Bill LaCroix: Donald Trump Is A Fascist and a Fraud and Should NOT Be Normalized or Even Tolerated--Starting Now

Friday, January 6, 2017

Donald Trump Is A Fascist and a Fraud and Should NOT Be Normalized or Even Tolerated--Starting Now

Don't Refrain or Defer: Trump's a Fascist. Call Him One.

Steven Harper, of The Belly of the Beast, recently put into words what has been on my mind since the daylight-heist of yet another presidential election: "...A frustrated plurality who never wanted a President Trump now say, 'I feel helpless. What can I do?' Help is on the way, but it won’t be an easy or quick fight. The winning strategy will test a people whose attention span is short and whose need for instant gratification is profound (emphasis mine). Only an organized, systematic effort can combat the chaos that President Trump is already inflicting from Trump Tower…"

There is a rise in the topography within the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock (the overflow camp on the floodplain where most people like myself ended up camping) dubbed "Facebook Hill". It was dubbed that because that's where you could usually get cellphone reception that was illusive at best in most other places in and around the camp. Cellphone reception, for better or worse, is now part of our 21st century DNA. It's critical, in fact, to counter the narrative of lies and omissions that corporate news depends on for its continued existence in this 21st century world (don't you love irony?!)

But, as PeeWee Herman once said, "Everyone's got a big 'but'", and mine's this: Mark Zuckerberg is not our friend. This should not be news to anyone, but there is a tendency to give these gizmo-creating techies a pass, because gizmo-worship is so ubiquitous now, and to use these "tools" like Facebook as if they're benign, which they most certainly are not. To be clear, I agree with the analogy of Facebook being a "tool". Of course it is, but it's certainly not "nothing but a tool". A hammer is a tool, and a useful one, too. But try dreaming about someone's sexy selfie while you're swinging one and see where it gets your thumb. There's a much more multi-faceted, and darker side to Facebook than there is to a hammer. We've evolved that much anyway, which proves that we do evolve, if there was any doubt in the first place about that, and I think there has been. It's merely the fate of us humans, I believe, to choose which way we want go with that natural law.

So, Facebook….Below is a Facebook screenshot from journalist Kevin Sessum's Facebook page. He's a mainstream author who seems to specialize in covering celebrities, so he's not someone who you'd think would be tarred as a "threat" by corporate media (which Facebook is a main organ of, like it or not).

Nevertheless, Mr. Sessum was blackballed by Facebook, for a day, for calling Trump a fascist. Facebook told him he had violated their "community standards" policy. In other words, calling a fascist a fascist isn't OK with Zuckerberg now that he's going to have to curry favor with a fascist president and on and on…you know the song and here's the link
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/30/facebook-temporary-ban-kevin-sessums-trump-supporters

Mr. Sessum's response was to post the below picture and message--on Facebook--and request that others do so. I did, and a day later, Zuckerberg backed down. Nice of him, huh?

I fully agree with Steven Harper's statement that "Only an organized, systematic effort can combat the chaos that President Trump is already inflicting from Trump Tower…" I would, once again, point to the doings at Standing Rock and the deep movement those doings represent as Exhibit A for that flavor of activism. Hundreds, thousands of such doings will be required now, have been required in fact but, due to our collective "short attention span" and "profound instant-gratification need" have not been realized and so we have a lot catch-up to do n'est pas?

Be mindful, then, of these new tools you use. They represent profound technological changes happening within our lifetimes, maybe as profound as the evolutionary development of hammers into weapons. Act wisely and forcefully, and know how to effectively protest within the confines of these new gizmo-infested mediums.

Post this screenshot on your Facebook page. Keep doing it. Make 'em back down. They won't--can't--do it otherwise.

You're the change you've been looking for. Evolve--toward the light, please.

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Why I Blog

Thoreau and Emerson had a discussion in May of 1846 about the Mexican War--our first war that set us on the course we still track today. Conquest of nation-states and the inevitable Imperialism that follows. Emerson counseled his friend that we can supersede the transgressions of a well-meaning State by the Muse. Thoreau wasn't so sure that the State was so well-meaning or that the Muse alone would be enough to supersede it. But he tried both the Muse and "other means" to our everlasting benefit. Civil Disobedience, in the American sense, has always been his child, in large part because he raised it to the level of Literature. "Other means" requires the Muse to be lasting and effective, and vice versa. How would anyone know what the hell you were talking about otherwise, let alone emulate what you're trying to do?

The problem with Progressives today, I think, is that we have been in the habit of letting other people--Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Sun Myung Moon--tell our stories for us, people who do not mean us well. We haven't plugged our muse into our political discourse very much, and that's a big mistake. Mark Twain didn't make that mistake, and he was among the first American writers to use the new-fangled typewriter. Why do we children of Twain, Emerson and Thoreau make that mistake now with our new-fangled computers?

For all its faults, Corporate America understands that people are story-based critters, like it or not, and I think we progressives should like it. By definition, people make many important social (read: political) decisions based largely on who's the best storyteller. It’s in our nature, and Corporate Media is a classic example of how Nature abhors a vacuum. We’ve collectively created a cultural ‘narrative’ vacuum by allowing ourselves to be so easily entertained by—Corporate Media! And Nature hates that. She’ll allow the same garbage responsible for that vacuum (Corporate Media!) to be sucked in and to rattle around until it ruins our cognative motors before she’ll let that sad state of affairs stand. I'd ask any "America Firsters" stumbling on this blog and reading this far to consider: Rupert Murdoch is from Australia. Sun Myung Moon, now-deceased but whose creatures, the Washington Times and UPI still walk the face of the earth, was from Korea. The Koch Brothers, of course, were from the sheikdom of Texas. All of them were, and the living ones still are, so obscenely rich they apparently believed they own America simply because they paid for it, and we collectively let them define who among us are “real Americans”?! C'mon!

Although it helps to strive toward the goal, progressives don't have to be great writers, and I'm not claiming to be one. We simply have to acknowledge that we have the better stories and we’re sitting on our best ones. Our truest ones. Multi-national billionaires have better versions of American Liberalism and Progressivism than the real ones told by real Americans? Us? We shouldn't put up with that. Why do we?

Like any historic attempt, we need to find our Voice. Significant action will come only after our contemporary, progressive political muse matures, which it hasn't yet. Not to paint with too wide a brush, but too much of our positions have been framed in intellectual, almost-didactic prose, which, if you don't identify as an intellectual, means boring. Not all of it, just a whole lot of it, but never mind. If history's still a guide--and I hope it still is--there's hope, because when any progressive movement's Muse matures, it generally becomes the baseline for much of Western Civilization’s meaningful and therefore lasting literature. For example, "Mein Kampf" is still in print but I'll bet you'd have to turn over a lot of rocks to find someone to call it 'literature'.

So, this blog. It's a call, I suppose, to elevate our critical modern discussions out of Fox-news-landia back to where intelligent, caring Americans can find their feet and fight back, either with the Muse, by other means, or both. It’s not up to some politician to change the narrative. That’s up to us. So by definition we still have as good a chance as we ever had. Don't lose hope. It’s always been this way. At least in literate societies.

In other words, like Emerson advised and Thoreau partially agreed with: stories matter, and may the best Muse win.