Carol Anderson - Trump's regime is leading America in an insurrection
NB: In 1939, the senior Nazi deserter Hermann Rauschning wrote a book called The Revolution of Nihilism. (It was republished sixteen times in four months). One of his memorable sentences was: The temptation of our day is to accept the intolerable, for fear of still worse to come. Yes, Trump is leading a racist-conservative assault on his country's institutions, and many who were (justifiably) disgusted with 'normal' American politics have tended to support this assault. Some people of left-wing persuasion are among this cohort. Such is the decline of democratic values that we swing from pessimism to crypto-Nazism without batting an eyelid. Incidentally, the RSS has been doing the same here - only with greater sophistication and sophistry. Let us see where 'popular wisdom' leads us. DS
On Friday, Donald Trump praised Robert E Lee. Slaveholder. Sadist. Traitor. Loser. It was his way of offering another “attaboy” to the neo-Nazis that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, even after they killed Heather Heyer, beat an African American man, and chanted“Jews will not replace us.”
On Friday, Donald Trump praised Robert E Lee. Slaveholder. Sadist. Traitor. Loser. It was his way of offering another “attaboy” to the neo-Nazis that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, even after they killed Heather Heyer, beat an African American man, and chanted“Jews will not replace us.”
Trump’s statement was
a clear nod
to his base. That would be the same base that sent pipe
bombs to the Clintons, Obamas, congressional Democrats and CNN. The
same base that gunned
down African Americans at a grocery store in Kentucky after failing to
gain entrance to a black church.
The same base that killed
Jews while in Pittsburgh and then followed up with another slaughter
in Poway,
California. The same base that burned
down three black churches in Louisiana and the storied civil rights
center, the Highlander
Folk School. The same base that had a hitlist
of Democrats, including Representative Maxine Waters, and an arsenal of
weapons to do the job. The same base that pretends
to be border patrol as
it kidnaps and cages human beings and defies law enforcement to do anything
about it. The same base that invaded a bookstore in a tony section of
Washington DC to intimidate
an author who was laying out the pathology that places whiteness above
everything else, even living.
America is in the
middle of an insurrection. Led this time by another rogue government, only this
one is not ensconced in Montgomery or Richmond. The architects of rebellion are
in the White House.
While they have ignited the base by conjuring up a vision of whiteness imperiled by “illegals” crashing the US/Mexico border, “black identity extremists” gunning for the police, and terrorists who, apparently, can only be Muslim, they haven’t stopped there. In a multi-front attack, Trump’s regime has laid siege to the very pillars of America – elections, the rule of law, “We the People” and the constitutional bedrock that Congress and the judiciary are co-equals with the executive branch.
While they have ignited the base by conjuring up a vision of whiteness imperiled by “illegals” crashing the US/Mexico border, “black identity extremists” gunning for the police, and terrorists who, apparently, can only be Muslim, they haven’t stopped there. In a multi-front attack, Trump’s regime has laid siege to the very pillars of America – elections, the rule of law, “We the People” and the constitutional bedrock that Congress and the judiciary are co-equals with the executive branch.
In the process, the
White House has dared Congress to fire back. There was that moment while
testifying before the House financial services committee, when the treasury
secretary, Steven Mnuchin, sneered at Representative Maxine Waters that if she
continued to “grill him” and make him miss a meeting, that “I
will not be back here. I will be very clear.” That defiance also included
blowing right past a congressional deadline, despite the clarity
of the law, to release Trump’s
tax returns. Also “indelible
in the hippocampus” is supreme court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh’s snarling at US senators for daring to ask him about the
things that make a person unfit to be on the highest court in the land. And,
while sworn to uphold the constitution of the United States, the attorney
general, Bill Barr, “misrepresented
key points”, “truncated” sentences and omitted the context of the Mueller
report’s findings, while refusing to release an
unredacted copy to congressional members who have the highest security
clearance... read more:
