Woof. What a forever it's been, folks. The mean tangerine machine has been listing his picks for his bigot brigade and they are…what's worse than bad? Really, really bad? Trash fire on a rubber tire mountain bad? Just like, a bunch of negative adjectives that indicate the opposite of good. So obviously, I have a few thoughts on this blatant fascist.
First off, we need to talk about how this is blatant fascism because we, the United States, have a long history of using fascist tactics to enable the state and justify its actions. Fascism is not new in this country. Spreading fear and contempt, negatively generalizing ethnic groups and races by 'othering,' religion in government is fascist territory. It's the first steps of genocide. Every single time. And we've got a history of that too. America has a higher death toll from our ongoing genocide of Indigenous Nations and black people than the oft-quoted Hitler and his holocaust (which also was very, very bad). What I'm getting at here is while it might be good for the sensationalism and the obvious parallels, comparing Trump to Hitler is disingenuous considering our history. It's an attempt to distance ourselves from our problem. And when we, white people, stick our fingers in our collective ears and hum loudly it lets problems go unsolved.
What else lets these problems grow? Well, definitely white apathy. I mean if Clinton had won, would we be seeing so much white indignation? She wasn't quoting Mussolini and vocally gunning for an ethnic purge but she would have continued to uphold a lot of the current laws (which she in part, worked on) and systems that have been targeting undocumented people, black people, indigenous people and Muslims. This shit has been going on, without white people pledging to care. Again, it wasn't immediately threatening white people so we put it on the back burner. But like a drunk person, we left it on the stove until it caught on fire.
Also, I think we can all agree that the news is the major information conduit for us. Maybe fewer people would agree that it actually informs us. That's a problem. Having biased information is propaganda. Honestly, I'm not certain the average American could accurately identify propaganda. I've been tricked, and that's only counting the times I've been able to catch being bamboozled. Propaganda is used by most every power. An authoritarian state like the United States certainly has disseminated information among citizens that centers our narrative and distorts any perceived threats.
So what am I getting at? Well, I'm tired of platitudes that this badness sprang fully formed from the ground or it will naturally die out. That's the life cycle of a cicada. Probably the only overlap is the obnoxious screaming. I'm saying this whole, ignoring an open wound until it's gangrenous and then slapping a Band-Aid on it, is kinda shit. I mean, the scrambling for quick fixes that doesn't address the root of the problem is the veritable jamming your thumb in the hole of an already sinking boat. Stuff like promising to do something when you see it. Cool, but consider the fact that we couldn't or were choosing not to see the same shit we now claim vigilance on.
