaders of the January 6th<\/sup>\u00a0Insurrection.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s the voter suppression we see in the several Republican led states that want to make sure their opponents don\u2019t win again.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s the use of fear:\u00a0\u00a0of vaccines and gun controls and the \u201cBig Lie\u201d of election fraud.\u00a0\u00a0And it\u2019s 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s rights that produced the courageous Virginia Hall (and Babs Dahlman) also was the \u201chigh tide\u201d of the Klan and rampant gangsterism here in the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve got bigger worries than an ex-President in Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Historic Perspective<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Fascists<\/h3>\n\n\n\n