Michael Moore: GENOCIDE ARMS DEALERS

Thank you for this, Michael Moore. Infuriating how many are supporting genocide! Deep gratitude for those who are not. Such utter and insane madness! — Molly

These Democratic and Independent Senators Voted to Send More Weapons to Israel to Kill Civilians in Gaza.

By Michael Moore

What better way to celebrate losing the November 5th election than by continuing to ignore the will of the American people who oppose Israel’s war on Gaza. Nothing says to the public “we hear you” better than the Democratic Party announcing that “we’re going to kill even more children in Palestine now with your/our American tax dollars.”

And what better way to celebrate the current holiday season — including the one where we feast and remember how the Indigenous people of the Americas saved our lives by feeding us a meal right in the middle of our European ancestors committing the largest mass genocide in human history… AND the upcoming celebration of the birth of the Prince of PEACE, plus the celebration of the Maccabees killing the Syrians who had stolen their land and their Temple with Hanukkah, the “Festival of Lights and thanksgiving,” commemorating the rededication and reopening of the Temple.

But something amazing happened exactly 10 days ago: 19 Democratic and Independent Senators stood up for the first time and voted to STOP the sending of three shipments of American weapons to Israel. It was a never-before rebuke to warn Netanyahu that millions of Americans have had enough of his slaughter of innocent civilians. Of course, to Netanyahu, Palestinians are not “innocent” because, well, they don’t exist. The 1977 manifesto/ charter of his Likud Party makes this very clear:

“Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”

In other words, “From the River to the Sea,” just driving the other way. He intends to remove these non-existent humans from Israel’s occupied territories and push them into the deserts of Egypt and Jordan — and, as we currently witness every day, to exterminate them, preferably when they are infants and children. Saves the trouble of having to do it later. Ask the Germans and the American pioneers. They were both convinced that annihilation was the answer — the Solution — to removing “the problem.”

Please keep in mind that the polls show most Americans these days do not support this war. And I believe that most Americans still believe the following:

1. Ethnic cleansing Is a War Crime.

2. Apartheid Is a Racist System that is a Crime Against Humanity.

3. A Theocracy Is Never a Democracy. Not in Iran. Not in an America run by the Moral Majority or Christian Nationalists. Not in an Israel that has sadly lost its way.

Please take a moment on this special holiday weekend to let your elected representatives know you do not want your tax dollars going to a right-wing government that is hell-bent on civilian mass starvation and death.

Democratic senators should know better. And their behavior in supporting this aggression will only cost them more elections. Voters under 45 and people of color combined (making up nearly half the electorate), have no interest in war and would rather our government spend our money on our schools, our elderly, and our broken health care system. Time to cut Bibi off.

Please go here for the original: https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/genocide-arms-dealers

Grief and Gratitude On Thanksgiving

Photos are by Molly

Grief and Gratitude on Thanksgiving

one hand opens in grief
the other in gratitude
pressing them together to pray

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

* * *

Thanksgiving was a day to give thanks for so many of the extraordinary gifts which I am blessed with today. That list feels like it truly has no end...

Of course, life happens every day and that certainly includes on holidays. So plans can also need to be shifted or changed and there are surrenders into what is rather than what we had thought would be. For our extended family, that meant one group had to cancel because of lice and strep throat. And another couldn't meet because they all got Covid. And my husband and I missed who we didn't see. And we also went on to celebrate with who was able to gather together and, in addition, we enjoyed FaceTime calls with other family members. In the larger picture, we are all deeply blessed. 

And gratitude has already long been my daily practice. It's amazing how things shift within me and in my life when I experience what is with gratitude and acceptance rather than what is lacking or "should" be different. So, for example, when I'm driving in a lot of traffic and everything is moving at a crawl, I surrender into what is and experience gratitude for this car that has enabled me to do my errands or visit with loved ones. And I'm grateful and just not going to sweat the small stuff. Not now, not now that I'm 73 and truly know the pain of the big stuff.

