Deep Shit

Republicans and the Right have always claimed to be in favor of "small government." Their biggest argument for the Second Amendment of our Constitution has been that people need their guns in case government gets out of hand. And yet, we see that they have absolutely no problem with the President of the United States sending in not only the National Guard against a state's governor's wishes, but actual Marines into a state to stop protests by citizens. Protests, mind you, that only cover a few square blocks and that the police of that city were handling and did not request or need help dealing with.

Moreover, not a few, have expressed the desire for troops to actually kill the protesters. They actually revel in the thought of this. 

I have to say that I'm not surprised at this. Most now look back in horror at the shootings at Kent State. However, I was in 5th grade when Kent State happened and was going to school in Westmoreland County, which if you don't know, is in what is called The T in Pennsylvania, which is a red part of the state. I remember when we discussed the shootings in class, I was horrified to find out that the majority of my classmates expressed the belief that if the students were shot then they must have been doing something wrong. I am sure they got this from what they had heard their parents saying. 

In other words, not much has changed in their attitudes. 

But, we have to realize that a whole lot has changed in our political environment. 

For example, if Trump did a Watergate now, would he even be impeached over it? Trump's list of crimes as president make Nixon look like a novice in comparison. 

And now, we know that we couldn't, say, count on The Washington Post to hold him to account, nor much of the other mainstream media. Oh sure, there might be some headlines for a day or two, but there would be five or six other scandals that would quickly take its place. 

Worse still, perhaps the majority of Americans don't even trust the media anymore. And, Nixon did not have a Fox News pumping out propaganda in his favor on a 24/7 basis. He also didn't have media which were completely cowered by his threats.

And that I believe is Trump's biggest sin: Convincing the American public that they can't believe objective facts. Facts don't exist anymore. Anything can be "fake news." 

Vaccines? They're poison. Immigrants? There's 20 million of them who came into this country in the past four years and they're all murderers and rapists and gang members. A president who can sell meme coins and accept a $200 million golden airplane from a foreign country? This has nothing to do with grift.

We also now have social media and AI. Social media provides a place for the worst ideas to fester and amplify and for people to gather. We didn't have the richest man in the world egging it all on back then and algorithms pushing it all further. We didn't have AI providing even the most design and visually challenged Joe Schmo a way to create endless visually appealing propaganda. Propaganda that apparently the average person can't even tell is not real. We didn't even have endless video and photographs at everyone's fingertips where they can push visuals from years ago claiming that it happened today.

And on top of this, Nixon did not have a Supreme Court who said that anything he did while President was basically legal.

We are in deep shit, people.

All I know is that everyone who still cares about democracy must fight back in any way that they can. 

Protest? Yes! Call and write your representatives? Yes! Document the lies on social media? Yes! Hold the media to account? Yes! Talk to your friends and relatives? Yes! Use your privilege to stand up for those who can't? Yes, yes, yes!

Do whatever is in your power. Do whatever you can or we will be lost forever.