Unequivocal Moral Imperative

In many of our differences we must find a way to compromise and move FORWARD. I understand the compassion and empathy of that ideal and I applaud.

However, the struggle we’re all facing right now is a concerted effort to force our society to move BACKWARD, back to a time of social oppression for all but the most select group. We cannot let that happen. Let me be clear: No, we cannot all just get along! This isn’t an issue of differing opinions. This isn’t people “just not getting along.” This struggle is our unequivocal moral imperative. Our children and grandchildren will look at this history being played out right now and ask what we did to resist this forced march backwards to oppression.

Frankly, letting everyone have “a right to their own opinions” is what gave room for this rise of racist fascism and social oppression we’re seeing now. We cannot continue to permit anyone the right to any “opinion” that oppresses humanity. These are not “opinions” – they are evil “ideologies.” These are ideologies no less egregious than those of the Islamist extremists. Racism, supremacist ideologies, and fascist ideologies are the same radical extremism as every Islamist extremist’s ideology. Free speech was never intended to protect hate-speech. Hate-speech is the speech of oppression.

What we’re seeing this past week cannot be allowed to continue. There is NO moral equivalency between the alt-right’s white supremacist, fascist, racist, bigoted, white nationalist, nazi, KKK, evil extremist “opinions” and those standing against them. Their “opinions” are unequivocally EVIL. It is just plain wicked to hold up those standing against that evil as equally guilty, which what Trump did yesterday – he essentially said that the protestors standing against EVIL are the same evil. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died fighting racist fascism in WWII – It is the duty of every American to honor them – we are the heirs of those WWII anti-fascist warriors – by standing unified against racist fascism rising in our very midst. It is every person’s duty to stand up and be counted… either we stand against this evil, or we continue to enable it.

There is no middle ground. This week defines for us all an unequivocal moral imperative as a nation, as Americans: Either you stand against racist fascism or you stand with it… and Trump.

Is America becoming the monster?

What is this movement in our nation that has wretched-up Trump as the GOP’s best and brightest hope? I think it’s symptomatic of a deeper society wide disintegration. It’s so distressing I cannot adequately express how despicable and bone-deep horrifying I find it. It’s yet another layer of Hitler-esque rhetoric.

If elected, Trump will have his Muslim database,

Trump will have his wall and Latino immigrant expulsions;

McCroryism (that’s best way I’ve seen to define this new Jim Crow or McCarthyism standard codified by McCrory and his NC cronies, a standard spreading disease-like all across the nation) will criminalize transgenders, and won't stop until it encompasses all LGBTQ folk;

The entire GOP continues waging war on the middle class and working poor, and continues to grind the middle class down to join the ranks of the working poor wage slaves;

The libertarian styled agenda of the GOP would like to even abolish the minimum wage, but certainly wants to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it;

They want to go backward and penalize the sick and poor for needing healthcare… (the Nazis called them “useless eaters;”

The fundamentalists and evangelicals will have women at home, barefoot and pregnant with no right over our own bodies;

Higher education is already being priced out of reach and the GOP/libertarian agenda includes ending public schools;

…and an endless litany of much more.

It fully looks like history repeating itself. The way things are going, I fully expect Trump’s database to lead to internment camps at the least – the history of the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII overrides anyone’s disclaimer of that not being possible in America. A Muslim database will not stop with Muslims – those things never do. They’ll add every element of society that doesn’t fit their narrow vision to that database.

There seems to be a diminishing of the American ideal we’ve always cherished and held out to the entire world. America is supposed to be the safe haven… the bastion against the intolerance of hate-fueled fascism. Are we becoming the evil from which the world turned to us to escape? Is America becoming the monster we need to escape? Is that American ideal fading? Is it already lost?

by D. Denise Dianaty

© 14 May 2016

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