On September 25th I went to a Leadership Institute training in the west suburbs sponsored by Awake IL, a local group, and Moms For Liberty, a national organization.
Just excellent! Prominently featured this piece in my comments on my Congressmen's FB pages (they're forbidden from deleting/blocking constituents) in urging fellow GOP-ers to Vote Blue to restore sanity to the GOP and kill off the GQP. I encourage others to do the same on their Congresspersons' FB pages:
Thank you! I appreciate that. So many of our GOP elected officials no longer seem to hear or heed anyone but the people screaming the loud lurid threats. It doesn't have to be this way. I do hope this dynamic changes, and the voices of those who sound like domestic terrorists aren't the ones calling all the shots (so to speak) forever going forward. Thanks for reading and commenting.
I came of age during Watergate, which drove home The Rule of Law to me, then later voted against Ford for pardoning Nixon.
Decades later, I was embarrassed and ashamed that ‘Murica’s Asshole Layer voted Trump into office.
Now I’m AGHAST that `Murica is about to (according to some polls) vote “Trump Spores” into more offices.
And it's downright demoralizing that thinking, caring Pols and pundits have decided to abandon what should be the marquee campaign issue: J-6 and the still ongoing attack against our democracy:
I’m deeply stressed that some of the stupidest, evilest jerks may well wind up governing us, and that asymmetrical “Civil War 2.0" may ensue. The fact that the incredible exposition of Trump’s treasonous criminality does not, on its own, derail him and his “mold spores” (the hundreds of Big Lie Trumpists running for office, and the millions of supporters) – that’s simply ball-crushing.
I thus doubly thank you for your contribution – it’s the most powerfully persuasive piece that I’ve read thus far, both because of its quality and who you are (a fellow conservative). It's why I posted it on all five GA Congressmen’s FB pages (yes, including MTG’s, though her district is beyond a lost cause, and in fact is a moral-social-political wasteland).
Finally, all of this obviously compels a message back in time to 1930s news editors and peaceful citizens in Germany: "Wake up! At some point voting, letters to the editor, and verbal persuasion must yield to preemptive, kinetic self-defense, lest the Brown Shirts simply liquidate you – on an individual-attack basis at first, then in wholesale slaughter fashion (death camps)."
I call that "Preemptive Defense," as perfected by the Israelis during the 1973 Arab/Israeli war (the IDF saw tank columns lining up and didn't wait for them to start shooting at Israel).
I now seriously ponder the unthinkable -- that in the too-near future, sane and reasonable Americans will be forced to ask: Is it wise to remain inside the "civility" box while watching evil-crazies arm and plan our demise? Wasn't "Team Normal" in the 1930s simply wrong to consume editorial ink while others loaded up machine guns?
November 8, 2022, shall be the cliff's edge -- whether and when America becomes `Murica.
If we slip over it into the abyss, what rational, moral responsibility will we have to ourselves, our families, and our nation? What will be a "civilized" response if The Law is controlled by the lawless, thus validating the truism that when The Law breaks the law, there is no law? When those who refuse to be reached by reality itself, but instead embrace wild, dark fantasies (Q-Anon) hold the Power of the State to misuse against us?
‘Muricans today and yesteryear's Brown Shirts demonstrate this much: All “advanced” societies will have an Asshole Layer. It’s just a matter of how thick and dangerous it’s grown. We were fine with KKK, skinheads, neo-nazies, etc. -- because they were always marginalized.
But now we’re already seeing (in Russia, and in MTG’s 14th District) how quickly “normal” folks can be turned into today’s Brown Shirts unreachable with reason, even reality.
Just as those who don't study, learn and maintain self-discipline succumb to default emotions (hate, xenophobic fascism, etc.), entire civilizations can putrify into toxic patriotism galvanized by twisted beliefs premised on calcified lies. Which is precisely what Team Crazy is doing, and may well bring the rest of us down with it.
I'm not tolerating that. I'm simply NOT going down without a fight.
