I keep seeing variations on a theme on my FB wall and elsewhere regarding protesters being late to the party and that we should stop blaming the people who voted third party and heal ourselves through compassion. This is the response I wrote to the direct question on my wall, to answer a question from a friend.
There is no way I can write a response to her question without taking on the people who read my writing, so let me preface this statement with the following: I am GLAD people are finally waking up and doing something. It’s about damn time.
That said, in realigning my personal and political blogs, I’ve had ample opportunity to look back at my writing. I lived through the Reagan era and I spent a lot of time reading articles about our history, about abortion, toxic waste, energy, and a host of other issues most kids my age barely acknowledged.
I guarantee you the writing was on the wall, even back then, especially as the USA Patriot Act was fresh and new.
People were complacent when the GOP put the mechanisms in place that control our lives today, but they were just as complacent when Reagan started to strip our rights, when Bush took office as VP and pushed the GOP to the Right, when Gingrich put out his contract on America.
Decades of erosion, blame, hate…they’ve all been there. NOW people have finally started noticing, and suddenly they’re paying attention because all along they thought it couldn’t happen here. The problem is, there is nothing T will do about it, nothing Pence will do about it, short of an actual war. And the mechanisms are already in place to prosecute with prejudice ANY individual who takes on the government.
About midway through last year, I asked a friend who I later unfriended (and then recently added back because he asked) what he would be prepared to do to keep his guns. Would he go out and shoot people who threatened to disarm him?
I never got a response. I won’t call him out now. It’s theoretically possible he’s reading this post right now. He might finally reply, or he might unfriend me.
I’m telling you this, right now: If you are not ready to kill to protect your family, if you are not prepared to run somewhere else to protect your family, if you are not reading every propaganda item that attempts to suggest this is normal, acceptable, or in any way false panic, you won’t see what’s coming next.
People are STILL telling me this isn’t Weimar, Germany, that we are not where we are today, that it can’t happen here.
The gunman who shot those Muslims in Quebec was immediately misidentified as one of the people INSIDE the mosque, instead of the white supremacist he is.
The seething hate has been building for a century and a half, but back then, we didn’t have nuclear weapons, and there wasn’t a flood of refugees coming in from areas WE fucked up first. It was our own people rising up to fight and die for what was right, to end slavery.
In the early part of the century we did NOTHING until Europe attacked US. We would have sat out WWII if Roosevelt could have arranged it. We turned Jews away because we were afraid. We locked up our own Japanese citizens (and others as well) because we were afraid.
We’re about to do it all again, because people who thought it couldn’t be that bad allowed these dangerous assholes into the highest office of the country, and when they finally take over the Supreme Court, there will be no checks or balances left.
And the Soviets won’t come to our rescue this time. Oh, no. Not unless they think they’ll win control, as with East Berlin. Red Dawn was just fiction, after all.
No, I’m not crazy, and I’m not going to apologize. I wrote about this stuff then and people blew me off. Many of them still haven’t apologized. I’ve noticed.
I want you to get active. Protest. Call your senators and representatives. Take that trip to the local office, SHOW UP and FIGHT. And be ready to fight in the real sense, because we’re past fuzzy pink hats and high fives.
This isn’t a feel-good movement. It’s the fight of our lives.
ETA:
The people who ought to be reading this are no longer part of my page for a reason. If you think I’m wrong, fine. Bring them back. I’m done talking to them.
But let’s be clear here: Bernie wasn’t going to win. Not once the white supremacists made their presence known. He had zero chance, because he is a socialist Jew.
I supported him. I did not and DO NOT support those people who thought he should win, picked up their toys and went to vote for Johnson or Stein instead.
I listened to Stein continue the dialogue, and to Nader as well, on Election night. They *STILL* have not walked back one thing they said that night. Until I see THEM apologize, turn THEIR supporters back into the fold, this whole discussion is meaningless.
Where the fuck are THEY now?