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    Tuesday, November 05, 2024

    Reject fear-based leaders

    JD Vance tweeted recently: “We need to empower the police to take violent people off the streets. It’s really that simple.” I have never been overly impressed with Yale Law School graduates, but I’m sure they all, including Vance, realize that police already have the power to take people who actually commit violence off the streets. So what is he talking about?

    He is parroting a fictional rationale for some of the outrageous and unconstitutional actions Donald Trump has promised. Last month, for example, former President Trump promised to eject a million immigrants who are legally in the United States.

    The Trump/Vance campaign is fear-based and fascist. They tell people that immigrants are going to eat their pets. He tells Black people that immigrants are going to take away “Black jobs.” He warns everyone that, ”They will walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat." I am fond of one twitter response to this nonsense that said: “I’ve had immigrants walk into my kitchen and cut my carrots, cilantro and onions and all I can say to that was it was delicious and thank you.”

    I am also hopeful that our sense of humor may save us, but mainstream media does too little to recognize and condemn this attempt at authoritarianism. The Trump campaign, with his Nazi rhetoric about “poisoning the blood” of our country and his dog whistle cries of “I am your retribution” are an appeal to the basest of human nature. His casual mentions of suspending the constitution, jailing his enemies and using the military to suppress protests are a treasonous insult to the legions who have died in defense of this democracy.

    Retired U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley said former President Trump is "a fascist to the core," according to journalist Bob Woodward's new book, “War."

    His rhetoric about genes has little difference from the eugenics movement that was the philosophical parent of Hitler and Nazism. He says Latino immigrants disproportionately have “bad genes” and tells his lily white rally attendees that they have “good genes.”

    As Barack Obama asked recently, when did this become OK? Is there not a tipping point moment when Americans say this is not who we are. It is reassuring that so many Republicans like Liz Cheney are putting country first and saying this is most assuredly not who we are. The demonization of immigrants is a tool Trump uses to try to regain power. We’d do well to recall that President Ronald Reagan’s final speech was a love letter to immigrants, the former president saying “Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American. We draw our people, our strength, from every country and every corner of the world.” Do we need a sane and rational immigration policy? Absolutely. A great start would have been the bipartisan legislation that Trump directed the squeaker of the house to kill.

    Fear is often what drives the turn to authoritarianism. Fear of losing power and, perhaps more important, fear of losing one’s dominant status in society. Fear is the road that Trump/Vance would ride to power.

    While I am tempted to suggest that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous assurance to the people of America that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is a sufficient rejoinder to the Trump/Vance fear mongering, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her impassioned dissent in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States (the title of which is appropriate in unintended ways) identifies the one legitimate fear in this election when she states “with fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

    Trump’s candidacy has been made infinitely more dangerous by the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, a case that sets the table for authoritarian rule. As Justice Sotomayor explained in dissent, it frees the president to engage in corruption and violence, including the assassination of his rivals, without fear of criminal charges. It allows the president to transform the executive branch into a fiefdom of self-enrichment and cruelty, wielding dictatorial power to entrench his own rule.

    Fascism is government control by force. There's no option to vote, no chance to impeach a leader and no freedom to stand up against the governing body. It’s not who we are; it is who Trump and Vance are and they must be soundly defeated by all Americans who put their country above their party.

    Steven Spellman is a retired state Superior Court Judge and former state Senator. He lives in Noank.

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