Signing up for organizations that want change is about all elderly Americans like myself have the energy to do. However, this is not likely to cut it. We are too civil nowadays. The politics of MAGA fascism involve extortion via threats of violence and actual violence - including using wealth to financially ruin those who dare defy the M…
Signing up for organizations that want change is about all elderly Americans like myself have the energy to do. However, this is not likely to cut it. We are too civil nowadays. The politics of MAGA fascism involve extortion via threats of violence and actual violence - including using wealth to financially ruin those who dare defy the MAGA Reich including mass firings both in government and the private sector.
To trigger change, one must fight fire with fire as AOC and Sanders are beginning to demonstrate. Civil letter-writing campaigns and donations to candidates is what got us into this mess. We, our neighbors, voted for the treasonous Sinemas, Manchins, and Fettermans as well as the MAGA majority in Congress. The DNC cannot even screw up the courage to kick that slob Fetterman out of the party. The GOP is as olde and useless as the current Democratic Party that is still dominated by wealthy old people like Pelosi. Ironic perhaps, olde Bernie Sanders is about the only true Democrat exception left on the Hill. He is not writing letters. He is out in the countryside with young AOC trying to stir up some action.
As I watched the recent Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown," there was a scene where Dylan walked down a NYC street after having run away from home. He was talking about his daily schedule, and mentioned attending CORE meetings. I thought to myself "Holy moley, I was just like that as a teen." In 1961, I too had technically run away from home, Whiteflightburbia, by convincing my folks to send me to a seminary prep school in downtown Chicago near Holy Name Cathedral.
Most of my 130 classmates and I were, marching for civil rights and opposing the Vietnam War. After school, many of us did volunteer work in Chicago's ghettos running organized activities for kids until their parents got home from work to help keep them out of trouble. At age 16, I was like a mascot for the Northside CORE, and like Dylan, now-n-then played my guitar at Saturday-night singalongs. I did not participate in the 1968 Democratic Convention protests because I was doing volunteer work in Southern Mississippi at the time. But many of my pals were there raising hell to try to wake up the Democratic Party "machine."
Eventually, the Civil Rights Act was passed. Eventually, right-inspired violence against protesters on college campuses like Kent State soured voters on the Vietnam War. Today, Trump's AG Blondy Bondi is threatening the prosecution of protesters as terrorists and deporting them to inhumane prisons in foreign countries. Police are once again beating students protesting MAGAs efforts to cripple voting rights, and trying to stop genocide in the Middle East enabled by a demented Democratic president and continued by a maniac fascist one.
It is hard to see how able-bodied Democrats joining letter-writing campaigns will stop the madness. If Americans do not fight fire with fire, democracy will continue to weaken as Trump's drill-baby-drill assault drills more and more holes into our government to let our democracy bleed out all over those ignored protest letters.
Signing up for organizations that want change is about all elderly Americans like myself have the energy to do. However, this is not likely to cut it. We are too civil nowadays. The politics of MAGA fascism involve extortion via threats of violence and actual violence - including using wealth to financially ruin those who dare defy the MAGA Reich including mass firings both in government and the private sector.
To trigger change, one must fight fire with fire as AOC and Sanders are beginning to demonstrate. Civil letter-writing campaigns and donations to candidates is what got us into this mess. We, our neighbors, voted for the treasonous Sinemas, Manchins, and Fettermans as well as the MAGA majority in Congress. The DNC cannot even screw up the courage to kick that slob Fetterman out of the party. The GOP is as olde and useless as the current Democratic Party that is still dominated by wealthy old people like Pelosi. Ironic perhaps, olde Bernie Sanders is about the only true Democrat exception left on the Hill. He is not writing letters. He is out in the countryside with young AOC trying to stir up some action.
As I watched the recent Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown," there was a scene where Dylan walked down a NYC street after having run away from home. He was talking about his daily schedule, and mentioned attending CORE meetings. I thought to myself "Holy moley, I was just like that as a teen." In 1961, I too had technically run away from home, Whiteflightburbia, by convincing my folks to send me to a seminary prep school in downtown Chicago near Holy Name Cathedral.
Most of my 130 classmates and I were, marching for civil rights and opposing the Vietnam War. After school, many of us did volunteer work in Chicago's ghettos running organized activities for kids until their parents got home from work to help keep them out of trouble. At age 16, I was like a mascot for the Northside CORE, and like Dylan, now-n-then played my guitar at Saturday-night singalongs. I did not participate in the 1968 Democratic Convention protests because I was doing volunteer work in Southern Mississippi at the time. But many of my pals were there raising hell to try to wake up the Democratic Party "machine."
Eventually, the Civil Rights Act was passed. Eventually, right-inspired violence against protesters on college campuses like Kent State soured voters on the Vietnam War. Today, Trump's AG Blondy Bondi is threatening the prosecution of protesters as terrorists and deporting them to inhumane prisons in foreign countries. Police are once again beating students protesting MAGAs efforts to cripple voting rights, and trying to stop genocide in the Middle East enabled by a demented Democratic president and continued by a maniac fascist one.
It is hard to see how able-bodied Democrats joining letter-writing campaigns will stop the madness. If Americans do not fight fire with fire, democracy will continue to weaken as Trump's drill-baby-drill assault drills more and more holes into our government to let our democracy bleed out all over those ignored protest letters.
Tom I thought that you were a retired Admiral