The Writing Was on the Wall

Last week’s attempted coup d’etat incited by the President of the United States and his henchmen - his eldest son and Rudy Giuliani come immediately to mind – was inevitable.  I was shocked by the events on Capitol Hill on January 6th (a day that will live in infamy), but I cannot say I was surprised.  The rally of white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, and the President’s lackluster condemnation of that rabble, should have warned us that this attempted coup by the President and his supporters was inevitable.

The fuse was already lit on January 20, 2017, when the newly inaugurated president stood on the steps of the US Capitol, the same steps his supporters seized and occupied on January 6, and reminded his audience - “Every four years we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power.”  So it has been since the found of our republic 241 years earlier.  “The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.” That statement was perhaps the first of the countless thousands of lies he would tell the American people over the next four years.  It is an oath he has violated with impunity almost daily since then.  “What truly matters is not which party controls our government . . . .”   Another bold faced lie.  From the very outset the president and his administration, and his Republican enablers in Congress, demonized their Democratic party colleagues and characterized those who voted for them as unpatriotic, un-American socialists.  “We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.”  Another lie.  It quickly became evident that the president’s allegiance was only to those among his base who swore their personal allegiance to him.  The country and what it stands for be damned. Inaction and complaining became hallmarks of his administration and his rhetoric and behavior became more delusional and unhinged as time passed.

Looking past the palaver of his first public statement on the direction his administration would take, his populist demeanor took on a more decided nationalistic bent verging quickly into aid and succor to the white supremacist elements of the population who until then had functioned on the outermost fringes of public discourse.  At his inauguration the president told us that when “you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.” Another lie.  Look to Charlottesville in 2017.  Those assembled there were not unprejudiced patriots.  Those the president increasing called patriots and who rallied to his call for “America First” represent the darkest side of American reality.

The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville on August 11-12, 2017, just seven months into the new administration, was organized ostensibly to protest the decision by the city council to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public city park.   It quickly turned into much more than that; an assembly of white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, American neo-Nazis, as well as various fascist groups and militias dressed in paramilitary gear and carrying Confederate and Nazi flags and banners bearing racial and anti-Semitic symbols and messages.  And who will forget the White Power torchlight parade and the chant “The Jews Will Not Replace Us”?

David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a former Republican member of the Louisiana state legislature, and a convicted felon who served time in a federal correctional institution, endorsed the president’s campaign as early as 2015 and he urged his followers to vote Republican.  To do otherwise would be “treason to your heritage."  Duke played a very visible role at the Charlottesville rally.  “We’re going to fulfill the promise of Donald Trump. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he say’s he’s going to take our country back.”   But for whom?  Duke personally thanked the president for being honest and courageous for not doing or saying anything to distance himself or his administration from the core message of the rally.  That message ended with the death of a young woman protesting against hate, and two police officers trying to maintain law and order at the rally.

The president’s response to events in Charlottesville was lukewarm at best, saying only that there were many fine people among the fascist and white supremacist protestors just as there were among the counter-protestors.  No there were not!  Look at the crowd that besieged the Capitol building during last week’s coup attempt.   Some might call them patriots for wanting to take their country back from some perceived domestic threat.   Others, including myself, look upon them as domestic terrorists who were not there to protest, but to destroy a cherished institution while threatening bodily harm on our elected representatives, including a threat to hang the vice president.  I think it is quite obvious who these individuals are and what they wanted.  There is a message presently going viral on Facebook:

I have found that in times of political confusion, particularly when emotions are running high and creating tunnel vision, the presence of Nazis can be an extremely helpful indicator.  If I am attending a local demonstration or event and I see Nazis…neo-Nazis, casual Nazis, master race Nazis, or the latest-whatever-uber-mythology-Nazis, I figure out which side they are on. And if they are on my side of the demonstration?  I am on the wrong side.

There is something wrong if someone who claims to be an American patriot can’t figure out this no-brainer.

The sight of Nazi flags and banners at the Charlottesville rally sickened me just as they have at countless fascist protests around this country since then. The fact the president viewed these fascist thugs as “fine people” sickens me even more.  I spent a 32-year professional career investigating and prosecuting individuals residing in the United States who actively supported and assisted the Nazi government of Germany in its wholesale extermination of the Europeans Jews and other peoples they deemed undesirable.  My father, as a 20 year old man from rural Michigan, fought his way across Europe in order to destroy the Nazis and what they represented.  He was awarded for his bravery. His unit assisted in the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp and he saw up close and personal what the Nazis had done and planned to continue had they been victorious.  He had to live the remainder of his life with the memories of the horrors he had witnessed.  I’m sure he would have been revolted by what he saw in Charlottesville, and again by what transpired on the steps of the Capitol building last week.

A Proud Boy thug wore a ‘Camp Auschwitz” hoodie complete with a death’s head and “Work Brings Freedom” message, a clear reference to “Arbeit macht frei” posted over the entrance to Nazi concentration camps where one’s only freedom was gained through the smokestacks of the overworked crematoria.  Or another Proud Boy thug wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “6MWE” - six million weren’t enough.  I need not share these images here; they are revolting and I’m sure you have all seen them by now.  These are American patriots???  The president must think so because, just like at Charlottesville, he could not bring himself to condemn their message and the violence they perpetrated.  He released a short video calling for the terrorists to leave.  Nothing more.  His statement was peppered with sympathy, telling these thugs "We love you, you're very special." 

It is tough to argue moral equivalence when I am standing next to a Nazi.  Look to my right.  Is there a guy wearing a 6MWE t-shirt?  I am on the wrong side.  Look to my left.  If that guy is wearing a Camp Auschwitz t-shirt?  Wrong side.  Are speakers being applauded for referring to things that Hitler got right?  Wrong side.

The President of the United States looked around and opted for the wrong side and he incited a coup d’etat in Washington, DC, the cradle of our democracy.  His soldiers are fascist haters, race baiters and anti-Semites who use what they perceive as their freedom to do and say what they please to actively undermine and destroy the democracy that gave them those very freedoms they abuse.  Not long ago, while visiting Arlington, a National Cemetery like many others where true American patriots like my father are buried with honor, the president turned to an aide.  “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”   The president showed contempt for the casualties of war, and in doing so, for all men and women who served this country in uniform.  A year or so earlier, he decided against visiting the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris.  “Why should I go to that cemetery?  It’s filled with losers.”  In a separate conversation on the same trip, he referred to marines killed during World War I as “suckers” for getting killed.  So we know what the president considers patriotic.  It’s hard for me to say this, but I am glad my dad did not live to see what this country is becoming.  I can only imagine the great psychic wound it would have inflicted on him and his fellow comrades-in-arms.  They do not deserve this.  None of us deserve this.   But here we are.

I want to remain optimistic.  I want to believe that once this scourge, this undemocratic nemesis is finally cast out, every possible step will be taken to insure that this regrettably stormy transition of power results in a quick return to sanity and proper and reliable governance.  We must all work together to heal the divisions that will continue to infect  this once great nation.  We will have to rebuild confidence in our democratic institutions and to demonstrate to ourselves and to the world at large that we truly are one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.