Tag: nazi

The Real Reasons Nazism is Rising in America

 

If you think, that the hatred of Obama, the hatred toward progressives, and the rise of Nazism in America today is really about economics or America’s standing in the world, or abortion, or anything other than two words, you are wrong. Dangerously wrong. Let’s just cut past the BS and speak the ugly words that are at the root of America’s peril today. The words are RACIAL HATE,  and BIGOTED HATE.

            Barack Obama was America’s first black President. He didn’t divide America. Racial hate as a result of his election divided and still divides America.

            Same sex marriage was affirmed and transgender citizens were confirmed to have the same rights as ‘straight’ whites.

 

            The tragedy, the murder, that took place in Charlottesville as the result of the city being attacked by KKK and Nazi white supremacists, proves it.

            Donald Trump’s response proves it.

            What is this “Great America” the far right wants reinstated? It’s the nineteen forties and fifties and early sixties. It’s the period between 1945 and the Civil Rights Movement of the nineteen sixties, when Jim Crow rode high and proud and roughshod over the African American community. It’s the America before the courts and the bulk of society stood up and said that black Americans have the same rights as white Americans.

            It’s the era before the LGBTQ community found the courage, and support, to come out of the closet. It’s the America before the bulk of society, and the courts, stood up for the law against the bible and affirmed that those with a different sexuality were human Americans too, and deserved the same rights as straight Americans 

            America’s standing in the world, and its leadership, were high at the end of the Obama era. It took the Trump administration less than six months destroy that, perhaps for a generation at least.

            The economy? Forget about it. Barack Obama’s policies improved America’s economy throughout the latter half of his first term and all of his second. Don’t believe me? Check it out.

            The ACA? Please. It if was really so bad it would have been long gone by now. The Affordable Care Act was, and is, successful to a degree that Republicans can’t come up with a better plan. The problems associated with it, namely rising rates, lies directly at the feet of a Republican controlled Congress determined to undermine it by threatening to not make government payments to insurers as was intended. Well over 20 million additional Americans have health insurance thanks to the ACA.  Yes, some Americans also lost health plans due to premium raises. Why? See the first half of this paragraph.

            Nobody is perfect. Nobody, even Presidents, can please all of the people all of the time. Obama made some decisions that I disagreed with. None of them are justification for the ugliness we are seeing.

            But the frightening rise of the white supremacy movement, thugs carrying automatic rifles and shouting obscenities while waving the KKK banner and the Nazi flag, let me repeat that, THE NAZI FLAG, is due to three things.  

1. Racism, and the hate that goes with it;       2. Bigotry, and the hate that goes with it;

 3. a -God help us- President that agrees with it.

 

Musings on the New Fascism in America

Re: This Disastrous Election and the Fall of the Constitution. Mother Liberty Cries Today.

The morning after November 8, the newest day that will live in infamy, someone texted to me “You’re disappointed. I get that,” then went on to chastise me a bit, in a kind and caring manner. Allow me to correct their initial assumption.

I’m not disappointed. Don’t even think I’m disappointed. I get disappointed when the Cardinals lose. I get disappointed and upset when Mizzou loses. And loses.  And I then make bad jokes about it.  That’s disappointment.  This election is far different from that.
I am not disappointed. I am afraid. I am afraid for my, and your, America. I am afraid for my children and their children. I am afraid for the people of the world who depend on the strength and freedom and example that is America to support and help them through their own darkness and who now fear us.
I am not disappointed. I am mad as hell. I am beyond angry. I. am. furious. I am furious at the hateful people who think that if you’re black or brown or anything other than white you are second class, that you don’t deserve the same rights as white people.
I am enraged at people who think that LGBT people don’t deserve the same rights as ‘straight’ people. I am enraged that supposedly Godly people choose to denigrate and persecute and relegate to the shadows people who are not just exactly like them. I am livid that these people try to blame God and Jesus for their hatefulness and prejudice and persecution of people who are not members of their personal club.
I am livid that these people claim it’s God’s will when a woman dies in childbirth or gets raped or a child is born with horrible defects that ensure a lifetime of misery, but don’t care to consider it’s God’s will when a pregnancy is aborted for the mother’s health or to prevent a tragedy.
I am angry and horrified to realize that I live in a country where more than half the people ascribe to beliefs and hatefulness and persecution that can only be described as those of a Christian Taliban. Tulsa, say hello to Aleppo.
When these ‘people’ who claim God and Jesus as their own personal puppets, and try to force everyone in the country to accept and obey their own personal distortions, install as our President a man who has no scruples, who has been shown to be an abuser of women and of all those who fall under his power; a hot tempered bully who has no respect for anyone or anything but himself and has been shown to be devoid of any character or morality whatsoever, I am terrified. I boil when I see my country being overcome by the practitioners of exclusion, of hate and bigotry and racism, to the cheers of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
I shake my head and wonder if some people were out of the room when logic and reason were distributed, when I hear someone say, as they vote for a tyrant in waiting, “Well, you know, maybe a change is good.” A change from ‘love your neighbor,’ to ‘beat the hell out of your neighbor if they are not exactly like you,’ is a good change how, exactly.
And I know we are lost when I see how many people in the aftermath are willing to just sit back, flip the channel to a rerun of a ‘reality’ show, and blithely proclaim “Oh, it’s okay, I’ll just be quiet and float along with it until the next election.” I am in dismay for our Republic and for all of the nations in the world that depend on us for their hope, our help, and  our example. I marvel darkly at the ignorance and self-satisfaction of people who wanted this, and now say, “Oh man up.  You just lost an election. It’s not a big deal.” I know then that I’m having a conversation with someone I never want to have behind me. I know I’m talking to someone who champions the bullies and the exclusionists and thugs.
Because it is a big deal. Because it was not just another election, it was an election that put every great ideal our country rests upon at risk.  Because it was an election that instantly changed the world from one looking up to us,  to one peeking fearfully at us from behind their drapes with their lights turned off. Because it was an election that refuted freedom and equality and chimed in the believers of repression, bigotry, racism, and a single-minded,  extremist, hateful  arm of Christianity: The Christian Taliban. And because other Christians helped it to happen. Because it was an election that assured there will be a lot more room in that streets of gold in the Heaven Christians profess to believe in, because the other place suddenly looks a lot more attractive. Because huge numbers of those supposed Christians just looked Jesus in the face, and spat. Because it was an election that warned us you can just look at the photo above and change the names to Trump, and McConnell, and Ryan, and Pence and their cohorts. Good Christians all. Because now, once again, a hate and intolerance and brutal pettiness which we thought we had moved beyond, has risen again and threatens to consume us. Because millions of good Americans and immigrants now fear for their lives and their neighbors have ordained it.

Because even as you sip your beer and check the TV guide and sagely say it couldn’t happen here, it’s starting to happen here. France may want its statue back. I couldn’t blame them. But no, I’m not disappointed.