My goodness, I certainly hope none of this comes to actual fighting. I have deep and abiding faith in our local communities and institutions--our neighborhood associations, public schools, places of worship, traditions. More than ever, we need to lean into the public good, keep believing in the public square, support civil discourse, and always be there for our neighbors. Americans have long done this. It doesn't always make headlines. But we can't lose trust in one another. (Note, I'm not saying we can't lose trust in our elected officials or in our police--most of them aren't worthy of it.) Even if the election comes out as badly as I am imagining, and I'm imagining a pretty terrible scenario, we will still have a winter ahead of us in which to support our neighbors who are food insecure, or help refugees that have been bussed to our neighborhoods by the unannounced fiat of some amoral red state governor; there will still be our elderly neighbor's stairs to shovel snow off of, there will still be kids' sports to attend and holiday cookie exchanges and local shops to patronize for the holidays. I am fully aware of how hokey this sounds but I deeply believe that we have a social fabric that is sewn together with a million more things beyond social media and it is critical that we support it, and each other, as best we can, as justly as we can, come what may.
I *am* worried--that our police are compromised, that more folks seem to be so much more racist than I ever knew (naive white lady that I am), that our schools will be dismantled, and that ordinary Americans who don't fit the narrow and hateful strictures of the present GOP will be constrained and harmed. But I still think this can be refuted and rejected and I intend to do so, arm in arm with my neighbors.
Vivid, and accurate, "spore" imagery you've got into my head! At least we know that bleach and light kill mold. Spores can be defeated with clean truth telling, one would hope. The complicit media does not help in this regard. It's up to us, talking to our families and neighbors.
As for how I can be classified politically, that is a tough question......I'm afraid that no one who knew me from Hillsdale--were they to talk to me at all--would call me a conservative anymore. I made the unspeakable error of voting for Obama and haven't voted (R) for president since. *I* think conservative principles guided me right out of the GOP, but my progressive friends would have a big laugh over that. So I have no political home now. That's okay. Political tribalism doesn't appear to be working very well, does it?
Thank you for your comprehensive and thoughtful reply. In the intervening months I’ve breathed a deep sigh of relief that America’s mid-term elections were spared the violence-prone, electoral chicanery that I feared – while the Red Wave was blunted.
The judiciary – democracy’s last line of defense – held up despite being partially Trumpified.
Sidenote: “Judgment At Nuremberg,” my favorite movie of all time, should be shown to all higher education students.
RE: “Spores can be defeated with clean truth telling, one would hope. The complicit media does not help in this regard. It's up to us, talking to our families and neighbors.”
I’m impressed that you’re as hopeful as you are about “talking to our families and neighbors,” despite the revelation that the J-6 Committee didn’t move the needle at ALL for most Republicans (recall, for that matter, that Fox refused to air the hearings).
And if that splendid production couldn't reach them, how do you suppose that "talking to our neighbors" could?
I agree that “we must support our neighbors” – that’s the Social Contract. We’re all in this together, especially during earthquakes and floods.
But I also believe that you would join me – in our hypothetical, time-machine-return to 1933 Germany – in whispering to that era’s German Intelligentsia: “Stop writing editorial columns against Nazism. The Brown Shirts are coming for you. And typewriters never triumph over machine guns."
True, 2023 USA is not 1933 Germany.
Yet.
But consider this, from your own essay: “More ominously, these parents getting swept along by the right wing activist current may or may not understand the rising fascism these groups represent. What does it look like? Awake IL requires an enemy (alternately "the gays," immigrants, "globalists," libraries/librarians, and/or school employees or board members), they require assent to obviously disprovable lies, they require silencing dissent and punishing those who do not uphold their vision, and they envision this punishment being inflicted by an authoritarian power.”
With uber-kudos to your meticulous “right-wing-watch” warning, we now face normalized, bald-faced lying by THE Republican Party (embraced by half the nation): Trump and his competitors (DiSantis, Haley, and doubtless a few more Clown Car occupants soon to announce).
That crazed mendacity, coated with moral sewage, is THE NORM for tens of millions of `Muricans now.
I thus do not share your “we can talk it out” optimism.
Still, please stay on task, OK? Truth Social, Fox, OAN, Lindell and the like now routinely flood the zone with obvious deceit and mind-spinning moral rot. And gifted, eloquent individuals like you are few and far between. You at least etch some truth into this arc of history.
Meanwhile, I no longer socially/morally tolerate, much less excuse, Trumpian adherents who’ve been fortunate to receive a formal education (I have condemned two, fellow lawyers who STILL support Trump) – which boggles my mind.