And not now after meeting Courtney when I was on my way to Trader Joes. She was standing on the corner as I got off the freeway with her little sign that read: "Anything is a Blessing". Gratefully, the traffic was stopped long enough for me to ask what her name was as I handed her a granola bar and a dollar bill. "Courtney," she said with a smile. And I responded smiling, "My name is Molly." Before our brief moments ended, Courtney and I both looked into each other's eyes and said Bless You to each other. As I drove away my tears began to well up as I thought of the travesty that there are any human beings living in such poverty and added onto the pain and suffering of untreated trauma. And I also thought — this could have been me...

So, no, I am no longer going to sweat the small stuff. 

And as I move from holding the Courtneys of our world in my heart, I also bring awareness to holding and reflecting on the Native Americans who experience Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning... And my heart reflects on Palestinians... And this is yet another list that also goes on and on. There are just so many human beings and nonhumans who are greatly suffering. And it is this keenly heartfelt consciousness that fills me with both gratitude for all of the incredible gifts that I experience today and grief for all whose suffering and pain remains unrelenting and untouched with healing or hope.

Which is why the commitment to doing whatever I can to alleviate the suffering of my planetary sisters and brothers holds such a depth of heart and meaning for me. It is this intention that keeps me aware of the fact that holidays like Thanksgiving are not just a happy and loving time of feast and celebration and love with family and friends. There are many who are isolated and alone and hurting and hungry. And that matters. We all matter.

Which brings me to my own personal story around Thanksgiving and the holidays...

John

Thanksgiving of 1977 was the last time that I talked with my brother. It was on that phone call 47 years ago that John told me that he was going to hold out and be himself until our mother loved him for who he is rather than who she wants him to be. That pain of not being loved by our own mother has a depth that is indescribable. John and I were also only 26 years old, I had not yet done any healing work, and I had no idea how to respond. And I don't remember that I did. I numbed my powerlessness, pain, fear, and the impossibility that I could hug my twin with John being in Michigan and me living 2,000 miles away in Oregon.

I didn't call my brother that year on Christmas either. This is so sad. I didn't call John on Christmas because our mother was visiting me. And I felt so guilty that our mother was with me and not John — and especially knowing how starved we both were for her love. So I didn't call. And our mother didn't call her only son either. She and John had been fighting a lot. Consequently, and given that our father had died two years earlier, John spent his last Christmas home alone.

My first husband and I had moved from Michigan to the Pacific Northwest in the summer of '75. My last visit with my brother was on my first trip back to Michigan in May of 1977. John had checked himself into a psychiatric ward again, this time at Cottage Hospital in Grosse Pointe. I still remember the sound of his slippers on the floor as he made it to the table where my first husband I sat waiting to see him. And that was when John told me, "I know that I need to get away from Mother. And I know that I can't."

I knew that John was telling me goodbye. It was just over two months since our last phone call on Thanksgiving that my twin ended his life on January 30th, 1978.

I have spent many, many years healing and unburdening this deep trauma. And transforming it. Transforming all this tragedy and loss into my deep, deep passion for compassion and kindness and caring for us all. My twin brother's death has a lot to do with the gifts I am able to embody today.

And this does not mean that I don't still grieve. I do. Of course I do. We humans don't just get over and move on from our greatest losses. It is what we do with the little t and Big T traumas that we experience in our lifetimes that matters. And matters deeply.

It is not easy to be human. And this is especially true in our culture which is built on rugged individualism and other narratives and norms which lead us further from the wisdom of our hearts and the experience of deep valuing and kindness and connection with our human and nonhuman family.

This can be healed and transformed. We can awaken to greater truths and unburden ourselves and our planetary sisters and brothers of that which has long caused so much harm. My brother's suffering is but a symptom among countless others of our unhealthy culture, a culture which has for so very long needed the radical systemic changes that hold the potential to bring about the peaceful, just, and caring world that we all need, yearn for, and are worthy of.

