In fear for my country
For the first time in my life, I am in fear for my country.
I have lived through eleven presidential administrations, and the previous ten took the country through different directions. I wasn't born during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that period was intense. There was civil unrest for the first few years of my life, and that was trying. We had ups and downs, recessions and scandals, but through it all we survived intact as a nation. Our presidents have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States to the best of their ability. Ten of the presidents in my life did so. Until now.
Donald Trump has been in office for one week, and with strokes of pens, he signed executive orders undoing the Affordable Care Act providing health insurance to millions, and other actions before the ban on people from seven countries. The fact that this is illegal and that there are court orders stopping this ban means nothing to this administration. Then today (I started this post last night and just picked up on it) I shared two articles on Facebook describing that these events are the beginning of a coup d'etat, and it clicked.
What's going on is a replay of events that took place when Adolf Hitler became Germany's Chancellor in 1933. He began rolling back rights on groups of people not in his image of an "Aryan". Jewish people were openly attacked in the streets, and they were soon stripped of their livelihoods, and then homes and possessions. It also happened to Gypsies, homosexuals, and anyone else not meeting the ideal "Aryan" individual. I don't need to tell you what happened next. Go read a history book for that.
In America things weren't much different. Not long after war was declared on Japan for attacking Pearl Harbor, thousands of citizens with Japanese ancestry were rounded up, stripped of possessions and livelihoods, and sent to interment camps to "prevent" them from giving aid to the enemy. Though we didn't gas them like Gerrmany with the Jews, it was still wrong.
And now, over seventy years after the end of World War II, history is about to be replayed. In Europe, some countries are tightening their borders to keep out refugees from countries attacked by the Islamic State. Britain voted to leave the European Union, and the new prime minister is taking steps to do that. And the wave of xenophobia has reached our shores, and now we have Donald Trump. The question is though, is Trump in it to create a master race like Hitler, or to fatten his bottom line? He won't give up his holdings and is making world leaders stay in his hotels as a condition of doing business. There are rumors of a deal with Vladimir Putin to lift sanctions on Russia in return for a deal to increase Trump's wealth.
I think he's in it for himself. He is beholden to the coalition of racists, Christofascists and wealthy people who put him in office, and this is why we are seeing rights being rolled back on women, LGBT people, people of color and non-Christians. His antics are merely a smokescreen to distract everyone from the big picture. They hope to wear us down from resisting and accept the inevitable. He may not last long because he has a volatile personality, but another one more tyrannical will take his place. He isn't really running the show, but his strategist Steve Bannon is. Bannon is the one to fight. Assisting Bannon is Kellyanne Conway, "Propaganda Barbie" as Keith Olbermann calls her.
I have the feeling we are in for a long fight. Trump may be gone in a few months to a few years, but he will be replaced by the Christofascists' choice Mike Pence. Pence will continue to roll back the clock on women's and LGBT rights, and freedom of religion as well. He may be more palatable than Trump, given his years in politics, but he is to be feared as well.
I remember reading the book 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Failby Bill Strauss and Neil Howe, about the rise of Generation X. Among other things, they predicted that the country would be threatened by a volatile man and that it would be up to Gen Xers to rise up and fight him. They appear to be right. But Trump also drew much of his support from people who were poorly educated. This generation, of which I consider myself to be a part, wasn't educated very well, and this may well be the generation to have given rise to Trump. And now it's up to us and the Millennials to undo this.
I'm scared for my future and my daughter's future, but I owe it to her and her friends to fight. They will be more impacted than me at this point. I don't know the price I will have to pay for resisting, but based on past history it will probably be high. I'm ready.
Some people I know don't want to fight. They're scared to give up their comfort. I unfriended a few of these people already. They may change their minds or maybe not. They may even sell out a friend to keep their comfort. I will stay far away from them.
This is a dark era, but it is always darkest before the dawn. I did face some troubling historic eras in my life, but I lived through them. I will have to live through this as well, but if it means fighting for a better future for my daughter and her friends, then I gladly accept. I may or may not see this dawn, but like Martin Luther King's story about the staircase, we may not see as far as a step at a time, but I know the top of the stairs is there. It just takes a step at a time.