America under Attack! Part I

 

 (5 minute read)

The truth needs to be told as often as the lie.

             The attack on America started before January 6, 2021.  I’ve written about the attack in other posts like the 1/6 post.  What happened was just the physical attempted coup d'état.[1]  Planning took place before then.  The “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol” reported on that.  They did an excellent job.  Their final report is well organized and well written.  It’s easily understandable. 

But the real attack on America and its institutions began way before that.  So, I’m going to talk about that as well as the January 6 attack but not in anywhere near the detail that they went into.  I’ll get more into the report in America under Attack Part II.

Just some high spots.

The short list: 

America is bad.!  Our government is corrupt![2]  There’s a Deep State running things!  Our elections are corrupt!  Our border is wide open and under siege!  Our justice system has been weaponized!  The government is weaponized against the American people!  Men in tactical camo gear with guns are walking in the streets, public buildings and government offices.  Rapists and murderers are pouring in across our open borders!  Our cities are in flames!  News is fake!  ANTIFA and BLM are tearing our country apart!  Our military is weak!  The world is laughing at us!  Our economy is destroyed!  News media lies!  Immigrants are getting Social Security and free health care!  (Bolsonaro?)  Our teachers are pedophile groomers!  Trust no one!  White people are victims!  Dems are pedophiles!  Dems are socialists!  Dems are evil!  George Soros is behind it all!  Jews are pulling the strings!  The Deep State is governing!  People on welfare are lazy!  Our nation is going to hell!  Bathrooms aren’t safe!  We’ve turned away from Jesus!  Our freedoms are being taken away!  Colleges are teaching socialism!  Is this the America you see?

This is the America they see.

Note:  If you read that list and believe even a small portion of that mythological garbage you should at least consider that you might be a Republican Neofascist and question your sources of information. 

Rural and small-town America, Republican Neofascists and Christian Nationalists eat this stuff up.  I’ll watch video of some MAGA head sitting in a comfortable home in suburbia talking about how bad America is doing and it’s coming apart at the seams.  A MAGA farmer in Iowa will talk about how horrible our open borders are!  And on and on, day in day out, they share their…

Dystopian[3] view of America.

Old is New

Fascists with covered faces once again marched in our streets.  They haven’t gone away.

Did they ever really go away?  Nazis/fascists have been around since before America entered WWII.  Nazis held a big rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939 attended by estimated 22,000 people.[4]  Hitler had the support of the churches in Germany with a couple of rare exceptions like Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer[5].  They are back in the streets again with their flags and their proponents are having dinner a Mar a Lago with their Duce, Donald J. Trump.

The largest secession group headquartered in Texas turned out to be run by the Russians.[6]  Russia is a dictatorship/oligarchy with Putin currently the leader.  His days are numbered but a fascist replacement is waiting in the wings.  Putin has the support of the Russian Orthodox church.  Trump asked for and received Putin’s help in 2016.  Trump would meet with Putin alone.[7]

Racists have been around since the founding of the United States.  Republican Neofascists like to call themselves Constitutional “originalists.[8]”  The right to own slaves was incorporated into our constitution.  The Confederate south rose up and fought a war for the “right” to own black people.  Then they kept People of Color down through segregation and the KKK.  The KKK has traded their hoods for face masks and are carrying their racist flags in the streets once again.

            All of the above-mentioned “master race” groups and more are under the same umbrella.  The Republican Neofascist Party has put together quite the disparate support group for their ideology and agenda.  What used to be the Republican Party has split into 2 distinct factions.  Conservative Republicans remain but they are in the minority.  And in Congress, if they’re there at all, they are cowed.  Republican Neofascists are the majority of the party and are now running things in the House of Representatives.  They actively pursue overturning our Democracy and its institutions.

It isn’t going to be pretty.

Messaging

MAGA fascists attack America every day.  They accuse.  They belittle.  They stay on message, which they share every day.  

I’m delivering the same message day after day as well.  I believe the lies of Fascists need to be called out as often as we can, wherever we can.

America is great.  We do have it better than the majority of humans living on earth.  That doesn’t mean that we can’t do better.  We can try as a nation to bring the almost 40 million people living in poverty in this country out of subsistence living.[9]  We can have health care for everyone.  We can provide an education for everyone.  We can continue making all religions safe from persecution and letting people believe or NOT believe as they choose.  We can tax the rich and corporations more than we tax working people. 

Republican Neofascists talk about making things better for “we the people” and then vote against doing that.  Democrats are at least trying to make things better for working people.  Republican Neofascists call that socialism.  I call it living up to the ideal of America.

We can do that.

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[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/coup-detat

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/10/house-vote-republicans-committee-investigate-government/

[3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dystopian

[4] https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-nazism-and-madison-square-garden

[5] http://www.dbonhoeffer.org/

[6] https://www.thebulwark.com/meet-the-texas-secessionist-movement-brought-to-you-by-russia/

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/us/politics/trump-putin-meetings.html

[8] https://www.britannica.com/topic/constitutional-originalism

[9] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.html