Wouldn't it be such an extraordinary experience for there to be a universal day of Thanksgiving and celebration ― a celebration of an abundance that is shared beyond any nationalities or borders, races or religions, ethnicities or species? A National Day of Mourning could then become a day of the deepest gratitude, gratitude that is held right along side the grief for how lost we humans have been. Still, another world awaits. Starting within each and every one of us.

* * *

Poems...

The Love That Will Not Die

Spiritual awakening is frequently described

as a journey to the top of a mountain.

We leave our attachments and our worldliness

behind and slowly make our way to the top.

At the peak we have transcended all pain.

The only problem with this metaphor is

that we leave all the others behind --

our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister,

our tormented animals and friends.

Their suffering continues, unrelieved

by our personal escape.

 

In the process of discovering our true nature,

the journey goes down, not up.

It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the

center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky.

Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures,

we move toward the turbulence and doubt.

We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it.

We move toward it however we can.

We explore the reality and unpredictability

of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away.

If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes,

we will let it be as it is. At our own pace,

without speed or aggression,

we move down and down and down.

With us move millions of others,

our companions in awakening from fear.

At the bottom we discover water,

the healing water of compassion.

Right down there in the thick of things,

we discover the love that will not die.

 

― Pema Chödrön

* * *

Kindness

 

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken 
will stare out the window forever.

 

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, 
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho 
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans 
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

 

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, 
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.  
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

 

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

― Naomi Shihab Nye

* * *

On Any Given Day

How easily I forget

I contain the story

of the universe.

Easier sometimes

to feel alone,

as if I am not connected

to every single atom

around me, as if

I am separate

from the shimmer

that made it all,

as if I am not

also you.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

* * *

Candlemas

May our eyes remain open even in the 

face of tragedy.

May we not become disheartened.

May we find in the dissolution

of our apathy and denial,

the cup of the broken heart.

May we discover the gift of the fire burning

in the inner chamber of our being...

burning great and bright enough

to transform any poison.

May we offer the power of our sorrow to the 

service of something greater than ourselves.

May our guilt not rise up to form

yet another defensive wall.

May the suffering purify and not paralyze us.

May we endure; may sorrow bond us 

and not separate us.

May we realize the greatness of our sorrow

and not run from its touch or its flame.

May clarity be our ally and wisdom our support.

May our wrath be cleansing, cutting through

the confusion of denial and greed.

May we not be afraid to see or speak our truth.

May the bleakness of the wasteland be dispelled.

May the soul’s journey be revealed

and the true hunger fed.

May we be forgiven for what we have forgotten

and blessed with the remembrance 

of who we really are.

...The Terma Collective

* * *

Whatever is happening in our lives, each and every one of us have experienced losses and deeply difficult times and, if we are so blessed, also many joys. Remembering this, may we hold ourselves and each other with kindness, compassion, and love — on holidays such as Thanksgiving and everyday. May we hold our joys and our sorrows with the deepest tenderness. And may we remember to embrace both grief and gratitude with the wisdom of knowing this is what it is to be human, to be a fully embodied human being. Life is a gift. May we share our lives with generosity, inclusion, compassion, wisdom, kindness, and love.

Bless us all, no exceptions...

💗

Molly

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: A Partial List of Gratefulnesses

A Partial List of Gratefulnessess

There’s the giddy gratefulness that sparkles
like morning sun on the river and the peaceful
gratefulness that soothes like warm wind.
There’s the gratefulness that almost hurts
as it squeezes tight around the heart,
the gratefulness that arrives quiet as cat’s paws
in the night, and the gratefulness that thrums
and swirls in us as if we’re a sky full of starlings.
Sometimes it opens as slowly
as a giant bromeliad in Bolivia, taking years,
even decades before we are ready to see it.
Sometimes it comes dressed in black.
There’s begrudging gratefulness, bedazzling
gratefulness, gratefulness that stands
on its hind legs and roars. Gratefulness
that soars like a tetherless kite. Gratefulness
that sneaks in mouselike—like an ermine
who knows just where to find the small gaps  
in the rocks. Every gratefulness a chance
to glimpse what is sacred right here,
to remember our place in the living world.
Every gratefulness the chance to revel again
in the sheer miracle that we belong.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

https://ahundredfallingveils.com/

Angell Deer: We Have to Awaken From the Deep Illusion of What Is Called "Normal"

 This is profound, wise, and true. 

