December 20, 2016

Resistance is Refusal. Resist.

Keith Olbermann, yesterday.


A partial transcript:
I'm Keith Olbermann and this is the resistance.

Our long national nightmare is starting. With the Electoral College presumably failing to do its duty as conceived under the Constitution (we won't know officially until the votes are counted on January six), Russia's puppet is probably now puppet-elect. So this changes everything.

No, it changes nothing.

These facts are the building blocks of resistance:
  • He is still elected by a minority vote. 
  • He's still wholly unfit for the job - the man you would expect to find if you are searching for the person who could most quickly and efficiently destroy a democracy and maybe a planet. 
  • He is still a moving breathing conflict of interest and will likely be guilty of an impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors within hours if not minutes of his own inauguration.
  • He is still a textbook case of corrupt self-dealing come to life.
  • He is still the leader of the most remarkable group of public service your self service ever assembled and most importantly Trump is still at best the local distributor for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Resistance means beginning with one simple act: refusing to legitimize illegitimate Authority.

[...]

It's a tautology of course but resistance then and now begins with resistance. You do not accept that which is not true.  More than half of republicans now refuse to believe Trump did not win the popular vote.  Resistance means find a Trump supporter everyday and remind them he [Trump] lost the popular vote.

[...]

Resistance means every public reference you make about him needs to underscore the fact that he was elected by a minority of the public and that his electoral college margin was the 46th largest of all time in other words the 13th smallest of all time. Trump is illiterate everyday.

[...]

Resistance means repetition. Humiliate him.  Humiliate him every day and those who support him.  We are in this nightmare because at some point we stopped punishing stupidity in this country.   We will not fix this core problem by appeasing the Cretans.  Besides which they will not be appeased.  They are too stupid to quit while they're ahead.  To borrow a Bush-era normalization of Terror, when you see something stupid call someone stupid.

[...]

And lastly this incoming administration rests on one inescapable truth and resistance means not moving on from it.  "A specter of treason hovers over Donald Trump" wrote Ambassador John Shattuck in the Boston globe in a piece not posted until late last Friday afternoon. John Shattuck was this country's ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1990 through 2000 before that he was assistant secretary of state for democracy human rights and labor.  "He has brought it on himself by dismissing the bipartisan call for an investigation of Russia's hacking of the Democratic National Committee as a ridiculous political attack on the legitimacy of his election as President."  In the Boston Globe the Ambassador outlined four possible explanations for Trump's dismissal of the investigation
  • That Trump was trying to shore up his political standing before the Electoral College voted. 
  • He was looking for leverage to use against the intelligence agencies once in office 
  • That he was testing his ability to convince the public that he and not the professionals knows the truth about national security threats and or 
  • that he is engaged in a cover-up of prior knowledge his or his campaigns of the Russian cyber attack.
"In each case the president-elect is inviting and interpretation that his behavior is treasonous the federal crime of treason is committed by a person 'owing allegiance to the United States who adheres to their enemies giving them aid or comfort' and misprision of treason is committed by a person 'having knowledge of the commission of any treason who conceals and does not disclose' the crime"

[...]

You don't have to use the "T-word." Others like "illegitimate" and "unelected" are nearly as good and there is also a passive-aggressive popular way to make this point clear.  It is like most of the points that finally defeated the Republicans of the Bush-era,  Those points succeeded not by suddenly knocking down walls but instead by eroding them as would a river.  Not using one word can be just as forceful as perpetually using another.

Never address Trump as president.  He is Trump.  Just Trump.  Never President.  The title of President?  That we must protect for a happier and more honest time.

Resistance means refusal.
Refuse. 

Resist.