I feel more and more strongly that the Democrats MUST call out Trump and "Trumpism" for what they are: a clear and present danger to the Republic..
Yes, there should be a well-thought out, savvy strategy. Yes, it must be presented also with a positive, alternative vision for the country (something that has been happening with Democratic congressional representatives leading protests at the border and other immigration detention centers). But calling out Trumpism is an urgent task if we are to save our democracy.
These three articles capture my own feeling of urgency (all three have been posted elsewhere on DU):
1. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/15/samantha-bee-robert-de-niro-trump-language
. . . Expecting those of us who are scared and angry over what our country is becoming to speak with civility is absurd – civility died the day Trump took office. It’s like telling a woman to smile as she’s being sexually harassed on the street: we’re not just supposed to put up with injustice, we’re meant to be cheerful through it, as well.
If you’re not angry enough to curse, to scream or name-call, then you’re not paying nearly enough attention. As the New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino tweeted in 2017: “Never forget to be extremely wary of every person in your life who has not experienced this last year as a personal moral emergency.”
Meeting extreme injustices with polite banter plays right into the hands of this administration, because it paints their outrageous actions as just being on one side of a well-meaning debate. They’re not. This is not about disagreement, or political discourse. This is about fighting for what’s right over what is clearly and demonstrably evil.
and this:
2.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/he-was-fired-10-months-ago-but-stephen-k-bannon-has-won/2018/06/17/4bddc874-70b7-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.html?
This is the victory not only of a Trump personality cult, as it has been described, but also of an ideology, one closer to Putinism than Reaganism. . . .The anti-democratic, protectionist, anti-immigrant, pro-authoritarian administration that has now taken shape, in other words, is not only Bannonism. It is raw and unvarnished Trumpism, too.
and this:
3.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/trump-is-making-us-all-live-in-his-delusional-reality-show.html
It’s vital for us to remember this every day: Almost no one else in public life is so openly living in his own disturbed world. This past week was a kind of masterpiece in delusion. . .
The bad news is that a vast chunk of the American public wants all this to be true as well. If you had any doubts that the GOP is now a cult, this week’s primary results should put them to rest. Republican voters have decided that they will follow their leader no matter what he says, and if that means changing their minds on a dime, so be it. Take Canada. Not so long ago, it was funny to attack our benevolent neighbor to the north. Countless episodes of South Park wouldn’t have worked without the baseline of reality that Canada is about as good and boring a neighbor as you can possibly imagine. But Trump has the power to change minds instantly. So in February this year, 94 percent had a favorable view of Canada. Now, only 66 percent have a favorable view, with 13 in opposition and 22 percent suddenly unsure. Only two years ago, free trade was as solid a shibboleth for the GOP as it gets; now, it’s anathema, even for Larry Kudlow! And watching every Republican senator, apart from McCain, Flake, and Corker (all retiring), stay utterly silent after their president praised a mass-murdering dictator and gave him a global PR coup … well, it’s no longer surprising, but it should remain shocking.
. . .
But to cling to this now — to empiricism, facts, to what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears, to what we can say in plain English — is to commit to the central and most essential task of resistance. We live in a lie now, perpetrated from the very top, enhanced by relentless propaganda, and designed to shore up what is a cult. It is growing in strength. It is precisely now that we must manage at every moment to dispel it. And then to vote, en masse, for its extinction.
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