Thursday, July 23, 2020

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 10

“It’s a dark thing when the world sets no value on you or your kin, and then death comes stalking in, in his bloody boots.” Sebastian Barry, Days Without End


Trump Death Clock

84,589

Estimated U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Due To POTUS Inaction


Trump has his own force of Brownshirts now and they are deployed on the streets of Portland, Oregon, uninvited and unwanted by state and local authorities. Heavily armed, decked out in camouflage fatigues sans branch insignia or name plates, riding around in unmarked vehicles, their mission is to stir the cauldron of social unrest on behalf of our demented president. Trump is itching to demonstrate how to dominate the urban “battlespace” and show the enemies of our beautiful white republic how a real “strong man” operates. If largely peaceful protests and acts of legal civil disobedience can be turned into a street brawl, so much the better. The tactics are straight from the tattered authoritarian playbook; first light a small fire, fan it with armed goons, add copious amounts of gasoline, then ride in with the Law & Order brigade to put the conflagration out. 


Trump is an arsonist, his target is the Constitution.


Silence from the ranks of the GOP Death Cult of traitors, cowards, hypocrites, and opportunists. The rancid moonshine Republicans have been guzzling since 1994 (Newt Gingrich’s family recipe) has shrunk their hearts and muddled their brains, and now a majority of the party is indifferent to the suffering of others whose race, gender, or religious affiliation differs from theirs. They’ve got the power disease as bad as Southern Democrats had in 1857. They’ve convinced themselves that the blood running in the veins of some Americans is inferior to their own. 


Trump will send his Brownshirts to other cities where they will be as unwelcome as they are in Portland. The Orange Menace is desperate for a foe he can vanquish to lift his sinking reelection prospects; Covid-19 is far too formidable, and when it comes to the economy, the GOP will ride their nihilistic ideology into the fires of Hell before they marshall the resources of the government to help ordinary citizens weather the crisis that is barreling toward us. Trump’s betting the last of his chips on beating the mythical “radical left.” I wish we had a radical left in this country. 


The excesses of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 return to roost in 2020, and Democrats bear as much responsibility as Republicans for creating this monster in the first place. Misuse and abuse was an inherent danger of granting so much power to the executive branch in the name of “security.” That brand of power will inevitably be used for nefarious purposes by unscrupulous actors. Thanks, Congress. 


Trump is an arsonist, his target is the Constitution.


In the late 1880’s, when southern Democrats had reclaimed political power and derailed the lofty intentions of Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass urged his fellow Americans to “Remember that all the present rests on all the past.” Almost every day, Donald Trump tries to make Americans forget the present. After all these months, after all the insane pronouncements about the pandemic, after all the blaming of others, after all the denials, after all the suffering and deaths, after all his abuses of power, Trump still insists that he, and he alone, can defy gravity. 


He can’t, but Trump will go down swinging at his real and imaginary enemies. He will make our three-headed crisis -- pandemic, economic collapse, and police violence -- worse. With every passing day, America sheds its democratic skin and takes on the visage of a pathetic banana republic. Our political leaders, of both parties, have failed the nation, failed the people, and failed to do their Constitutional duty. 






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