It's Memorial Day, of course, as I write this. I do so with the hope--dare I say, the expectation--that you will, in ways large and small, find a way to remember and pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice or served in uniform on behalf of their nation and the values to which it has traditionally aspired. Many of you, including me, have family members who fall into that category. In my case, it is a father and a father-in-law I was lucky to know, and an uncle and a cousin I did not get a chance to meet. All of them are a source of pride and reverence for me, as I am certain that similar members of your families are for you.
Which is why I am especially outraged over the current state of America on this Memorial Day. And why I hope and pray that you are similarly outraged. Outraged enough to do more than grumble and tweet about the present. Outrages enough to take action--positive action--but, if necessary, to make whatever sacrifice may be necessary not to make America "great" again, but to make America America again. If that can be done, the greatness part will take care of itself.
For, as of right now, America isn't America. Over the past eighteen months, the nation has rapidly moved away from being the America the world aspired to emulate, and has instead moved rapidly toward becoming more like the despotisms the world has always tried to escape.
It is, of course, a process that started when we put a professional narcissist and bully named Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Of course, only 46% of us did that, but that's federalism and the electoral college, plus a lot of voters who looked the other way and sat at home because they foolishly comforted themselves with the idea that their vote meant nothing--an idea that Memorial Day itself stands toward in opposition.
In any case, both pro-Trump and anti-Trump voters comforted themselves with the idea that he was little more than an entertainer. So how much harm could he possibly do to the nation and its values?
In eighteen months, plenty.
Trump has shown in that time that he is not merely an entertainer, a buffoon, a narcissist, and a world-class bully. He has shown every intention of becoming what nobody thought that he could become, indeed what no one thought anyone could every become in the United States. A dictator.
Does that sound extreme to you? Its extremity, if any, is only exceeded by the nature of many of Trump's decisions and statements. Consider the following partial listing:
As is well-known by now, Trump's favorite presidential activity is using his Twitter account to inflate his record and libel his opposition. Accordingly, he has attempted to use the "block" feature of Twitter to silence those who respond in opposition to his tweets. This led to a suit in Federal court and a judge's ruling that Trump's account is a public forum that cannot be allowed to exclude anyone from responding.
You might think that this ruling would be the end of the matter but, in Trump's America, you would be wrong. In fact, Twitter itself is wrong; since the judge's ruling, the social media site has been locking out anti-Trump accounts. Do you imagine Twitter would be doing this on its own? I don't. I think the impetus to do this comes straight from the West Wing.
And, at any rate, the fascism expressed in all of this is not in isolation from Trump's other recent actions. He has demanded that the Washington Post, a newspaper that has been highly critical of him on a number of fronts, register as a lobbyist because of its supposed Democratic leanings. Anyone who has read the Post in the decades after the paper's Watergate coverage knows that it has been anything but easy on Democrats. Nevertheless, this is what Trump really is working toward here: a national press that he can control, censor, and otherwise manipulate so that it will always be friendly to him, just as it is to dictatorships in other countries where news outlets are "registered."
He is not alone in his administration in attempting to censor the press. His EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, barred reporters from CNN and the Associated Press from attending a national summit on harmful contaminants, to the point of physically restraining them from entering the EPA building.
Trump has gone, at least verbally, beyond the issue of mere restraint to suggest that, if you don't live up to his definition of patriotism, you should leave the country. This, of course, was in the context of his opposition to NFL players who kneel during the playing of the National Anthem at games, to protest violence against African-Americans. To protest that, and not the flag, the Anthem, or even Trump personally.
And, when Trump thinks you should leave the country, he truly thinks that should happen "by any means necessary." You need only to look at his treatment of immigrants--the most American aspect of America--to see how far he is willing to go in his inhumanity to our fellow humans. He has deliberately separated parents from children at our border with Mexico, on such a scale that the babies literally have their own buses, courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has required the use of yellow bracelets to identify the parents of these children (sound familiar?). And even this level of efficiency hasn't prevented Trump from losing track of nearly 1,500 children who arrived unaccompanied at the border.
Trump's corruption of our most basic values has begun to destroy the fabric of other American institutions as well. Sadly, the NFL is a prominent example; its recent decision to divide players between those who will stand for the Anthem and those who won't, with the latter exiled to the locker room for the duration of the Anthem, is an example of how to compromise the First Amendment without even talking to the affected players or acknowledging the controversy that led players to start kneeling in the first place. Far from affirming the unifying power of the Anthem, the league has allowed Trump to weaponize both it and the First Amendment. This, despite the fact that the NFL is a non-profit organization (!) that, by law, is constrained in its ability to express any political speech, and has so little respect itself for the Anthem that it prefers using its playing as spots for advertisers. (It does have a few heroes in it, however; see here.)
Trump's corruption has descended all the way down to the citizen level. allowing individuals to insult and assault people who are guilty of no other crime except that of not being white males. Oh, and Christians, of course. Let's not forget them, especially the ones who want to make their beliefs as mandatory for the rest of us as possible.
Is this the America you want to live in? Is this the America that those we remember on Memorial Day died for? Do we want to ensure that their sacrifices were for nothing?
Please don't let that be the case. For the sake of my absent family and friends, and for yours, please get out there, one way or another, and resist the tyranny that is slowly creeping around all of us, and is threatening to make the greatest experiment in the history of democracy just another failed empire consumed by the base desires of a few, instead of the hopes and dreams of everyone.
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