After the Deluge
We will rise again
With the first major snowstorm of the winter bearing down on us here in New England, there’s an excitement in the air that mirrors the giddiness in the global order. As tRump backs down once again on his surreal Greenlandic fantasies of world domination, we seem to have weathered the worst of the right wing death cult that has once again engulfed the West.
In response, a humanitarian wave can be glimpsed coming on the horizon. The forces of progress gather strength.
In Europe, you can see this in the halls of power, as a Dutch MP puts the lie to the fake machismo of the old school, the might makes right logic of the Donroe doctrine.
She calls on Europe to do better than the US, exhorting the nations of the newly born again Old World to display unity in the face of rightwing, xenophobic populism bidding for power.
Read the comments, and you will find many Americans expressing support and solidarity. We feel proud of Europe, grateful that the nations of our ancestors are standing up and fighting back.
This is a global struggle underway, and it is clearer than ever before where the belly of the beast is located. Physically, right now, that would be Minneapolis, MN.
And to those who think that protesting has no effect, the message that a march like this sends is unmistakeable. Anybody can see that the force of the people in the street is unstoppable. Like Napoleon in Russia, ICE will not survive the winter in Minnesota. Project 2025 has been checkmated.
For now.
There are two things that can be true at once.
A. We love our country and are tied by invisible bonds to the people from whom we descend.
B. We recognize ourselves in all people and raise up the primacy of brotherhood over selfishness and fear.
Project 2025 is driven by the same “volkish” motivations as drove Hitler to power. These beliefs, part A above without the required balance of part B, have lain dormant in the post wwII era but are now back at the fore. Their primary spokesman is today our ignoble president tRump, the White House’s troll in residence. You can hear it in the sneers of his most recent Davos speech when he excoriates Europe for becoming unrecognizable to his mythic “friends” returning from once scenic Old World cities.
“They’re not the same. Not the same,” laments Uncle Don.
We all know what he means. We have all heard it before. It’s an ingrained part of the American experience. The wrong side of town where the black people lived, the ghettos of our northern cities, no-go areas, blighted and crime ridden. Blame it on the victims, nothing to do with systemic racism, the legacy of slavery, or plain old poverty.
Of course not.
The solution? Same as it ever was to the filthy rich. Ship them away, hide them, eliminate them, disappear them back somewhere else. Not our problem. Empathy and solidarity with mankind? Nice words, piety to be gestured at. Nothing more. Feel good stuff. Thoughts and prayers.
When the leader of the free world is an out and out racist spouting thoughts and phrases that would be recognizable in your drunk uncle or a cab driver in Marseilles, you have a worldwide storm on your hands. The good news is tRump 2.0, with the exponential brutality of its deportation machinery and associated paramilitary, is also spurring a backlash of protest and organizing that so far has proved the match of the evil and rot at the heart of Maga.
It’s not pretty, it’s already ugly. It will get worse. But I know who I’ve got my money on.