#NoDictators #NoOligarchs #NoFascism #NoTheocracy #NoWhiteSupremacy
Let’s not complicate things. The central matter at stake is Democracy in America. Our very form of representative governance, with its constitutionally mandated foundation built upon the Separation of Powers, and limits on those powers by a system of Checks and Balances, is being dismantled piece by piece right before our eyes. This isn’t sensationalism or alarmist exaggeration. It’s happening right now.
Another thing that’s not super complicated is how we got here. The we I am speaking of inhabits a very large tent. It includes Democrats and Republicans. People of color. Immigrants and Indigenous folks. The credentialed class and the working class. In short, the we I’m addressing here is everyone who agrees that the only legitimate and acceptable form of government is one that operates with our consent and one which we may directly influence and exert constraint over with our voice and our vote. But all of us who care about Constitutional Democracy lost the election to a person leading a party who demonstrably couldn’t care less about the Constitution, Democracy, or the Rule of Law.
Donald Trump’s Republican Party is presently trying to replace Representative Democracy in America with autocratic fascism. This means power consolidated in the executive branch designed to benefit a specific population, namely white nationalists, to the detriment of absolutely everyone else.
Make no mistake, team Trump is trying to make America a Dictatorship.
Many people who voted for Trump may not know what this means, and they wouldn’t like it if they did. Many of them only felt, and made known, that the ideas of the far left had left them out of the conversation altogether.
Trump went full fascist and only a literal handful of Republicans resisted. Wedge issues were successfully used to further divide the nation.
A critical mass of the Democratic Party, for its part, has been pushing a kind of supremacist factionalism, one that disenfranchised historically Democratic voters. The perspectives which alienated many are not ones based on race, culture, or religion. They are based on a kind of supremacy of viewpoint espoused by academics and far-leftists. It includes things like Critical Race Theory and Intersectional Feminism. To be certain, these perspectives shed light on the sources and causes of institutional and systemic bigotry and oppression in modern day America. But to insist that anyone not signing on and supporting wholesale, the entire suite of associated sociological theories, is to be reviled and shunned as an outcast, is a form of ideological supremacy. It is also ableist insofar as there is a relatively high intellectual threshold to be able to grasp some aspects of these theories associated with graduate level university study.
The Fascist Party of Donald Trump understands these dynamics and is taking full advantage of the unforced errors of the Democratic Party.
Immediately following the election, major news outlets published editorials calling for a “great reckoning” of the Democratic Party. That reckoning has yet to happen.
Recent reporting on NPR reflected that Latino and Black populations felt the Democratic Party had left them behind with their focus on gender and LGBTQ2S+ related issues. Vice President Kamala Harris gave her opponents the red meat they wanted when she answered in the affirmative that the U.S. Government is morally bound to use American taxpayer dollars to pay for gender affirming healthcare to incarcerated undocumented immigrants.
In 2023, in a televised hearing, U.S. Congressman Mark Takano (D) California, was asked if biological males who identify as female should be allowed to compete with biological females, Takano’s reply was: “The short answer is yes.” He went on to clarify that it really should be addressed on a case-by-case basis. But the soundbite, taken out of context, was nevertheless exploited.
The social pressure on Vice President Harris and Congressman Takano from their peers in the educated, professional, and managerial classes was, and remains, so great that any hesitation in saying biological males should be allowed to compete in sports with biological females … would place them firmly outside the in-group. They would be labeled as transphobic bigots.
More recently, in the aftermath of what is being called the worst fire in Los Angeles history, LAFD Deputy Chief Kristine Larson addressed concerns that female fire fighters might not be physically strong enough to carry a man out of a burning building, saying, “He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”
The Civil Rights movement in America has come a very long way since 1964. Is it perfect? No, not by a long shot. But if our civil rights are lost to the Fascist Party of Donald Trump, these rights will not easily be won back. Let’s not give up on Democracy simply because it is not yet as fair, just, and equitable as we would like it to be. It will be difficult to protect the civil rights of people of color and LGBTQ2S+ populations in a totalitarian dictatorship.
Midterm elections are in about 21 months. The choice is ours to make. We can continue doubling down on the cult of moral purity, the assertion that no population in human history has ever been as morally superior, decent, or respectable as that of the far-left modern Democrat.
No social, political, religious, ethnic or ideological group of people has ever had, nor ever will have, an exclusive on goodness or evil. There is not now nor has there ever been a THEM. There is only one BIG US. Humanity. Whenever humans are involved, humans will get things wrong. From minor violations of human rights to outright atrocities … humans will always be the common factor.
You are welcome to look down on the Founding Fathers. But these white, slave-holding men did not develop the U.S. Constitution on their own. They drew upon the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederation. They knew then, and it holds true today: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If humans are to have any chance of governing themselves with any semblance of justice, equality, and equity, then the rule of law based on a Constitution with a Separation of Powers, within a System of Checks and Balances … which countless lives were long ago self-sacrificed to attain, must be preserved.
The Fascist Party of Donald Trump does not want the Democratic Party to have that reckoning. Trump desperately wants ours to remain the small and exclusive tent of the “morally pure.” The party of an elite group who look down their noses at everyone who does not see the world exactly as they do.
For Democracy in America to work, it must preserve the rights of its people to hold different perspectives. Though we must always strive for a more perfect union, let us not let the Perfect become the Enemy of the Good.