— Molly

Photo by Molly

We Have to Awaken From the Deep 

Illusion of What Is Called "Normal"

Sometimes, what looks like sickness is health. And what looks healthy is deeply sick.

Think of the anxiety, fear, pain, addictions, and depression in this world. Is that really sickness or is it a natural healthy reaction to what is sick? I have yet to meet a client that his/her "illness" is not a natural reaction to a sickness in their system of relations...

We can agree that fever is not a sickness but a healthy immune system reaction to a disease.

Think of "business as usual" and the constant illusion of growth and progress measured by stock markets and life expectancy. Is that health or sickness when all it truly does is destroy the very life that sustains us?

Joanna Macy shared in a recent interview that if we do not cry every morning for the Earth, we are probably not feeling her at all. Michael Meade talks about the necessary heartbrokenness needed to access the depth of the soul. Medicine man/shaman explores the sickness "in the system at large" and does not obsess over the symptoms.

Maybe all those tears, pains, discomforts, depression, and addictions are normal reactions to a very sick world. When the world tries to sell us that atrocities are necessary and justified, we have hit the rock bottom of our dehumanization.

We have to awaken from the illusion and deep sickness of what is called "normal." What we have learned to accept. What this hyper-individualized society has cost to our souls and communities.

The deeper we observe in depth the world as it is, the more the illusion of normal is lifted. The more we see the extreme violence of "normality."

"...the Outsider is a man who cannot live in the comfortable, insulated world of the bourgeois, accepting what he sees and touches as reality. `He sees too deep and too much,' and what he sees is essentially chaos... He is the one man who knows he is sick in a civilization that doesn't know it is sick." — Colin Wilson

Let's stop calling any of this normal and reclaim as healthy all our natural reactions to this globalized sickness and our deep desire to break the belief patterns and systems of oppression.

We will only heal once we recognize and collectively acknowledge where and what the sickness is really about and reclaim radical different ways of living, relating, and belonging.

Angell Deer

Sacred Paths

Www.sacredpaths.earth

Joanna Macy: A Wonder Beyond Words

 

A Wonder Beyond Words

We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it—is a wonder beyond words. It is an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with self-reflexive consciousness that brings awareness of our own actions and the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world.

— Joanna Macy

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Together

Together

It smacks me, sometimes,

how connected we are—

though we draw boundaries,

build walls, fight wars,

call names, and kill. All it takes

is a photo of earth from space

and I’m stunned again,

how much we are in this together.

And though we’d rather not know it,

every choice we make

affects everyone, everything else.

Perhaps this is why I weep

when the woman I’ve barely met

embroiders me a sweater

with a word she knows I’ll love

and then brings it to my home.

Because it’s proof of kindness,

a confirmation that beauty

not only exists, it will lead us to each other.

How easily two strangers

might become friends.

It can happen anywhere

on this small blue and green planet—

anywhere two people co-exist,

the invitation to be generous,

thoughtful, to think of new ways

to be good to each other.

Each kindness a bridge that spans

the world’s flaws. Each moment,

another chance to build another bridge.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

https://ahundredfallingveils.com/

The Energy Gap: Why Democrats Keep Losing to GOP Plutocrats

An excellent, chilling, spot on article. We can't say that we haven't been warned again and again and again about the neoliberal capitalist corporate buy out of the Democratic Party — something that must be dismantled and radically changed.— Molly

Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and James Clyburn (D-S.C.) speak to reporters on Capitol Hill on November 5, 2021.(Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Energy counts, matters, and wins the political battles. There isn't even any adrenaline around the Dems' capillaries.

