The News received an email this week that solicited me to become some kind of leader – a political thing, all folksy and faintly perfumed, referencing my non-existent past as a force to be reckoned with in local politics. The pitch described a plan to install a network of such leaders, in an effort to bring neighbors and friends into the daylight of Liberal democracy. Pretty typical stuff, but it struck a chord.
First of all, on the “leadership” score, and to paraphrase Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t want to lead anyone who might be fool enough to follow me. I have not engaged in leadership efforts since the old days of the Civil Air Patrol, where leadership appointments largely depended on having successfully transitioned puberty. Moreover, leaders are targets, and I have been instructed repeatedly, during various occasions of military and para-military training, to keep my goddamned head down.
Second, I’m way past all this kumbaya let’s-all-join-hands and go lead the MAGAs out of the wilderness. The MAGAs like the wilderness. They’re comfortable there, with the rocks and trees and all sorts of birds flying about uncooked. MAGAs coming out of the wilderness and putting on suits and walking into public buildings is exactly the thing we wish to avoid. Seriously. There’s been far too much of that, of late.
What is needed here, and what the ONS News now officially supports, is a Resistance movement – led by people trained in resistance tactics, cells armed with pens and swords to join the cause. We need an army to beat back the oppressive forces of unrestrained capitalism and the lying oligarchs who scapegoat the poor, the weak and the marginalized, as they and their billionaire friends scoop up and hoard an increasingly smaller pot of scarce resources. In sum, we need to fight back. A year from now likely will be too late.
I am not sanguine that a Resistance can be mounted, or succeed. For all the bitching and whining about inflation and housing prices and the death of the service economy, a majority of people still have it pretty good. We are in the glorious throes of the White Supremacist endgame, and mostly blind to the creeping apocalypse. You probably think you’re safe if you just keep YOUR goddamned head down. In the near term you’re probably right, as long as the atrocities don’t keep you awake at nights.
“Atrocities?” you say. “What atrocities? The News is making shit up!”
Here’s what’s coming. It’s right in front of you.
The cornerstone of American Democracy is the rule of law – the long history of jurisprudence where liberty has some sensible boundaries, precedence takes priority, and Federal law is ascendent over State law on matters of interstate concern. That cornerstone is badly chipped and crumbling. I don’t expect it to last much longer now.
We have a would-be Dictator for a Day openly flouting the rule of law, claiming that he is immune from the law because he says so. And those MAGAs, who have long despised the legal constraints on their crooked business dealings, resented limits on their relentless destruction of our environment, and protested restrictions on the paternalistic and violent domination of their spouses and children, are delighted that someone, finally, is standing up for their freedom to do whatever the fuck they please.
Who do we hate?
Queers, cross-dressers, cross-genders, poor people, and immigrants.
Why do we hate them?
Because the law protects them.
In state houses across this great nation, grubby little pseudo-Christians are rubbing their dirty hands together in glee as they turn the law on its head – to protect the corporations, tax the poor, make war on the “other,” turn away the lost, and destroy the open spaces.
Some noteworthy examples:
North Carolina is in the process of outlawing gender affirming-care and trans rights. The leading contender for Governor openly calls gay and trans people “filth.” The legislature is gradually, slowly but surely, dismantling the public school system and shuffling students into crypto-religious academies to be indoctrinated.
In Texas, the Governor is flaunting Federal control of the border, putting up razor wire and drowning women and children in the Rio Grande. Their openly-criminal Attorney General recently survived an impeachment proceeding on a party-line vote. The few members of his party who stood against him are now lining up to apologize.
In Oklahoma, a transphobic terrorist named Chaya Raichik has been appointed to serve on the Education Department’s Library Media Advisory Committee. Raichik (aka “Libs of TikTok” on Twitter, er, X, whatever . . .) specializes in inciting violent harassment towards hospitals and schools who support gay and trans-gender rights. She has the financial backing of some millionaire conservative named Seth Michael Dillon. She does not live in Oklahoma.[1]
There are dozens of other examples. We haven’t even touched on the coming pandemic of disease X, and/or the climate crisis approaching a tipping point that no one can locate in time or space.
What do you suppose will happen when the rules are written by criminals? Watch and see.
We need a Resistance. Of course, I don’t plan to lead it (see above). I’d gladly lend a hand, though – sternly worded letters, Molotov cocktails, that sort of thing. Got a plan? Get in touch. P.S. – no grassroots. I don’t make phone calls or visit door-to-door.
[1] https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/ok-charges-stochastic-terrorist-with-censoring-childrens-education
I like how you mix up articulate/erudite words with common vernacular and even curse words within the same sentence. It’s like a pitcher who can throw a fastball, slider, change-up, curveball, etc. on any pitch count. It’s just a cool style.