Finally, if the social fabric to which “civility” believers cling unravels into the “Civil War 2.0" that some warned of before the 2022 midterms, then I’ll learn to virtuously shoot actual, not just verbal bullets.
Which leads me to my question for you, given the Right Wing, Xtian Fascist reality that opened your eyes and led you to so eloquently describe their tactics, their Dark Money, and their unabashed declaration that power is everything, nothing else matters (even voting for a violent moron like Herschel Walker in my State):
How bad does it have to get before you yourself “go kinetic?”
Like, if theocracy arrived after a long frog boil, and “Gawd!” authorized the torture and execution of women like we see in Iran and Afghanistan, would you find it morally just to support The Women’s Liberation Army?
Further on that "morally justified, kinetic politics" theme, I've also recognized that Putler's war (because China’s Xi is a greedy slime) will not end anytime soon, so a “Final Solution” is now warranted:
I'd be curious whether you'd have any counterargument to that.
In my Quora profile ("James Christopher Desmond") you'll find a link to my Political Romance novels that turn on, among other things, Moral Conundra that no politician would ever have the balls to confront.
I do. And I’m converting the political philosophy explored in those books into a more mainstream iteration. You can contact me through that Quora site if you think you might want to jump in.
Alas, that's what's missing nowadays. Other than yourself, I almost never encounter anyone interested in confronting reality and applying the Acid Truth Politics necessary to repair the Trumptastical Rupture from which we've yet to recover.
Readers, the above commenter stated that I hadn't convinced her that I really was an old-school conservative. She deleted her comment after I wrote this response:
Well Avery, that's because you disregard data and base your conclusions on your feelings. (Thanks for demonstrating one of my points so very well.) I'm not trying to "convince" you, I'm telling you facts. Here's one more--I voted Republican in every election my entire life until 2008. (First vote cast proudly for Reagan in 1981, fyi.) Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.
Just excellent! Prominently featured this piece in my comments on my Congressmen's FB pages (they're forbidden from deleting/blocking constituents) in urging fellow GOP-ers to Vote Blue to restore sanity to the GOP and kill off the GQP. I encourage others to do the same on their Congresspersons' FB pages:
https://www.facebook.com/CongressmanBuddyCarter
https://www.facebook.com/CongressmanRickAllen
https://www.facebook.com/RepLoudermilk
https://www.facebook.com/CongressmanJodyHice
Thank you! I appreciate that. So many of our GOP elected officials no longer seem to hear or heed anyone but the people screaming the loud lurid threats. It doesn't have to be this way. I do hope this dynamic changes, and the voices of those who sound like domestic terrorists aren't the ones calling all the shots (so to speak) forever going forward. Thanks for reading and commenting.
I came of age during Watergate, which drove home The Rule of Law to me, then later voted against Ford for pardoning Nixon.
Decades later, I was embarrassed and ashamed that ‘Murica’s Asshole Layer voted Trump into office.
Now I’m AGHAST that `Murica is about to (according to some polls) vote “Trump Spores” into more offices.
And it's downright demoralizing that thinking, caring Pols and pundits have decided to abandon what should be the marquee campaign issue: J-6 and the still ongoing attack against our democracy:
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/democrats-2022-midterms-jan-6-campaign-strategy-rcna55334?cid=nt_npd_ms_as_ms_220127
I’m deeply stressed that some of the stupidest, evilest jerks may well wind up governing us, and that asymmetrical “Civil War 2.0" may ensue. The fact that the incredible exposition of Trump’s treasonous criminality does not, on its own, derail him and his “mold spores” (the hundreds of Big Lie Trumpists running for office, and the millions of supporters) – that’s simply ball-crushing.
I thus doubly thank you for your contribution – it’s the most powerfully persuasive piece that I’ve read thus far, both because of its quality and who you are (a fellow conservative). It's why I posted it on all five GA Congressmen’s FB pages (yes, including MTG’s, though her district is beyond a lost cause, and in fact is a moral-social-political wasteland).
Finally, all of this obviously compels a message back in time to 1930s news editors and peaceful citizens in Germany: "Wake up! At some point voting, letters to the editor, and verbal persuasion must yield to preemptive, kinetic self-defense, lest the Brown Shirts simply liquidate you – on an individual-attack basis at first, then in wholesale slaughter fashion (death camps)."
