A Measure of How Much has Changed in Two Years
Curt Wechsler | January 9, 2019
Mr. Trump's first Oval Office address felt like a non-event agree The New Yorker writers John Cassidy and Masha Gessen.
"A measure of how much has changed in two years -- how far we have fallen -- is that commentators have stopped saying that Trump is 'Presidential' when he manages to read from the teleprompter," says Gessen. "This isn't because Trump has changed or the commentators have changed. It's because he has redefined what 'Presidential' is."
Absent the impetus of the declaration of a state of emergency foreshadowed by political pundits, Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi countered Trump's demand for a border wall with Mexico with the moral-less stance that: 'It costs too much'. Instead of denouncing death in detention camps, the violation of human rights suffered by families in hieleras, or the kidnapping of children by agents of the U.S. government, Schumer and Pelosi choose to ally themselves with the President's position.
"Make no mistake," Schumer says, "Democrats and the President both want stronger border security." Facilitating the denial of international protection afforded asylum seekers desperate to escape untenable living conditions -- exacerbated by U.S. meddling in Latin American countries -- the shameless duo confer legitimacy to the genocidal policies of a fascist regime consolidating in full view of an immobilized citizenry of "leftist" or "progressive" persuasion.
We can't wait for Democrats to save us from this nightmare.
2018 has ended with two Guatemalan children dead in U.S. detention at the border, "their precious lives lost in the hands of this regime," writes RefuseFascism.com contributor Coco Das. "What do we owe those children, and the lives around the world hanging in the balance? Our mission today is as clear as it was when we began, to bring millions into the streets in a sustained, non-violent movement to demand, in the name of humanity, the Trump/Pence regime must go. There is much turbulence roiling above, but the waters down here are far too calm. There is only one kind of disorder a fascist regime fears, the disorder and disobedience of the masses of people. We must very soon take advantage of the divisions at the top with a massive disruption from below, to un-calm the waters on our terms and wrench a different future out of this turmoil."
