Words

(7 minute read)

Culminating event

            This post has a point, it’s just going to take a minute to get there.  Just a little bit of my history and approach to life. 

            For a number of years, I was an activist with a group of union members working for reform in a labor union.  To oversimplify we opposed what is called business unionism.  We referred to the leaders of labor unions as the administrative caucus.  Long story short.  We spent a lot of personal funds and put in an incredible number of hours in addition to holding down our regular jobs trying to make our union more democratic and responsive to the needs of the rank and file. 

We were mostly unsuccessful, however we did achieve a small measure of success in court.  The court ruled that the union had to inform members of their legal rights under specific labor  law.  (Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 as amended [LMRDA].)  We had found out what union officials salaries were through federal filings they were required to make under the LMRDA.  Then we told people.  The administrative caucus of the union took it personally.

            I did make it to retirement even though at times we ended up fighting/dealing with the union as well as a major corporation.  MaHOGony row did not hold us in high esteem to put it mildly.  Fortunately, when the company division that I worked at was sold off I was old enough and had sufficient years in to retire, because I would not have been hired by the newly formed company.  The same managers were in charge.  A lot of former “dissidents” were not hired.

            The reason that I bring this up is that there was a lot of ugliness directed at us as a group and individually including violence and vandalism.  How do you categorize cutting a vehicle’s brake lines?  There were obscene phone calls at all hours of the day and night.  Union members of the administrative caucus tried to get us fired even though we were “brothers” and “sisters” of the same union.  Threats of violence included a threat of being bombed.  That threat came from a union rep while on company property.  (He was drunk.)  A favorite threat for their supporters to make was, “we know where you live!”  There were variations.  The threats were intense enough that I sent my kids to my ex-wife one time after a particularly rough contract negotiation.

            Then came a drive-by shooting at our house after a threat against one of our members while at a union office.  They were escalating.  Our group of dissidents disbanded not long after that.  Things were getting way deeper than what the majority of our group had considered possible even though they had been warned. 

            I also have experience in civilian politics.  There were a couple of times that I was elected to office while living in a small city.  There wasn’t anything that even came close to the ugliness of union politics.

            There was a constant escalation of union rhetoric against us as the prominence of our dissident union group grew.  Things got a lot more interesting when we reached out to other locals nationally.  The union administrative caucus upped their game considerably.  The “poison pen” handbills and information that they circulated around the country called us Nazis, Commies, Socialists, Sexists, Racists, etc.  Think of an “ist” and they called us that.  People that we didn’t know and had never met hated, and I mean hated, our guts.  The international union President had a letter about me read at not only our local but all the locals in our state.  The letter was untruthful.  Completely.  We simply didn’t have the resources to fight back at so many different levels.  People were making up stuff faster across the country on a larger scale than we could answer it.

            The people that hated us had no reason to believe otherwise.  Their union sources of information had one story and that was that we were bad people that needed to be stopped at any cost.  The story, lies about us, was being told at every level involving union officials.  The supporters of the administrative caucus were seeing that their threats of violence were being sanctioned.  They believed based upon what they thought they knew to be the truth that their actions were justified.

That was then.

This is now.

            We saw the culmination of lies of the Trump Republican Party on January 6, 2021.  Our Capitol was stormed and breached by them to overturn the lawful and legitimate vote of “we the people.”  These people believed, and millions still do, that the election was stolen from the leader of their cult, ex-president Trump.  Hard to believe in this day and age of development but nevertheless here we are.

But the groundwork for violence was being laid throughout Trump’s term in office.[i]  It started with the constant vilification of anyone that disagreed with him and his playing up how he valued the dictators like Putin, Un, Xi, Orban, Bolsonaro, etc. and the way that they ruled.  He has encouraged and supported physical violence against adversaries.  Trump used the office of President not to just use the bully pulpit but to actually bully those around him.

            Election workers are quitting because of the threats and bullying that has been done not only to them but their families as well.  People have left office or are declining to run for office because of the threats and intimidation.  That’s how bullies work.  Trump Republicans excel at doing it.

            The pandemic science deniers increased their violence at the local levels of government and up the governmental chain.  They showed up with guns including long guns whenever possible with the sole goal of intimidation to accompany their threats of violent action against those they had singled out as being in opposition to their leader and his desires.  Their opposition was portrayed as child traffickers, pedophiles, immigrants, murderers, traitors, Nazis, etc.  Teachers were/are portrayed as groomers of children.  Education along with history is their enemy.  White slavers are to be remembered and honored for trying to overthrow democracy.  They are the true victims just like their glorious leader.  Trust no one, believe no one except for the ones anointed by the glorious leader.  The government of “we the people” is their enemy.  Our country is the greatest except we’re the worst.  It is everyone else that isn’t them that is their enemy.

God is on their side.

The way

            Trump showed the way.  The Republican Party has been working on changing our form of government to get back to our “original” roots for decades.  Trump simply came along at the right time to reap what they had spent years sowing distrust of our form of government.  Their problem was/is that he took charge of the white victimology belief.  I had predicted back in November of 2015 that Trump couldn’t win.  To be fair even Trump thought that he couldn’t win towards the last.  This was prior to mainstream media enabling him with a couple of billion dollars worth of free campaign advertising.  It’s poetic that once he attained office, he turned on them.  He recognized their danger of presenting the truth and the truth doesn’t serve him well. 

            The truth of Trump didn’t serve the rest of humanity either and a man was elected President that had been in a soft porn film, along with a wife that had posed oiled up naked in a photo shoot with another woman, in addition to being photographed naked on Trump’s plane with Trump watching and supported by right-wing Christian evangelicals—as their orange Jesus.

He won.

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[i] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/nov/01/amy-klobuchar/election-officials-lawmakers-congress-have-faced-i/