THE RISK OF A SECOND TRUMPIAN, FASCIST INSURRECTION
BY
David Gottfried
I did not want to write about Trump today.
But I am absolutely flabbergasted.
Years ago, there was something known as the Presidential honeymoon. The Presidential honeymoon, which roughly lasted for the first six months of a President’s term, was a period in which the opposition party would not attack the President and would give him a chance to grasp the reins of power. Joe Biden’s honeymoon ended before it began.
This weekend the Trumpian half-wits had a Heil Hitler rally for Trump at the annual CPAC convention. They should be holding their heads in shame, but they are howling like Halloween goblins, shrieking like orange-eyed sewer rats.
Less than two months ago, these thugs, at the direction of Trump, committed treason. They declared war on our democracy. In quantitative terms, it was nothing like Pearl Harbor, but qualitatively it was the same. The Trumpers were fascists; the Japanese and Germans were fascists. The fascists attacked us without a declaration of war. Ditto the Trumpians. But in a way, the Trumpers were worse: They were Americans, and they betrayed their country.
I shouldn’t have to say any of this. There is no need to talk about anything. We know what we should do. We need to demolish the Trumpers before there is a coup – replete with planes and tanks and the commandeering of all radio and television stations. They said, “lock her up,” in regard to Hillary, with respect to some e mails that even Bernie Sanders disparaged as irrelevant, boring, “damn e mails.” It’s time we lock them up before they go any further.
I am sure many liberals -- compliant, quiescent, chronic compromisers -- will claim I am an alarmist. But look at Trump’s record:
He always seems to be worse than our worst expectations.
When he started his campaign, we thought he was just gonna be a joke and quickly fade away. He even sounded a little liberal as he talked about expanding or increasing social security benefits. He seemed so ultimately innocuous that the supposedly “liberal media” gave Trump billions of dollars in free airtime.
When he announced his campaign, most of us never imagined he would commend the Charlottesville Nazis who chanted, “The Jews will Not Replace Us.”
When he seemed to play Patsy Cake with Putin, no one imagined that he would pretty much give away the store to Russia -- and North Korea as well.
When he lost the race, and claimed that he had really won (distorting reality ala his favorite uncle, Adolf), most of us never imagined that he would stage a coup on January 6. Let’s not forget: The Governor of Maryland wanted to send National Guard Troops into Washington, but was refused. Why the Hell was he refused. Because this was an insurrection directed from the top.
Therefore, wake up and smell the crack in Donald Trump’s crack pipe: They are preparing to topple our Democratically elected government.
They called Hitler the little colonel and look what he wrought. Similarly Trump is more than a fiendishly, queenly, bitchy bastard. Don’t forget: In divorce proceedings, one of his ex-wives said that he kept a volume of “Mein Kampf” on his night table.
We really shouldn’t be talking. We should be fighting. Our attorneys should be devising strategies to give as many of the Trump henchmen as much hell fire and damnation as they can mete out. Our activists need to make the Trumpers afraid. I do not advocate the commission of violence. I advocate instilling the sort of fear that will make them slide their tails between their legs and run off to the rabbit holes and warrens of their creepy homes in Dixie.
This reminds me of what I felt like when I read “New York Jew” by Alfred Kazin. In large measure, the book is a prosaic ode to the author, great New York Jew extraordinaire, Alfred Kazin. In the first chapter, he notes that 1942 was a great year for him: He had just gotten a big book published, moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan and got invited to all the really right dinner parties where the fancy pants windbags debated all the really great isms of the day. And as I read this, I wanted to rip Alfred Kazin to shreds: It is 1942. The protocols of the Wannsee Conference (the final solution) are being implemented. There is nothing left to talk about. There is only the fighting that must be done. As a Jew, Kazin should have done his duty and signed up for the Marines, or the Royal Air Force, or the Glorious Red Army. And it is not the time for us to weep or carry on like nelly Neville Chamberlains at Salon.com, like ladies fainting in salons. If I were young and healthy, I would be raging in the streets.