IT COULD HAPPEN HERE.

     Recently I was given a task by Professor Wen at Willamette University . She is conducting a study on generations with her class. Since I am of an older generation,  i represent my demographic. My task was to make a presentation of my writing to a small group of students from the class she is teaching. I knew immediately what I would present to her Generations group.

     Some years ago in my mid 20's I hitch-hiked to Southern California. On a typical sunny California day I found myself sitting in the well-heeled comfort of Marina Del Rey.  An old man struck up a conversation with me. He was then, around my age now. 

   He was clearly Jewish, that distinctive nose and the Eastern European accent. He told me a story of escaping Holland in a sailboat regatta of these odd little sabot sailboats. I said little except to draw him out when the story began to lag. He used a phrase when referring to how people dealt with the insult of being occupied by a hostile nation, "small displays of contempt". My dad had fought in WWII, in the Pacific theatre, my uncles in the European theatre. These were rather larger displays of contempt. They talked sparingly of their experiences but I grew up on a diet of television shows and movies of that time devoted to war. They were a mixed-bag of action movies, tragedies and comedies. I also had read books about the war. One time I read Catcher in The Rye under a false cover of a WWII story. Religious zealots then, as now, were overly concerned by our exposure to some books. War was okay, the experiences of a young man growing to adulthood was of concern to them. 

     Among the arsenal of contempt these conquered, not captured, people practiced was such discreet tactics as plugging tailpipes of German military vehicles with potatoes, putting sugar in the fuel tank, small explosive devices attached to the underside of a general's car, anything to prevent the smooth operation of the Wermacht. These were somewhat less than acts of war to be sure, but these were acts of contempt that could be done surreptitiously. And they were effective.  Other more discreet activities were spitting in a soldier's soup, drinking a small amount of wine from a bottle of cherished red and pouring pee into the wine before recorking it. There were two important objectives...not to get caught, and always, make your show of disrespect an effective way to expose your hatred of the enemy.

     My fascination then with this very personal story was that of a young man with the confidence, maybe even the arrogance, to know that I would never suffer occupation in this nation. This was the mid-seventies. Richard Nixon had been forced to resign, the Vietnam War had come to an end, Gerald Ford was serving the remainder of Nixon's second term. He was a nice man, as Republicans go, his only fault to my mind was pardoning Nixon, and being a member of a shitty party where Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and even Roger Stone arouses no embarrassment. Jimmy Carter would follow. The Civil Rights Act and Voters Rights Act had been in effect for a decade. We had not had an assassination of Civil Rights activists or a politician judged too liberal in several years, and the Kent State Massacre was some 5 years in the rearview mirror. Life was good. Democracy was working. Even when Ronald Reagan had been elected several years later, I was not concerned about the direction our nation was heading. Until he went after the Air-traffic control union, and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of this thing called "corporate personhood". Shit excelerated while "trickle-down economics did not trickle down, causing some of us to become increasingly concerned.. 

     Today, I have a different feeling for the WWII experience of that Jewish man. It is not that it could happen here, it is happening here. We witnessed a president getting elected with the aid of a hostile foreign nation, Russia, in 2016, and less successfully in 2020. We watched that man turn his presidency into the Corleone family for the four years of his presidency. That continues to this day. When he was defeated for reelection in 2020, we watched him and his party save for a tiny few, start and defend, an insurrection. We watched him try to destroy the US Post Office to weaken vote-by-mail during a pandemic, we watched him chip away at the integrity of our electoral process. To date, none of those criminals have recieved prison sentences. If they do, the prison sentence will not be as long or harsh as it should be. And that piece of shit is leading his primary opponents coming into the 2024 elections. By a significant majority.  We have not been invaded by a foreign nation, we have watched fascism rise up among the very people who were our military in younger days and our police forces today. Two-thirds of our Supreme Court have or are, taking large gifts of "friendship" from wealthy Republican donors. Ditto for many of the jurists in our lower courts. A significant number of thinktanks, political Action Committees, and 504c pressure groups are feeling unconstrained strength. CPAC, a conservative political action committee invited the Hungarian dictator, Victor Orban to speak before its body in 2022. This is the threat that faces us going into the 2024 presidential election. The threat that our precious democracy is under attack, and the Republicans have either defended that attack, or turned their back on it. The Speaker of the House 2.0 is one of those actively threatening our democracy. Something history has taught many of us is that authoritarians, when unrestrained, become dictators. And oddly enough, authoritarians suck at self-restraint. They are fine with restraints on others, they just don't see themselves as needing restraint. Now that the 2023 elections have concluded. Republicans suffered some significant electoral losses. This is what Republican former Senator Rick Santorum said after the concession speeches were made:

