Look – up in the sky – It’s a bird – It’s a plane – It’s the President.
Strange visitor from another planet (have you seen his birth certificate yet? What about his taxes – does he have a Social Security number?)
- With powers and abilities far bigger and greater than the world has ever seen – he promises
- Yes, it’s the President
- Simpler than a speeding toddler
- Less powerful and more impotent than the nuclear deterrent he threatens to use
- Buys Chinese steel with the signature of his “small hand”
- And who disguised as the Commander and Chief Speaks faux truth and justice to the right-wing racists who make up the rancid underbelly of our great nation.
On August 12, 2017, our country rocked on its heels as a violent confrontation took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. A gathering known as Unite the Right convened to protest the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee, symbol of the Confederacy.
Did they have the right to protest? Yes. Did progressive proud Americans have the right to protest their protest? Yes.
Then what was the problem? This is America where we are all entitled to our opinions.
Perhaps burning torches, long rifles, swastika armbands and the Nazi chant “Blood and Soil” might have seemed a tad radical and an abuse of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Add to that the alleged ISIS style terrorist attack of a car mowing down peaceful protesters, killing one and injuring others and you’ve certainly created a climate where violence and mayhem will flourish. This is domestic terrorism plain and simple.
Bottom line, peaceful even not so peaceful protests are part of American culture.
However, there’s a huge difference between a group of citizens protesting the removal of a statue and white nationalists including Klu Klux Klan and other extremist groups convening en masse to exhibit their disdain for American values.
It’s pretty easy to make the case that this was a premeditated terrorist assault on our American way of life.
If as liberal and tolerant a man as our esteemed Attorney General, Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions states:
"The violence and deaths in Charlottesville strike at the heart of American law and justice. When such actions arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated… justice will prevail."
you know this was no simple protest that got out of hand.
It was an attack on all Americans! A strong enough one that the most conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats joined together in speaking out against this moral atrocity.
Yet when Donald Trump who speaks his mind about everyone from Rosy O’Donnell to Mitch McConnell (my heart just bleeds for the latter) can’t, won’t or has no understanding at all of the threat these groups pose he empowers them
We have to get real. The only two entities he won’t speak up against are ex-KGB operative and current Russian President Vladimir Putin and the right-wing haters and extremists who helped get him elected.
His milquetoast non-committal condemnation of parties “on all sides” of the protest is an open invitation and not so discreet encouragement of what occurred.
Let’s face it folks. America has elected a President who is dangerous to the very existence of our Democracy and way of life as we know it.
We can sit idly by and let events unfold – North Korea’s a good example. Or we can mobilize, peacefully protest and do everything in our power to see to it that our ineffectual, impotent leader – “the most powerful man in the free world” is either removed from office for cause or is neutered by changing the political landscape in 2018.
Just like Bernie Sanders, we have to be radical in the most positive sense of the word. Our country and that of our children and grandchildren is at stake.
We have to pay it forward. If we don’t all of us will be paying for it forever.
Search your heart, and if you feel President Trump is a threat to our country’s future then do everything you legally can to change the political landscape.
Or, just sit on your butt and see what happens. This is America – the choice is yours.
Trump Image: leirbagarc / 123RF Stock Photo