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The Amazon Trail: All Along the Watchtower

Lee Lynch | January 12, 2021

Topics: American Civil Liberties Union, Capitol riot, Coup, Donald Trump, Republican Party, Southern Poverty Law Center, The Amazon Trail, Unite the Right

In this month’s Amazon Trail, Lee Lynch explains that the right-wing insurrection we’re dealing with now in the United States is nothing new.

Oh, hell, what can I say at a time like this? Did we think they’d simply go away?

When angry white criminals occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon back on January 2, 2016 and the seven miscreants were charged with federal conspiracy and weapons violations only to go scot free;

When, in the 1980s and 1990s, angry white Christians organized to legalize discrimination against their scapegoats-of-the-day, gays, in order to build a vast political machine;

When a woman was killed by a white supremacist at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia;

When people of color are daily, hourly, victims of “officers of the law”;

With Southern Poverty Law Conference workers putting their lives in jeopardy to identify and expose hate groups;

With the American Civil Liberties Union and its sister social justice organizations unendingly trying to bring equality to a country that can’t or won’t provide it for its citizens;

When sixty-four million voters choose a money-grubbing, power-grabbing, morally empty, strangely uneducated cheater to rule them, and make an American idol of him;

When you’re Jewish, or your skin isn’t white, or you’re female, or your affectional preference scares people enough to make you a threat and a target;

When Americans bomb their neighbors;

When it’s dangerous to represent the citizens who elected you — we need to pay attention. We need to acknowledge that anti-democratic power is quietly accruing and will lash out; will harm rather than protect this too-trusting nation.

These rightist protestors are angry that gays can marry; they’re angry about a woman, especially a woman of color, becoming our vice president. They’re angry because they can’t get ahead, can’t pay their medical bills, can’t put anything away for retirement. This anger is passed from generation to generation, and as we become a more just and equal nation some of these Americans blame the newly enfranchised for taking away their jobs, or their right to be better than whoever is lowest on their totem poles. They’re striking back, but at the wrong people.

Right wing demonstrators apparently think wealthy Republicans represent them. Socially, they may. But it’s not affirmative action taking bread off their tables, it’s not gay marriage siphoning off the middle class. It’s not “satanic” Democrats lowering taxes on big business or cutting food stamps, gutting Medicaid, and threatening to weaken Medicare and Social Security. Democrats are not the ones passing laws to weaken unions nor are they making it easier to give U.S. jobs to countries guilty of child labor, sweatshops, and pitiful wages.

Republicans are for big business. There’s a mutually beneficial relationship there: corporations fund their political campaigns and elected officials do corporations’ bidding. Like voting to consider corporations equal to humans. The campaign donations are used, in part, to target voters who are told that Democrats, progressives, socialists, liberals — whatever trigger word works — are harming Americans. The demonization is passed through certain churches, through organizations like the N.R.A., through some charter schools, through media designed for the purpose of telling lies.

They spread lies that smeared intelligent and capable Hillary Clinton so thoroughly that an insecure, bankruptcy-prone idiot who knows nothing about government, foreign affairs, economics — about anything necessary to the office of President of the United States — was elected. Now, because he pandered to the anger and frustration of a populace frightened of change, opposed to inclusiveness, looking for a miracle, they seem to believe an economic evangelist con man will lead the way to riches untold.

We should have expected it and done more to stop it. This is a capitalist nation. Nothing wrong with that. Except, when Republicans eased the restrictions on corporations, they unleashed a money-grubbing free-for-all.

Unfettered capitalism is greed, pure and simple. Greed for profit and greed for power. And that’s what we have today, universal greed. Instead of taking care of its citizens, our government feeds that greed, starving those it was supposed to serve and protect, telling them all the while who to blame. While destroying the economy for the average American, these shameless elected corporate automatons duped laid-off factory workers, ex-service people, unstable wanna-be rebel leaders. Duped them not into a revolution, but into murderous, cock-a-hoop self-sabotage.

The Republicans aren’t sitting in jails, the corporations aren’t sharing their riches. These dissenters, tools of a corporate, big brother world, aren’t going away. We, the people, cannot look away any more.  