                    Allowing Americans to have a direct say in what rights they should have

               Is often a bad deal for Republicans, which is why they want to make sure that

                happens as little as possible.

Back in 1980, Paul Weyrich, a soon to be Reagan advisor, similarly told Republicans that "Republicans win elections when fewer people vote." Being elected by a popular vote is not as important to this fascist party as getting elected. 

     The 2024 elections will be the crucible that determines if we can rebuild that democracy we have lost, thanks to this cavalier view. Must we rebuild with a higher grade of steel than we needed previously, or will the democracy that remains be an aluminum foil hat. Sure, you may say, you use words, you know how to recognize hyperbole. And you would be right, I can use hyperbole whats more i know that the definition of hyperbole is: an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken seriously, the second prepositional phrase being ignored by Republicans. More importantly, I use hyperbole because I like humor, where would humor be without hyperbole, without exaggeration? Many of us are skilled enough to know when hyperbole is misused to frighten the less-skilled minds among us. And there's no humor to be found there. History has written many warnings about the threats to the democratic process. In the time of my father, we saw a man elected to serve in the Reichstad, who was able to coalesce around him an effective band of people who misused hyperbole to frighten their base. That man and his followers was the group my Jewish friend was forced to flee. We saw in 1933 a group of wealthy industrialists and bankers try to enlist a two-time Medal of honor winner to take President Roosevalt under house arrest. The man they enlisted was a man of integrity and he reported the incident to a Senate committee. We know that American fascism was trying to get a political foothold, then. It has taken some 90 years for fascism to elbow its place comfortably into our government. At the same time there were authoritarian international leaders who allied themselves with the Deutchbag. Mussilini in Italy,  Attaturk in Turkey, Spain, and this tiny empire in the far flung reaches of the Pacific Ocean, Japan. Spain had the good sense to remain neutral and because of that, General Francisco Franco held his seat long after the Axis powers was a mere memory.

     What do we do if this fascist takeover of democracy succeeds? First, vote. Vote even if it is for some lowly schoolboard candidate. They, the fascist enemy, are seeking to insert themselves in the public school system. They have been at it some time, but have been more successful recently. If you don't vote, those people will. And when they succeed, they will find an effective way to keep you from voting. I return to Paul Weyrich, whose subtle advice in 1980, is no longer subtle. They have mastered many tactics to encourage you not to care enough to vote. I am too old to go all Jack Reacher on the Proud Boyz or some other MAGA-fascist group. But these people, as other authoritarians before them, are arrogant assholes and they hate being laughed at. They speak with their fists, I speak with words. A Safeway store manager in North Portland noticed some people parking in the far end of his parking lot a few years ago. After parking they loaded into a van to take part in the George Floyd protests. The Safeway manager called the towing company and all of their cars were impounded. Since we are on the subject of the George Floyd cop-murder, the protests that took place in Portland over that couple weeks had a couple notable groups. One was the granny brigade, a group of white and colored women of a certain age that stood in the front row between the protesters and the Proud Boyz. They were joined by a leaf-blower brigade to blow the tear gas back towards the police. My Jewish friend would have enjoyed that small display of contempt. 

     Such people must be removed from the public commons. Not by force or violence, but in the way that they are least prepared to accept: by making them the butt of humor. By showing them that they are nothing but the minority. The only minority that presents an actual threat to our nation.