The Seriousness of the Situation

Recently a cousin of mine wrote a post on Facebook expressing his concern that public health directives to wear face masks and observe social distancing would make him a sheep, blindly following the government’s orders.

He is worried about the tyranny of wearing face masks, but he is not worried that he is are already the willing sheep of a fascist government.

Trump claims he wants to “stop the insanity.” The insanity he wishes to stop is most of the American people demanding equality for black people, for indigenous people, for Latinx people, but mostly demanding that our police, who used to be called “peace officers,” stop killing people of color for no reason.

How dare we.

Protesters exercised their legal right to assemble peacefully. The police used their “crowd control” weapons, instigating violence where there was none.

Unfortunately, like the coronavirus, assholery is an equal opportunity employer, so we have had people going on violent rampages in Seattle, and elsewhere: Businesses attacked and vandalized, windows smashed, fires started, graffiti everywhere. This is the violence of which Trump accuses all protesters, labeling them, “domestic terrorists.” This is the “insanity” he wants to stop. The actions of a few are an invitation for him to send in his storm troopers. Not that he needed an invitation.

And oh yeah, some of those violent, destructive people? White supremacists, neo-Nazis, and QAnon geniuses, agitating for their “boogaloo,” using the protests as an opportunity to escalate violence among Americans.

The Homeland Security troops are thugs and goons. We have seen them in action in Portland, Oregon. Trump sends them only to cities whose mayors are Democrats. He is transparent about deploying his storm troopers as a political tactic to please his base, raise his polling numbers, and, he hopes, win the election in November.

His base loves seeing protesters getting beat up, shot, gassed, and otherwise injured.

Couple of weeks ago federal troops arrived in Seattle. The following day Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan held a press conference at which she said that she talked with Chad Wolf, the head of Homeland Security, the day before. He told her that he saw no need for sending federal troops to Seattle, and if they were sent, he would let Mayor Durkan know ahead of time.

The troops were in the air on their way to Seattle at the time of that phone call.

I hear that those troops have left now, after Mayor Durkan, Governor Inslee, and King County Executive Dow Constantine, the most visible of public leaders who objected to the troops’ presence, managed to convince whoever is in charge of their deployment that the troops were not wanted or needed here, and might escalate violence here as they have done in Oregon.

News reports are that Oregon Governor Kate Brown negotiated the departure of the federal troops from Portland. Portland has become a more peaceful place without them.

Supposing Trump loses the election in November. He has been open about saying that if he loses the election, he might refuse to leave the White House. Of course that is an extreme possibility. At least I hope it is. Trump is acting more and more like a cornered wounded animal.

Even if he loses the election, so much of the United States government is in ashes, so much of the Constitution has been trashed, so many fascist minions will be entrenched in government agencies and departments, and our population will still be divided almost in half. The Trump base will be mad as hell if he loses, and they have been emboldened these past four years to express their racism and act with violence.

They don’t mind fascism. They think it’s peachy, because the gestapo has not come for them or theirs yet.

If Trump wins, by hook or by crook (the latter, I’m thinking), our country will continue its downward plummet.

Even if he doesn’t win, so much of what used to be America is gone, and the rebuilding will take years, decades. That’s if enough people can keep their eyes on the prize and turn things around consistently for those years and those decades.

The United States was once the country that could call other countries to order. Now we have the fascist government so many of us have seen coming for years, and Americans are now judged the stupidest, and with the coronavirus out of control, literally the sickest people in the world.

I am sorry for our children, and our grandchildren, who will be inheritors of this sad, violent legacy.

My generation – yes, the infamous Boomers – had big ideas for the world, of making love not war, and giving peace a chance. We failed to do those things. We really did not grasp the seriousness of the situation.