By Ralph Nader

Over thirty years ago, Republican historian and political analyst, Kevin Phillips, remarked that the “Republicans go for the jugular while the Democrats go for the capillaries.” This serious disparity in political energy levels is rarely taken into account to explain election turnouts. The voluntary enfeebling of the Democratic Party started long ago. In 1970, writing in Harper’s Magazine, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, a co-founder of Americans for Democratic Action, wrote an article “Who Needs Democrats? And What It Takes to be Needed?” He argued that if the Democratic Party does not take on the corporate and political establishment, it has no purpose at all.

In 2001, long after the 1980 Reagan landslide of Jimmy Carter, Labor Secretary under Clinton, Robert Reich, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post which declared, “…The Democratic Party. It’s Dead.”

In the following years, while the Democrats were accelerating their abandonment of half the country as “red states,” and became more out of touch with blue-collar workers and unions, whom they took for granted, the Republicans were becoming more energized by the year. Their mouthpieces dominating talk radio – e.g., Rush Limbaugh – were directly sowing unrebutted discord, day after day, among blue-collar workers against the Democrats. Why? It’s because the Democrats essentially gave up on Talk Radio and didn’t bother listening to how these corporatist radio bloviators were turning hard working listeners into Reagan Democrats.

While the GOP was eroding the core base of the Democratic Party and taking total control of red state legislatures, governorships, and courts, the Democrats, starting in 1979, were plunging into enticing and taking corporate PAC money, as urged by then Rep. Tony Coelho (D-CA). This reliance on corporate campaign money weakened the Party’s positions and actions on behalf of workers, consumers, the environment, and the need for an expanded social safety net for the populace. Western nations have provided their citizens superior health care, family support and education programs for decades.

The comparative energy levels were exhibited in the 2010 state gerrymandering drive. While the Democrats were snoozing, a laser beam effort in several states, like Pennsylvania, took the Dems to the cleaners. The result: majority GOP Congressional delegations for a decade even though the Democrats won the popular vote there. (See: Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy by David Daley.)

"The Dems had the popular New Deal agenda update in their grasp, but let it slip through their fingers."

Recall, in 2009 Obama had a large majority Democratic advantage in the House and Senate as a result of his win over John McCain in November 2008. Instead of going forward full throttle with this mandate, Obama chose extreme caution. He focused on Obamacare, after giving up right at the beginning the crucial “public option” allowing people to opt out of the corporate health insurance grip. He gave it up unilaterally before negotiations began with the obstructive GOP.

For the rest of his term, Obama appeared to be resting. He promised a $9.50 federal minimum wage in his 2008 campaign but didn’t lift a finger for it during his first term. It is still at a poverty wage of $7.25 per hour to this day. He didn’t really put up a grassroots fight for his stimulus bill following the Wall Street collapse and the great recession starting under George W. Bush, (the war criminal against the Iraqi people.) Obama even declined to prosecute the Wall Street crooks.

In the meantime, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, managed to lose the House to a reactionary GOP in the 2010 elections, the 2012 elections, the 2014 elections and the 2016 elections, straightjacketing any possible Obama agenda in the Congress. The Dems had the popular New Deal agenda update in their grasp, but let it slip through their fingers while the GOP had a corporatist anti-worker, consumer, and women’s agenda and with ferocious energy blocked improvements supported by a majority of people in the US.

Even more inexplicable was the Democratic Party’s refusal to strongly support the galvanizing political civic movement to cancel the Electoral College (see NationalPopularVote.com). This organizing effort has led so far to the passage of state laws (California, New York, Illinois, etc.) handing the Electoral College vote to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. The Democrats won the popular vote in 2000 (Al Gore) and 2016 (Hillary Clinton) but lost the Electoral College vote to G.W. Bush and the surprised Donald Trump. Still, the Democrats stay on the sidelines though this movement already has enabled state laws totaling 215 Electoral College votes, needing only to get to 270 to neutralize this anti-democratic vestige from the historic era of slavery.

