Raise Your Hand

Raise Your Hand

Contributed by Chuck Legge

How many people reading this still support Donald Trump? Raise your hands, arms at a 45-degree angle, hands in line with your arms and fingers straight out and together. It seems to me that if you are listening to what this guy is saying and you still support him, you’re either an idiot, a fascist, or both. If not idiot fascist, than at least idiot fascist curious.

Let’s take a look at what inspired this blunt observation. On Tuesday, December 5, Trump tells Sean Hannity that he will be a dictator if re-elected. The exact exchange goes like this: Hannity asks former President Trump to reassure the American people that he would not abuse the power of his office to seek retribution against political enemies. He asks Trump: “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Trump immediately responds with: “Except for day one, I want to close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill”. That Trump is such a kidder. Anyone can see that he was joking. He was joking; wasn’t he?

This exchange tells us two things. Trump, kidding or not, is perfectly willing to smash through the constitutional guardrails of the presidency to get what he wants. Make no mistake. Trump was deadly serious about doing whatever he wants to do without the check and balance meddling of those other two branches of government. After all, he is the CEO (Chief Executive Overlord); right? That’s the way we do it in the business world. The boss gets to do what the boss gets to do. If you don't believe me, his argument for Presidential immunity in the Third Circuit Court in DC is: President Donald Trump could sell state secrets or murder a political rival and, if he is not impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate, he is immune from prosecution after he leaves office. How fascist curious are you now?

His answer also tells us that, although he shows a marked propensity toward it, Trump doesn’t understand the word “retribution”. Hannity is trying to assuage the concerns of some viewers that Trump is going to retaliate against political opponents. His response is, I’ll close the boarders and drill for oil. What? It's like me asking you what the time is and you say, it’s $12.99 a pound. If you still support this guy, you’re probably more than idiot curious.

Now, let’s talk about vermin. You know; those creepy little critters that scurry around in dark places and disagree with the grand and glorious Donald. On November 11th (Veterans Day) Trump posted on Truth Social that he promised to: “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country…” Soooo… political dissidence is no longer tolerated in Trumps America?

Let me state right here, that contrary to what some might think, I’m not a Communist, Marxist, Fascist, or Thug. I do, however, believe that those with different and even radical points of view have a right to their particular point of view. Now when those thoughts become actions that threaten the well-being of my community, that's when the law steps in. It’s the old saying: Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.” Actually, I’d prefer it ended an inch from my nose, but who am I to argue with an old saying.
The term vermin is particularly unsettling in that is was an oft used noun in 1930’s Germany. If you can present your opponents as something less than human, it’s much easier to send them off to concentration camps where “Work Will Make You Free”. Look it up.

Finally, on December 16th at a rally in New Hampshire, Trump said immigrants coming across the border are “poisoning the blood of our country.” It doesn’t get more blatant than that. Our blood is becoming tainted by those unclean lesser beings from the South. Can you say Heinrich Himmler or maybe Steven Miller? There is no way to sugarcoat this. The dividing and dehumanizing of people is straight out of the Nazi playbook. Create an enemy, another, that’s coming to get you. Sew distrust in the institutions that guide your nation and keep it unified. Divide the country into warring factions, and you have a situation rife with possibilities for a strongman.

The preceding quotes are not the interpretations of some pundit. They are not political spin. These are dead on quotes from the presidential front runner in the United States of America. This is what we’ve allowed ourselves to come to. If you hear what this man has said. If you read the text of his speeches. If you still agree with what Trump has told you he will do, in his own words, then you are a fascist. If you think that ignoring, reworking, or outright trashing, the Constitution will somehow make things better, you’re an idiot. I’d like to close with a well-known quote from Benjamin Franklin. When asked what kind of government we have he said: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Let’s do our damnedest to keep it.