The most frustrating arguments I have these days aren’t with Trumpanistas. They’re with people completely on ‘our side’.
The question isn’t ‘Is Donald Trump the worst thing (aside from slavery) that ever happened to America?’ The question is why are so many ‘informed’, progressive people so reluctant to fully embrace — and act upon — a simple, empirical fact?
Why are they so reluctant when their whole way of life is threatened. Not make believe threatened — For Real, No-Shit, No-Kidding Threatened. The kind you look back upon afterward and ask yourself, ‘Gee, considering how clearly and obviously threatened we were, why didn’t someone do something?’ That someone would be YOU, pal — and the why is YOU NORMALIZED THE THREAT.
The steady ‘Drip-Drip-Drip’ of Normalization. It is DEADLY.
Remember the feelings of outrage you felt over the words Donald Trump spoke about Mexicans on DAY ONE of his campaign? He said that about human beings he didn’t know, about AMERICANS (many of them) — hard-working, patriotic Americans.
The moment we didn’t stop what was happening and insist that Donald Trump’s campaign to be POTUS end right there, right then — he had us. It was over. We had just ACCEPTED — and therefore NORMALIZED overt racism and bigotry. It poked its nose into the Commonweal’s tent — saw no resistance — and so came right in and made itself at home.
When we next ACCEPTED ‘Pussy-Grabbing’ as ‘Just how this candidate talks about women‘ — we were gone, gone, gone. Now it was more than HALF THE POPULATION whose DEBASEMENT we ACCEPTED and NORMALIZED.
Authoritarians need the mob BEHIND THEM, not opposing them for this reason and that reason. Divide & Conquer is so basic even bad dictators usually get that one right. Donald Trump certainly did.
Donald Trump managed to get the wishes & desires of 16% of the American population — yeah, as a percentage of the whole American Population, that’s the sum total of hard core Trumpanistas. Throw in the fact that — with the assistance of Russia and Cynical RW White Christian Male Money — Election 2016 was fraudulent top to bottom and you get the recipe for an Authoritarian soft coup just the way the chefs drew it up.
Each little drip was bad enough. But those drips add up. Like now — into a whole trough FILLED with Malicious, Un-Democratic Intent. And the ‘Coffee Maker’ looks and smells like it’s about to explode.
Fer Christ’s Sake — Can we PLEASE turn the ‘coffee maker’ off before it shorts out and burns the whole house down?