Copyright Lee Lynch 2021. Top Photo via The Hill/Twitter

Everything You Are Feeling Right Now is Valid

Landon Shroder | January 7, 2021

Topics: America, American politics, Coup, Donald Trump, Insurrection, Republican Party, Riot, rioters, United States, Washington DC

Citizens of conscience, everything you are feeling is valid. How can we even begin to process the range of emotions experienced in the past 24 hours? What happened yesterday, January 6, 2021, is a day that will forever be seared into our collective memories. On this day, a rabble of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists attempted a coup against the government of the United States. The images of this mob scaling the walls of Congress, ransacking the offices of our elected officials, and committing violence against the seat of our government was beyond excruciating to watch. Even more so, since it was all done in the name of a white supremacist president whose lies and conspiracies have corrupted so much of our body-politic. 

Because of this we are right to feel angry. 

In the aftermath of President-Elect Joe Biden’s electoral certification, we cannot forget to hold those accountable who let this happen: corrupt politicians whose only sense of principle originates with naked power, the police who were clearly complicit in letting this siege take place, and a conservative media echo chamber that continues to put their profits above the health and well-being of our democracy. And of course, the president, whose malfeasance and depravities need no explanation. 

Because of this we are right to feel betrayed. 

Photo by Quinn Bonney

There has been a lot of conversation on what to call yesterday — an insurrection, a riot, a mob — but in the end, this was an attempted coup. An attempt by a despotic authoritarian to subvert the will of the people and overthrow our democratic traditions that, however imperfect, provide the foundational bedrock of our society. This did not happen in a vacuum, though. Our president has been enabled by a subversive political class that has betrayed their oath of office and their country. Whatever their intent, they should have known better. They must be held responsible. 

Because of this we are right to feel anxious. 

Grandstanding on the idea of “my constituents have concerns about the election” is as dangerously ridiculous as it is dangerously provocative. There is only one outcome in this scenario: creating the conditions we saw unfold yesterday. Indeed, the men and women who pushed this narrative are not working class, salt of the earth Americans, fighting against the establishment. They are the epitome of the elite. Ted Cruz went to both Princeton and Harvard, Josh Hawley went to Stanford and Yale. These are seditious men who used their power and platform to wage war on our democratic traditions (however imperfect). They stand beside other giants of sedition: Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Alexander Hamilton Stephens — their visages could line what remains of Richmond’s Monument Ave. 

Because of this we are right to feel distressed. 

Photo by Quinn Bonney

Do you remember this summer, when hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets in support of racial justice and police reform after the murder of George Floyd? Do you remember the sheer brutality of the police and their mandate of state-sanctioned violence? The tear gas, pepper spray, armored vehicles, riot police, and mass arrests? Now remember yesterday — when Q-Anon conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and people who were chanting “murder the media” easily overran the Capitol building. Do you remember seeing the videos of cops taking selfies with rioters and insurrectionists, abandoning their posts, and letting the gates open? Does the difference between these two things need further explaining? 

Because of this we are right to feel rage.

Photo by Quinn Bonney

None of this should surprise us. We can be shocked and filled with emotion, but surprised we cannot be. This is the inevitable outcome of a failed political system; a system that has elevated demagoguery at the expense of conversation and partisanship at the expense of pragmatism. Instead of reconciling our foundational issues, which would lead to a stronger America in terms of racial justice, income equality, healthcare, education, and climate (to name a few); we have let extremism, racialism, and fascism take root — because that was an easier pathway forward. Because it was easier to ferment hate and conspiracy than it was to look within and acknowledge our failures. Yesterday proves this. Throngs of enraged white people who felt entitled enough, who were privileged enough, to wage a coup in the name of a cultist conspiracy speaks to the depravity of what America has become. And no amount of revisionist history and political double-speak will wash away the truth of what we bore witness to yesterday. 

Because of this we are right to feel apprehensive.

The only path through this is forward, with an acknowledgment that everything we are feeling is valid: anger, betrayal, anxiety, distress, rage, and apprehension. There is no turning back from what happened yesterday. As we face our family, friends, and colleagues who believe in the Trump conspiracy and cult, we will be faced with the complex reality of who they are, what they believe, and what they have become. The sides have been drawn. There are those who will stand for democracy (however imperfect), and those who will stand for fascism, white supremacy, and the conspiracies of a political faction corrupted by an incurable sickness that has been allowed to spread uncontrollably. No one knows what the coming days will bring, other than a continued range of emotions — all of which will remain valid for some time to come. 

*All photos by Quinn Bonney. You can also find Landon Shroder on IG right here.

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