Like many other Americans, I sat transfixed, terrified and enraged at seeing the Capitol Building in Washington assailed by mindless, violent thugs in their narrow, self-righteous attempt at overthrowing a government that over the past four years has increasingly become the personal property of a man whose insidious, though accurate, instincts have attracted and controlled armies of dissatisfied citizens who live in terror that our nation might actually belong to all its citizens, regardless of race or color. The fear that something might be stolen from them has grown almost to the point of civil war, even though these people and the President himself would furiously deny that their hateful rhetoric is in any way racist.
I think of Italy and Germany of the 1930’s under Mussolini and Hitler whose bigotry was the basis of fear and unrest, the flames of which were fanned by those leaders to promote suspicion, terror and, finally, shameless mass murder on an unfathomable scale, which many of the criminals from last week’s embarrassing drama in the USA would be too ashamed actually to admit really even occurred. Such denial, self-righteous egomania, and aggrandizement made it easier to flout law and order for their own megalomania, which had been bubbling under the surface for years until what they deemed a “strong leader” fomented unrest through his army of psychotic marionettes, controlled like the pawns on a chessboard.
Blind mob rage created the terror and destruction they hoped for, leaving an ugly scar on the democratic process at which they scoffed for their own egomaniacal purposes…naïve gullible armies of them (like ants), seeming to believe absolutely anything the President said or even implied, as though carrying the American flag was what made them patriots. History repeats itself, sometimes very painfully for those who either forget it or want to use it for their own selfish purposes. So it goes, sadly this time with an army of spineless, gutless Republican lawmakers, cowering in their little comfort zones of what they deem their power and money. History will not look any more kindly upon them than it will upon the Brown Shirts and Black Shirts of eighty year ago in Europe. My hope now is that history books will not leave out the greed and utter treason of those who have shamed themselves over the past weeks (four years) and rendered our country a nation of fear, greed, suspicion, bigotry and utter shame on the world stage. JB
Great article. I would forward it to McConnell and others if I thought it would change minds. I love your writing. Wish you were my writing professor. I did have one instructor who said, when writing, the words must “rub together”. Words need to sound good when they “rub together” when you write. You certainly rub them together quite well. See you one day coming up.