It could happen here

It could happen here

To The Eagle:

Howard Brawn is right. No amount of rusticated humor, light hearted irony or clever twisty logic is going to make me feel better about the national disaster that is Donald Trumpeting from his Awful Office.

His agenda is to regress this nation back to the 1950's when: “Every woman knew her place / seating was assigned by race / coal was king / pollution ruled / no, Donald does not have me fooled.”

One can now imagine Mike Swift muttering “Enough wailing and gnashing already! Too. Many. Words. Incoherent!”

Nonetheless this Liberal finds it difficult to restrain his environmentally religious zeal. Better to placate Gaia with the sacrifice of a few oil executives upon Mammon's altar rather than sacrifice our present and (our children's) future pure water and air.

Yet the latest dark cloud rolling over the horizon toward us is of an entirely different kind of pollution. Recent outbreaks of neo-Fascist violence at our universities and public functions have seen conservative and right wing thinkers, speakers and marchers threatened and assaulted by purportedly “anti Fascist” thugs who apparently consider property damage, physical assault and verbal abuse to be the new standard of national evolution.

Duh. Glorification of violence, suppression of free speech and scorn for democratic values actually are themselves the very definition of Fascism. Talk about twisty logic!

Can the blame for this public violence against civil discourse be laid at the office doorstep of our rabble rousing Bigot In Chief? Probably no more than Obama could be held responsible for our last ruinous economic implosion, yet blamed he was.

I see no silver lining here at all. Escalating public political violence is going to instigate a reactionary response by factions in our streets and by our police state. This sort of social upheaval spiraled out of control in the 1930's and ended up incubating Italian Fascism and German Nazism.

The vortex of racial intolerance and suppression of dissent is accelerating. If you're thinking “it can't happen here,” think again.

J.B. Bouchard

Puget Island