Almost everywhere you look you see this huge disparity in energy levels. Compare the smaller Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives with the Pelosi-toady Progressive Caucus. The difference is that between thunder and slumber over the years.

Compare the Tea Party’s slamming impact on the established GOP in Congress with the tepid attitude of most labor unions and the AFL-CIO deferring to the Democratic Party.

Compare the over-the-top corporate judges to the so-called liberal judges, as relating to federal cases against Trump.

Compare the comprehensive ghastly Heritage Foundation’s 900-page 2025 blueprint directed toward the GOP expansion of the corporate state and the stripping away of services to the people and their rights with the agenda advanced by the progressive citizen groups. No comparison. The media notices this difference in energy levels which is one reason it gives more coverage to the right-wing messianic bulldozers who show in every way that they are hungrier for taking power as they take no prisoners.

Partisan energy disparities even extend to the right-wing vs. left-wing media. The former has the brazen Fox News network. The left has nothing like that. Bill Moyers told me he urged mega-rich George Soros and allies to start a competing progressive network after Fox became quickly formidable. No way.

The right-wing magazines cover the actions of their right-wing allies, plus those gatherings and books. While the progressive media mostly ignores reviewing progressive books and what citizen groups are driving for against corporate power in Washington, DC, and at the state level. The Progressive media prefers publishing their opinions and exposé pieces. That’s one reason why there are more non-fiction right-wing corporatist books which become best sellers, while progressive tomes gather dust.

Further weakening the energy gap in favor of the GOP are the Democrats who look for scapegoats like the Greens to account for their disgraceful losses. They rarely look at themselves in the mirror. Democrats like Norman Solomon (See, Roots Action) issue “autopsy reports” following Party defeats. The 2017 report documented the Democratic Party’s arrogant, entrenched leadership which ignores the progressive base.

After the November 5th debacle, have you heard about mass resignations by Democrats responsible for this victory by the convicted felon, chronic liar, bigot, corrupt, phony promisor Trump? Well, the DNC chair, Jamie Harrison is resigning but that is pro forma. Other Democratic leaders are still on board at the state and federal level, in addition to, astonishingly enough, the failed corporate political/media consultants who enriched themselves while wasting away the biggest flood of campaign money in American history on the Kamala Harris campaign.

Younger Democrats who raise the need to displace the failed Democratic apparatchiks, and who want popular vigorous progressive agendas, as espoused by the naturally popular Senator Bernie Sanders, get ignored or worse pushed out of contention, visibility and, importantly, respect.

The Party’s losing elders have assured the absence of farm teams, of successors. Speaker Pelosi and her deputy Rep. Steny Hoyer are experts at this geriatric supremacy despite their track record of losing to the aggressive Republican plutocrats. Energy counts, matters and wins the political battles. There isn’t even any adrenaline around the Dems' capillaries.

Please go here for the original article:  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/democrats-losing-republicans

Trump's Cabinet Nominees Are Not a Joke, They're a Fascism-Inspired Dare

This is a deeply important article. And chilling. As I've researched and written before, many are seeing us now entering an era of neoliberal fascism under the Trump regime. I highly recommend that we Americans become increasingly informed about fascism and how fascism works. This is but one of numerous excellent resources that I have recently shared: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/11/excellent-clarifying-and-understanding.html. — Molly 

President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks to reporters as he leaves the Russell Senate Office Building on November 21, 2024 in Washington, DC. Hegseth was on Capitol Hill meeting with Senators to discuss his nomination and qualifications. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The individual nominees Trump has put forward forward are concerning on their own terms, but the implications of their nominations are even more chilling when taken as a whole.

By Ryan Skinnell

As a professor of rhetoric who studies Nazism, fascism, and demagoguery, I've watched Trump’s cabinet picks with mounting unease. The majority of them are so egregiously unfit for the offices they're nominated to run, it seems like a perverse joke.

