Column
We can stop with all the hedging and qualifying
Donald Trump walks back to the White House after appearing outside of St John?s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. Photo: Brendan Smialowski /Getty Images
He?s a Nazi. He?s not scarily reminiscent of a Nazi. He doesn?t have alarming Nazi-like qualities. Your president, my president, is a fucking Nazi. That?s not a standard bit of tweeted hyperbole. It?s a truth. It?s bedrock. There?s no sly coding to it. You don?t get to go OH DEAR PRESIDENT TRUMP IS SAYING THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD when there has never been any quiet parts to Donald Trump, nor any disguising his zeal for outright fascism.
If the past four years have not made it clear, if 100,000 dead and kids in cages and open admiration for fellow dictators didn?t do the trick, then this week better have. This eternal harbinger of misery got on the horn with 50 governors yesterday and demanded they ?dominate? American protesters by arresting them, contact tracing them, and putting them in jail for 10 years. Then, later that day, he deliberately ordered his own men to teargas peaceful protesters and fucking PRIESTS to clear the way for him to walk ? with the laziest possible gait ? over to an empty church so that he could hold a bible upside down on camera. He has authorized, with some dubious legality, the American military to suppress the very people they serve. But of course, he barely needs the military when he?s already openly encouraged local police forces and everyday white shitbags to do as they please with the lavish caches of artillery they already possess. And they have.
This is Nazism, gas included. This is the enemy. This is war. Anyone who says otherwise is part of the same complicity industrial complex that led us to this flashpoint to begin with. I don?t wanna hear any more BUTs to any of this. Every time you say BUT, another American is force-fed a flash grenade on camera. Your time expressing vague disappointment over Trump?s rhetoric and the general state of affairs is over. The chance of this ending peacefully? Also gone. Don?t tell me to break bread with Nazi sympathizers. Don?t tell me that I can vote my way out of this when the destruction you see before you has been wrought by a President that the majority of us did NOT vote for, by local officials who have suppressed and gerrymandered their way to permanent tenures, and by corporate lobbies who are agnostic to all of it.
He?s found his bliss, and it?s in remaking this country in his own image: sour, ugly, hateful, and miserable.
And don?t tell protesters ? REAL and genuine protestors and not the handful of dipshits co-opting the cause ? how to protest. Who the fuck expresses their anger flawlessly? Why should anyone rein in their anger after what we?ve all just witnessed? Windows will be broken. I don?t care. What?s the cost of one window against the cost of losing George Floyd? Against reporters getting arrested on camera for reporting? Against kids getting unprovoked rubber bullets to the face? We are under attack from within and all but helpless right now. People just wanna be left the fuck alone by this asshole Nazi President. They just wanna LIVE. They want, you know, actual freedom. And yet, Trump refuses. He?s not gonna change. He?s not gonna grow interested in things OTHER than being a Nazi. This is his calling. He?s gotten approval from his bloodthirsty supporters and it?s given him true purpose. This is the hardest he?s worked in his whole life. He?s found his bliss, and it?s in remaking this country in his own image: sour, ugly, hateful, and miserable.
When I was growing up, you couldn?t be a Nazi openly. Outed Nazis and Klansmen were shamed and laughed into isolation. They were alone. But once the internet came around ? a positive development in so many other aspects ? they found each other. They connected. Suddenly they didn?t feel so alone. Suddenly they felt emboldened. Freer to be themselves. And Donald Trump, being a Nazi himself, realized that he could round up this disparate coalition, shelter them inside a gleeful GOP, and lead them. I didn?t see a single moment of shame from him or from any belligerent police officers this week. All I saw was pride. And I don?t see anyone who has the power to stop any of this right now laboring to do so.
This country built its modern reputation on two world wars that it was late to the party for. America was a decisive factor in both of those wars, but now finds itself late to a war happening on its own soil. If you can?t see that war outside your door right now, you?re either a fool or you?re cheering it on. I don?t want a fucking thing to do with you either way.
There is no acceptable response to Trump and the GOP right now other than outright hostility. All they want to do with power is hurt people with it. They are Nazis, and they have only begun fulfilling their grandest Nazi ambitions. I promise you that they won?t stop trying. Call them what they are. Nazis. Terrorists. This party cloaked itself in the American flag and now stands poised to render us history?s greatest disappointment.
