Here I Go Again
I promised to write no more stories. I misspoke. Trump and his band of illiterate miscreants seem to bring out the worst (or the best, perhaps) in me. But his continued attack on a free press and his assaults on free speech and free press compel me to speak (or write).
Trump continues to rail against free speech and free speech his mindless and vitriolic comments threaten our republic and all for which it stands. He wants to silence his critics by silencing news outlets with which he disagrees — he has said so many times — and he wants his political opponents arrested (lock her up, he continues to rail with increasing vitriol at his rallies).
I am not calling Trump a Nazi or fascist but I am reminding you that the parallels among Trump, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini grow more striking by the day. Create fear of their critics, demonize the media, seek to consolidate more power and deny, deny, deny (lie, in the vernacular). Trump seems to be following this script closely and his “base” at his rallies praise him with applause and cheers. Dr. Scott Peck coined a phrase, “simplism” which I understood to mean acting without thinking. He further remarked that he believe if we continued along this path, we would end up killing ourselves. It seems we are following such a path. I may be wrong but I believe more people have adopted this behavior since Trump’s election. “Let’s fight before we talk and then see if there’s any need to talk.” In what kind of world does such a strategy make any sense? I do not know.
We seems to have lost much of our ability to disagree without being disagreeable. The internet has done a lot for us but has also enabled us to write the most hateful things about others anonymously without any consequences or opportunity for dialogue. In that sense, it has enabled vitriolic and hateful discourse (if is discourse at all).
What has become of civility? Has it vanished? It seems that a great number of people take pleasure in writing to cause pain just for the sake of causing pain. What is good or righteous about such a practice?
What can we do? Quite a lot actually. We can write letters to our legislators objecting to such vicious behavior. We can speak, with a calm and reasoned demeanor to our friends, relatives and loved ones about the need for freedom of speech and press in a free country. We can become more active in politics by voting, if you don’t already and by volunteering for candidates who support these basic American values. And so much more.
What we must not do is sit idly by and watch our worst nightmares come true: “Finally, they came for me.”