Once again today, I listened while a Democratic spokesperson mouthed the logical non-sequitur “If President Trump succeeds America succeeds.” In an effort to tamp down citizen outrage at the failure of our misnamed national elections from interference by both foreign interference from Russia and a right-wing cabal in the FBI, elements of the Democratic party are clinging to weak sophistry and thereby undermining their own credentials while doing nothing to validate the incoming president’s legitimacy. The idea that the successful attainment of goals of Trump’s coalition of the white supremacists, self-serving billionaires, morally bankrupt evangelical charlatans, environmental rapists, climate change deniers, and militarists, will somehow improve the conditions of the millions of Americans who voted against him is ludicrous on its face.
Now is the time for anyone who loves their country to hold their elected official to account. This is especially true if those official claiming the mantle of the Democratic Party. In a few days, we will witness the transfer of power from a legitimately elected president to an illegitimate puppet of global oligarchs from both the USA and Russia. Any elected official who counsels for business, as usual, is part of the problem and not the solution. They need to be shouted down and exposed as the apologists they are. From this day forward, only one patriotic path is open to the American public, RESISTANCE. If the forces of tyranny who have twisted our democratic system of elections into a weapon wielded against the interest of the common man succeeds, the American people will lose. They stand to lose their health care, free press, rights to control their own reproductive system, their freedom from religion, huge sections of low-lying coastlines, and decade’s worth of progress on race relations and possibly their future survival.
Every American alive today has survived the clear and present threat of nuclear annihilation, most of us for our entire life. During 72 years since the first detonation of a nuclear weapon by the American military, we have developed and deployed a wide range of tactical nuclear weapons. These weapons have been specifically designed to make their use a more appealing option than the 40 and 50 megaton bombs of the cold war. On the 20th of this month, the nuclear codes will be transferred perhaps for the last time in history from a rational globally respected, legitimately elected president, to a pretender to the presidency, who is characterized by his unquenchable megalomania and feared around the world by our friends and allies as well as our enemies and competitors, a man who has frequently expressed a greater willingness to employ our nuclear arsenal as a TRUMP card in negotiations. This situation can only be thought of as the peaceful transfer of power if the consequence of the inauguration at totally ignored.
Political leaders who attempt to describe our upcoming inauguration as a peaceful transfer of power are either delusional or dishonest. For the last eight years, American oligarchs have shielded the AR15 toting militias while they intimidate their fellow American, seize federal land, and advocated for the violent overthrow of our government. Through their minions in the US Senate, they have stripped the American people of the protection of our third brand of government by refusing to perform their clearly mandated responsibility of advice and consent. Now is not the time for people who love their country to sit quietly by while their birthrights are being ripped away. Historians will mark January 20th, 2017, as the official beginning of THE AMERICAN RESISTANCE. Either the forces of democracy will succeed or those of fascism will overpower the will of the people. One or the other…not both.
The Forest In Focus 