Dan DeWalt, a frequent contributor to these pages and one of the founders of this newspaper, writes that if he didn’t love his country, he “wouldn’t spend so much time trying to get it to live up to its purported principles.”
NEWFANE-Trump has gone off the deep end: freeing a convicted narcoterrorist Latin American president; choosing instead to murder over 80 Venezuelans and kidnap another Latin American president and charging him with narcoterrorism; recruiting his own personal militia, under the guise of ICE, which he is using to terrorize and murder Americans who oppose his efforts to deport millions of people living legally in the USA; building massive detention centers, where he plans to jail all who oppose him; having a bromance with war criminal Netanyahu as they both continue genocidal actions against Palestinians; threatening war against NATO if he can’t “take” Greenland.
Every week, a new set of horrors are rolled out, overwhelming us with stories of state insanity, making us fear for our own safety and lives, and keeping us unbalanced and unable to muster a united force to oppose his unconstitutional and illegal actions.
Trump’s cabinet of sycophants and zealots are foaming at the mouth, accusing every person murdered by ICE to be a ”domestic terrorist,” advocating state policies that echo and are aligned with the likes of Hitler and Putin, and lying through their MAGA-whitened teeth about their conduct and its consequences.
And although “We the People” are largely opposed to his actions and even claim to abhor them, we are willingly financing and strengthening his position.
Trump would not be able to get away with his destruction of our Republic without the active support and financing of the billionaire oligarchs who are profiting from his policies.
Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, Singer, Schwarzman, and Thiel are just a few of the billionaires who have jumped on the MAGA bandwagon. The media moguls have fired or denied access to voices of dissent. The profiteers who benefit from the Trump agenda kick back millions to Trump and his organization, a regular orgy at the feeding trough of the pigs of capitalism.
No crime or assault against the Constitution is too great for these oligarchs to stomach, as long as they can grow their already-obscene piles of money.
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Although Trump is enriching them, the oligarchs ultimately depend on us to buy and use their products. Without our dollars, they would wither and die on their golden vine.
Our consuming habits are our superpower; are we willing to flex our muscles? Can we all please take a moment to analyze our spending and to move away from supporting the corporations that are killing our Republic?
Here is a partial list of those who are supporting Trump in various ways:
• Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram)
• American Eagle
• Tesla
• Home Depot
• Walmart
• Palantir Technologies (which enables government spying and oppression of dissent)
• Amazon
• Apple
If Americans stopped using the services and products of these corporations, their support for Trump would dry up overnight. But Americans seem to think that we can’t live without our corporate masters.
How could we share photos of our grandkids without Facebook or Instagram? How could we buy whatever we want and get it quickly without Amazon? How could we go find a regular hardware store instead of going to Home Depot? How would we ever get a chance to become rich as a social influencer?
In short, Americans seem to be saying, “We don’t approve of the destruction of our political system, but we are not capable of doing anything to change our own conduct, because we are so busy and they make our purchasing easier. If we can’t do it with a click on the screen, then it’s more than we can handle right now.”
* * *
We are facing a violent coup d’état, but we want it to end without any real effort on our part.
Stopping Trump will require that we boycott MAGA-supportive corporations and that we will go on consumer strikes we buy nothing at all. It will require us to harass our politicians daily until they shed their lethargy and their attachment to the corporate money stream. And it will require some of us to be arrested, injured, or killed in the line of duty, which is to stand up for our country and each other.
We have been spoiled in this country. Since the Civil War, we have not had any armed conflicts on our soil. We gave up having a political consciousness to live by as we were mollified by small handouts from the money powers, like workplace health insurance, the eight-hour work day, and modern conveniences hyped to make our lives easier (as long as you didn’t think about the consequences of living perpetually in debt to those from whom your convenience was bought).
Are we up to the task before us? Are those of us who have been demonstrating willing to take the next step to blockade the streets, disrupt business, and make ourselves ungovernable?
(If we don’t want our National Guard overseas, being put in jeopardy of conviction for war crimes, then we can make enough of a ruckus here at home that they will have to come back to deal with us.)
Are those of us who have yet to do more than signing a petition or calling a politician willing to step up our game and serious study the boycott lists and see where we can stop spending dollars that support the Trump coup?
Can those of us who still are paying our taxes take a long, hard look at this habit and see if we might find the fortitude to hold our taxes back this April?
Can those of use who are wage earners change our W-2s so that no tax money is withheld during the year (denying the government an interest-free loan to do its dirty work)?
* * *
What will it take for America to fully realize that we, like the proverbial frog, are now treading simmering water that will soon boil us to death?
It’s time to stop pretending that this is anything other than an emergency. It is time to accept that if we don’t act, we will all be living an unfree life where neighbor is pitted against neighbor, prejudices are encouraged and inflamed, trust is destroyed, and the American dream is not just a difficult distant goal, but will instead be a nightmare of greed, violence, and race hatred.
The breathtaking pace at which we are barreling down into this rathole should convince us that this grim prediction is not something that lies in our children’s or grandchildren’s future, but is just around the corner. Each one of us will be bearing the full effects of our failure to act. Our current discomfort will be nothing compared to what lies ahead.
For generations, we have embraced the myths of Americans’ can-do attitude and our indomitable defense of our freedom in the face of adversity. Can we step up and actually take actions that align with these myths? Or will we find that we are just as hollow as our claims of a classless society and of freedom and justice for all?
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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