I keep hearing about how close we are to civil war. That’s wrong. We’re not close. We’re in it. It’s a cold civil war, but it will turn hot and we will lose it if we continue pretending it’s not even happening. You can’t win a war you won’t admit you’re fighting. And the way to win the cold civil war is difficult, painful, and costly. It is by aggressively prosecuting and/or neutralizing Trump and every element of his terrorist movement. That is the only course of action that prevents a fascist takeover of the United States.
And when I say “every element” I mean EVERY ELEMENT.
The stupid grunts on the ground who can easily be whipped into attacking governmental institutions – the traitors we saw on Wednesday.
The leadership elite who spread the lies and agitate the troops. Trump, Miller, Hawley, Cruz – it’s a long list.
The propaganda arm that perpetuates the lies and helps organize the thought structure. This is the biggest pillar of the whole thing. I’m talking about FOX News, OANN, Breitbart, Newsmax, but also Parler, Twitter, Facebook to the extent that they facilitate the spread of propaganda.
The financing arm. The banks and megacorporations and billionaires that are funding this attack on the US.
The intelligence & infiltration arm. The police who are KKK, who open the gates for the attackers.
This is a vast and well-organized fascist movement against the United States. It will not be happy until our government is subjugated or destroyed. It is a cancer on American democracy and needs to be surgically removed.
I understand doing this will make the fascist movement angry. I understand they may retaliate. That is what fascist movements do. The alternative is to capitulate to them, pussy-foot around the issue, and try to find a way to make fascists be less angry without calling them to account. That doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked the last four years. It has never historically worked in any country where a fascist movement rose. That approach is exactly what got us the attack on the capitol this week. A soft response to that attack emboldens it. It encourages more attacks.
My wife really crystalized this for me last night. Imagine that Trump was just a bit more savvy and had planted 5 people in that mob charged with planting bombs in the capitol, on a timer switch. They could have easily gotten them in there – everyone had backpacks. They could have killed everyone in the building, eliminating the entire Legislative branch. Or imagine Trump had walked down to the capitol with them, like he said he would, and stood on the front steps screaming, “Drag Nancy Pelosi out here!”
Does it really seem that hard to imagine? We were THIS CLOSE to an absolute collapse of the US government. THIS CLOSE. There are fascists in this country, right now, who realize that. They see the roadmap. They are making plans.
This is not about healing the country. You heal AFTER the surgery, not before. This is about defense of our way of life against threats domestic. This is a cold civil war. I hope it never turns hot, but we need to fight it as hard as we fought the last cold war. We need to fight it as if our lives and our freedoms are on the line because THEY ARE, people. They are.