A wrestling CEO and the subject of a lawsuit accusing her of sheltering pedophiles for Secretary of Education? A celebrity doctor with a history of multi-level medical and insurance marketing schemes for Medicare and Medicaid administrator? A cable news personality whose called for purging “woke” generals from the military for Secretary of Defense? An anti-vaxxer with a history of drug abuse for Secretary of Health and Human Services? A dog murdering governor whose been banned from all the Tribal lands in her state for Secretary of Homeland Security? The list goes on.

But Trump’s cabinet nominees aren’t a joke. They’re a fascism-inspired dare.

In the last months of the campaign, not one but two of Trump’s former cabinet members, plus the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—all four-star generals—openly called him a fascist. Several other people, including his opponent, did as well. Whether or not the specific term “fascist” is accurate, there are reasons it keeps coming up.

Trump has repeatedly echoed fascist rhetoric, staging multiple fascism-inspired rallies, threating to be a dictator “on day one” if re-elected, and calling journalists and his political opponents “enemies from within.” He’s even threatened to deploy the military against U.S. citizens who oppose him. After General Mark Milley, criticized Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection, Trump suggested he should be executed. Milley’s execution is not the only one Trump has fantasized about.

But even in his less provocative moments, Trump exhibits tendencies that align with fascist politics. He has consistently resisted or rejected the norms and institutions of democracy, including accepting election results, respecting non-partisan civil services, and upholding the separation of powers at the heart of American democracy.

Open opposition to democracy has been at the center of fascist politics since fascist politics have existed. Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Germany’s Adolf Hitler, Spain’s José Antonio Primo de Rivera, among others, rejected democracy as decadent, unnatural, and weak. In many cases—Italy and Germany, chief among them—fascist parties participated in democratic politics in order to rise to power, and even after they were in power, they often retained the trappings of democracy, including parliaments and elections.

But they also eviscerated the norms and institutions designed to keep them in check. Mussolini, for example, helped push through the Acerbo Law in 1923, which said that whichever party earned the highest number of votes in parliamentary elections automatically got two-thirds of the parliamentary seats. In 1933, Hitler and the Nazis took their proposal to suspend Germany’s constitution to the Reichstag for approval, which they got through coercion and changing voting rules on the spot.

Destroying democratic institutions, and other efforts like it, were of course intended to consolidate fascist power, but they were also explicit challenges to democratic lawmakers. They were so egregious that lawmakers were forced to unambiguously declare their allegiances—would they defiantly confront the fascists, or would they fall in line? Needless to say, defiant confrontation had predictable consequences and falling in line had obvious advantages.

Whether or not Trump intends to usurp two-thirds of Congress or suspend the Constitution, he’s leaning into the fascist tradition of issuing egregious demands, which require lawmakers to unambiguously declare their allegiances. In nominating a Director of National Intelligence who has no experience in national intelligence, Trump is forcing Senators—Republicans, in particular—to say publicly whether they’re with him or against him.

No one should imagine, even for a second, that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing with his Cabinet picks. He knows his nominees need Senate confirmation. During his first term, his Cabinet nominees were “conventional” Republicans, which is to say anti-tax, anti-regulation, and pro-national security. Still, they faced considerable scrutiny, even among Senate Republicans. As several of his initial appointments resigned or found themselves caught up in ethics scandals, Trump resorted to “acting” appointments to circumvent the Senate.

This time, Trump isn’t bothering with conventional nominees. He’s challenging the Senate by compiling a list of nominees that are more than just partisans. They’re more than just extreme. They are ultimatums. The question is not, “Is Nominee A or B qualified?” It’s “Are you going to try to stop me or not?”

The individual nominees Trump has put forward forward are concerning on their own terms, but the implications of their nominations are even more chilling when taken as a whole. How the Senate responds will tell us a lot about just what kind of threat to democracy Trump will be in the coming years. If history is any guide, we’d do well to pay careful attention.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-cabinet-fascism