America’s
Nightmare Is Already Here
“Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
Or so says the Washington Post
in their banner.
The problem is that it doesn’t always die in darkness. Sometimes it’s in the full klieg lights of a
network studio and those of a campaign speech.
Sometimes it’s the bright lights of a legislative assembly room, with
all the world watching.
This article is being posted on April 1st, 2019. It marks the 23rd year that I’ve
been doing online columns. This is a
claim that most online columnists and two major cable networks cannot make. No, that is not a joke. That is a fact. During that time, I’ve watched America
descend into what it has always feared; a despotic tyranny.
I’ve said way back when that tyranny doesn’t just march down Main Street
as some conquering force overnight. We
don’t go to bed a free nation and then wake up the next morning and find ourselves
under the Orwellian thumb of a dictator and his parade of goose-stepping stormtroopers. They don’t “invade”. They infiltrate. They infest.
They worm their way into positions of power and control. And it doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over years and even generations. It happens with one election at a time. One seat of power at a time. One radio station or TV channel or newspaper
at a time.
America’s real enemy is not some outside force. It’s not some nation or some terror group or
some cartoonish criminal organization bent on ruling the world. The real enemy has always been here. They’re not invaders. They are our neighbors.
They’re the ones that complain that “immigrants are taking our jobs”. The ones that hate Hollywood and academia as
some abstract invisible villains but they’ll still pay for movies and watch TV
shows and demand their precious little tax deductions go to college. They hate any politician that doesn’t agree
with their view of the world... not just dislike, but hate and despise. They hate “welfare” as long as it doesn’t
involve taking away their own government assistance or their tax breaks or the
tax breaks of corporations. They claim
they’re not bigots, but they’re quick to proclaim America being “a Christian
nation” when it never has been such and proclaim that anyone who is not a Christian
should not be in America never mind be an American. And they claim that they’re not racists, but
their laundry list of groups to hate and persecute and imprison and deport and
otherwise impose sadistic torment and humiliation seem to lean to those of a more
darker skin than their own. What a coincidence,
huh?
Yes, they are two-faced bigoted hypocrites. But they are also our neighbors and our
co-workers and our bosses and our friends and even our relatives. And they also learned something very
important... they learned that voting is important. Because they do vote. That’s how they got in.
Nationalism and fascism have wormed their way into power. White nationalism, Christian nationalism, economic
nationalism, it really doesn’t matter which “flavor” of nationalism you favor
or fear. It’s all the same thing now. It’s the party of hate and the party of
division and the party of privilege that are enjoying their day in the sun.
And the figurehead of it all... the one taking the credit and the one
that symbolizes this hypocritical fascism... is an orange-skinned narcissist
with an eggshell ego by the name of President Donald Trump.
White Nationalists get someone who supports them, who thinks there are “some
very fine people on both sides, both sides”.
Christian Nationalists get someone who appoints their people into
positions of power. Not just the ones
who “lean towards” their agenda, but the ones that will eagerly carry them
out. Economic Nationalists get someone who
will gut trade agreements and impose tariffs on their competition overseas, as
well as repeal regulations and give them tax breaks.
The insane part about this is that Narcissist Trump did not create this
nationalistic and fascistic despotism. It
didn’t just “pop up” in time for the 2016 Election. It was here before I even started this column
twenty-three years ago. These are the
same groups that I was warning about from day one, long before Narcissist Trump
even thought about running for office.
But Narcissist Trump, much like the other things that he is involved in,
takes ownership of it and dresses it up like it was all his creation. That’s what he does.
In the 23 years since I started this column, we have gone from a
soft-spoken Southern lorathio who was shamed into admitting his picadilloes, to
a bumbling C-grade Texan who waged war at the drop of a hat but at least meant
well, to a failed idealist with a baritone voice... to a brutish, bloviating,
orange-skinned man-child who makes Narcissus look like Medusa in comparison. At least the previous White House inhabitants
had some sense of dignity and honor and treated the job with respect. They didn’t demand a military parade like
some third world dictator. They didn’t
demand that everything they do is
the greatest most generous most successful activity in the history of the
world. They didn’t publicly boast of having
a goon squad of soldiers, police officers, and biker gangs ready to inflict
all-out hell if they didn’t get their way.
They didn’t complain about a “rigged system” and then demonstrate that
it exists to service them.
Even worse is the knowledge that the so-called “opposition” are impotent
eunuchs; failing to take the right action because it would be either “political
suicide” or because they can use the narcissist and his fascist supporters to bolster
their re-election. They don’t want to
impeach Narcissist Trump or any of his people because they need Narcissist Trump
and his red-hat cult followers to consolidate their power base. Lives be damned. The economy be damned. America be damned. Just let them keep getting re-elected. After all, there’s always another election.
And the media? The supposedly
sacred “fourth estate”
of journalism? This commentator watched
as ABC, NBC, CBS, and all the rest of the supposedly “noble journalists” lied
about a report that they never saw, that has not yet been released, based
on a “summary” written by a biased Attorney General who was hand-picked by
Narcissist Trump because he believed the President is above the law, and whose “summary”
pretty much mirrored his previous assumptions before he was appointed.
They lied! They lied like Bill Clinton
over his intern affair. They lied like
George W. Bush over yellow cake uranium.
They lied like Narcissist Trump over... everything. The people that proudly took down Nixon, who called
out Reagan, who called out Clinton and questioned Bush Junior... they *lied*
and they acquiesced to Narcissist Trump.
Let’s get brutally honest here... we are living the nightmare that
America’s founding fathers feared. We
are under the grip of a tyrant who attacks comedians and TV shows, whose supporters
mercilessly attack anyone who criticizes him, who considers himself above
reproach and above the law and appoints toadies that ensure it. And his supporters are even worse. They are going from state to state imposing their
Christian Nationalist agendas while Narcissist Trump and his fascist supporters
in Congress are busy rushing in judges that will rubber-stamp those agendas. And all while the supposed “opposition” is grandstanding
so they can win points for the next election.
It was Benjamin Franklin who said that what the Founding Fathers created
was “a republic, if you can keep it.”
Clearly we cannot and did not.
No, the Washington Post has it wrong.
Democracy doesn’t die in darkness.
It died in front of us, in full view, with all the blinds open and all
the lights turned on and the whole world watching in disgust. And the only thing that we can hope right now
is that the rest of us can survive long enough to see past this dark era of arrogance
and ignorance and hypocrisy and self-important privilege and if there is
anything left of the no-longer-United States that can be salvaged.
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