After the last several years of “are you serious” living in the United States, I have no doubt that we don’t have to ever have to seriously worry about impeaching Donald Trump again.
I would be foolish to say he will never run again for president. Trump is a criminally ill narcissist so twisted, that he will threaten another trip down the magic escalator even from his jail cell or death bed.
But recently watching the achingly right states of Arizona and Nevada vote for progressive Democrats over their home-grown brand of twisted fascists restored my confidence in saying, “eventually, we’ll all be OK.”
Oh, yes. I’m confidently throwing out the political F-bomb there. Trump and failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake are outed, tried-and-true fascists.
Doubts? Check any expert definition you like, they all sound like this:
Fascism is ‘a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation brought on by supposed communists, Marxists and minorities and immigrants who are supposedly posing a threat to the character and the history of a nation.” That summary, which is like almost every other, came from Yale University philosophy professor Jason Stanley as told in a Sept. 6, 2020 NPR story.
If you know anyone who retold stories of life in Germany, Italy and Spain before and during World War II, you know how the fascist ideals and claims were at first scoffed at, then eye-rolled, then acknowledged, then widely accepted and then — well the story of fascism in our lifetime was cataclysmic.
In talking to my own family and other survivors about how people could ever believe such deluded things before World War II, and even later during the McCarthyism debacle in the 1950s and 1960s, the response was always the same: People were scared.
They were afraid of losing their jobs, like during the Great Depression. They were afraid of minorities owning businesses and homes and treating white people like so many white people treated minorities. They were afraid of Russia.
The common thread of all these fears were the overarching dread of someone taking something from you, directly or indirectly.
It’s an offshoot of the mentality that if someone wins, someone else must lose.
In reality, it doesn’t work that way. Black and brown people can own businesses, homes and even banks, and white people don’t have to worry about living in their cars or being red-lined out of a house.
We can send extra money to schools in Aurora where kids struggle more than others to read and do math, and it doesn’t mean that schools where kids don’t struggle as much will have to learn to read in dark, cold classrooms.
Spending Colorado tax money to boost the pay of nurses and doctors in rural Colorado, to ensure residents there can get medical services, doesn’t mean worse medical care in the cities.
Spending Aurora tax dollars on providing livable space for a homeless drug addict doesn’t mean we can’t pave the potholes in the streets. It also doesn’t mean that everyone will want to quit their jobs to become homeless drug addicts so they can have a free place to live.
Need a generations-long test that this kind of “socialism” won’t have us all saluting XI Jinping in new American Red Squares? Social Security. We all give to it. We all get something back from it. Creating Social Security didn’t prevent businesses from thriving, and it didn’t turn us all into communists, like conservatives of the day said it surely would.
We don’t have to be afraid to improve the lives of everyone, we just have to be committed and clever.
I think we’re on the way back to that. Colorado voters soundly rejected the unified war drum of fear most of the GOP candidates started pounding out a few years ago.
Republican District Attorney John Kellner, a reasonable, affable and dedicated prosecutor, didn’t even carry his home Arapahoe and Adams counties in his bid last week to unseat Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser.
Kellner boasted the partisan torch of “be afraid,” but he came across as relatively restrained and cogent compared to the antics of GOP Gubernatorial hopeful Heidi Ganahl. She saw “furry” conspiracies virtually everywhere and undeniable denier running mates trying to deny the undeniable all over the state.
I have faith that well-heeled and truly powerful Republicans will see there’s no future in Trump’s personal brand of fascism and flick him and his cronies aside, just like people did Il Duce and, just recently, Jair Bolsonaro.
No need to be coy. Call out lunacy and fascism when you see it so we can get back to the anguish of plain old partisan politics like we used to know it, and finally get stuff done.
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Good piece! It says a lot, but one thing I would like to add. Conservatives have taken to railing against the government as if they are not a part if it. Government serves the purpose of supplying goods and services that would otherwise not exist. It is filling utilitarian needs – those needs that benefit the most people. As long as government listens to the public and works to solve those issues, it will seem to be acting in an efficient manner to benefit the majority, which is a logical place to start with universal background checks for gun purchasers or codifying women’s right to natal healthcare. We have much work to do, but we need to come together to put Trump and his ilk firmly in the rear-view mirror!