I call that "Preemptive Defense," as perfected by the Israelis during the 1973 Arab/Israeli war (the IDF saw tank columns lining up and didn't wait for them to start shooting at Israel).
I now seriously ponder the unthinkable -- that in the too-near future, sane and reasonable Americans will be forced to ask: Is it wise to remain inside the "civility" box while watching evil-crazies arm and plan our demise? Wasn't "Team Normal" in the 1930s simply wrong to consume editorial ink while others loaded up machine guns?
November 8, 2022, shall be the cliff's edge -- whether and when America becomes `Murica.
If we slip over it into the abyss, what rational, moral responsibility will we have to ourselves, our families, and our nation? What will be a "civilized" response if The Law is controlled by the lawless, thus validating the truism that when The Law breaks the law, there is no law? When those who refuse to be reached by reality itself, but instead embrace wild, dark fantasies (Q-Anon) hold the Power of the State to misuse against us?
‘Muricans today and yesteryear's Brown Shirts demonstrate this much: All “advanced” societies will have an Asshole Layer. It’s just a matter of how thick and dangerous it’s grown. We were fine with KKK, skinheads, neo-nazies, etc. -- because they were always marginalized.
But now we’re already seeing (in Russia, and in MTG’s 14th District) how quickly “normal” folks can be turned into today’s Brown Shirts unreachable with reason, even reality.
Just as those who don't study, learn and maintain self-discipline succumb to default emotions (hate, xenophobic fascism, etc.), entire civilizations can putrify into toxic patriotism galvanized by twisted beliefs premised on calcified lies. Which is precisely what Team Crazy is doing, and may well bring the rest of us down with it.
I'm not tolerating that. I'm simply NOT going down without a fight.
Onward!
My goodness, I certainly hope none of this comes to actual fighting. I have deep and abiding faith in our local communities and institutions--our neighborhood associations, public schools, places of worship, traditions. More than ever, we need to lean into the public good, keep believing in the public square, support civil discourse, and always be there for our neighbors. Americans have long done this. It doesn't always make headlines. But we can't lose trust in one another. (Note, I'm not saying we can't lose trust in our elected officials or in our police--most of them aren't worthy of it.) Even if the election comes out as badly as I am imagining, and I'm imagining a pretty terrible scenario, we will still have a winter ahead of us in which to support our neighbors who are food insecure, or help refugees that have been bussed to our neighborhoods by the unannounced fiat of some amoral red state governor; there will still be our elderly neighbor's stairs to shovel snow off of, there will still be kids' sports to attend and holiday cookie exchanges and local shops to patronize for the holidays. I am fully aware of how hokey this sounds but I deeply believe that we have a social fabric that is sewn together with a million more things beyond social media and it is critical that we support it, and each other, as best we can, as justly as we can, come what may.
I *am* worried--that our police are compromised, that more folks seem to be so much more racist than I ever knew (naive white lady that I am), that our schools will be dismantled, and that ordinary Americans who don't fit the narrow and hateful strictures of the present GOP will be constrained and harmed. But I still think this can be refuted and rejected and I intend to do so, arm in arm with my neighbors.
Vivid, and accurate, "spore" imagery you've got into my head! At least we know that bleach and light kill mold. Spores can be defeated with clean truth telling, one would hope. The complicit media does not help in this regard. It's up to us, talking to our families and neighbors.
As for how I can be classified politically, that is a tough question......I'm afraid that no one who knew me from Hillsdale--were they to talk to me at all--would call me a conservative anymore. I made the unspeakable error of voting for Obama and haven't voted (R) for president since. *I* think conservative principles guided me right out of the GOP, but my progressive friends would have a big laugh over that. So I have no political home now. That's okay. Political tribalism doesn't appear to be working very well, does it?
Thank you for your comprehensive and thoughtful reply. In the intervening months I’ve breathed a deep sigh of relief that America’s mid-term elections were spared the violence-prone, electoral chicanery that I feared – while the Red Wave was blunted.
The judiciary – democracy’s last line of defense – held up despite being partially Trumpified.
Sidenote: “Judgment At Nuremberg,” my favorite movie of all time, should be shown to all higher education students.
RE: “Spores can be defeated with clean truth telling, one would hope. The complicit media does not help in this regard. It's up to us, talking to our families and neighbors.”
I’m impressed that you’re as hopeful as you are about “talking to our families and neighbors,” despite the revelation that the J-6 Committee didn’t move the needle at ALL for most Republicans (recall, for that matter, that Fox refused to air the hearings).
And if that splendid production couldn't reach them, how do you suppose that "talking to our neighbors" could?
I agree that “we must support our neighbors” – that’s the Social Contract. We’re all in this together, especially during earthquakes and floods.
But I also believe that you would join me – in our hypothetical, time-machine-return to 1933 Germany – in whispering to that era’s German Intelligentsia: “Stop writing editorial columns against Nazism. The Brown Shirts are coming for you. And typewriters never triumph over machine guns."
True, 2023 USA is not 1933 Germany.
Yet.
But consider this, from your own essay: “More ominously, these parents getting swept along by the right wing activist current may or may not understand the rising fascism these groups represent. What does it look like? Awake IL requires an enemy (alternately "the gays," immigrants, "globalists," libraries/librarians, and/or school employees or board members), they require assent to obviously disprovable lies, they require silencing dissent and punishing those who do not uphold their vision, and they envision this punishment being inflicted by an authoritarian power.”
With uber-kudos to your meticulous “right-wing-watch” warning, we now face normalized, bald-faced lying by THE Republican Party (embraced by half the nation): Trump and his competitors (DiSantis, Haley, and doubtless a few more Clown Car occupants soon to announce).
That crazed mendacity, coated with moral sewage, is THE NORM for tens of millions of `Muricans now.
I thus do not share your “we can talk it out” optimism.
Still, please stay on task, OK? Truth Social, Fox, OAN, Lindell and the like now routinely flood the zone with obvious deceit and mind-spinning moral rot. And gifted, eloquent individuals like you are few and far between. You at least etch some truth into this arc of history.
Meanwhile, I no longer socially/morally tolerate, much less excuse, Trumpian adherents who’ve been fortunate to receive a formal education (I have condemned two, fellow lawyers who STILL support Trump) – which boggles my mind.
Finally, if the social fabric to which “civility” believers cling unravels into the “Civil War 2.0" that some warned of before the 2022 midterms, then I’ll learn to virtuously shoot actual, not just verbal bullets.
Which leads me to my question for you, given the Right Wing, Xtian Fascist reality that opened your eyes and led you to so eloquently describe their tactics, their Dark Money, and their unabashed declaration that power is everything, nothing else matters (even voting for a violent moron like Herschel Walker in my State):
How bad does it have to get before you yourself “go kinetic?”
Like, if theocracy arrived after a long frog boil, and “Gawd!” authorized the torture and execution of women like we see in Iran and Afghanistan, would you find it morally just to support The Women’s Liberation Army?
What's that, you ask? Here:
https://sites.google.com/site/workingsurface/home
Further on that "morally justified, kinetic politics" theme, I've also recognized that Putler's war (because China’s Xi is a greedy slime) will not end anytime soon, so a “Final Solution” is now warranted:
https://sites.google.com/site/workingsurface/war-without-limits
I'd be curious whether you'd have any counterargument to that.
In my Quora profile ("James Christopher Desmond") you'll find a link to my Political Romance novels that turn on, among other things, Moral Conundra that no politician would ever have the balls to confront.
I do. And I’m converting the political philosophy explored in those books into a more mainstream iteration. You can contact me through that Quora site if you think you might want to jump in.
Alas, that's what's missing nowadays. Other than yourself, I almost never encounter anyone interested in confronting reality and applying the Acid Truth Politics necessary to repair the Trumptastical Rupture from which we've yet to recover.
Onward!
Readers, the above commenter stated that I hadn't convinced her that I really was an old-school conservative. She deleted her comment after I wrote this response:
Well Avery, that's because you disregard data and base your conclusions on your feelings. (Thanks for demonstrating one of my points so very well.) I'm not trying to "convince" you, I'm telling you facts. Here's one more--I voted Republican in every election my entire life until 2008. (First vote cast proudly for Reagan in 1981, fyi.) Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.