Bearing Witness
And moving forward
I wanted to follow up on the piece I posted just past midnight after a rather difficult four hours. Brian Karem and I watched Mary Trump Media’s livestream of Donald’s address before a joint session of Congress, after which we did our best, under the circumstances, to process and analyze the horrifying spectacle that unfolded before the American people. I don’t know exactly when, but towards the end of his remarks, I thought very clearly, “America is over.” I knew what I meant, but, based on many of your replies to the post I later wrote, I failed adequately to translate that meaning to you in my post.
I don’t want to go into the details of what Donald said last night, or what else transpired; rather, I want to clarify what I was trying to get at.
In the lead-up to the 2020 election, I said repeatedly to anyone who would listen that American democracy was on a knife’s edge. If Donald Trump is re-elected, I said, it will be the end of the American experiment. It took four more years, and an astonishing range of betrayals and systemic breakdowns, but we finally found out whether or not this was the case last night. Donald’s speech, the WWE of it all, along with the capitulation of the fascist Republican Party and the muted acquiescence of the Democrats, answered that question. And the answer is yes—American democracy fell on the wrong side of the knife, and we failed the American experiment.
My last post was entitled, “The End of America: Fascism and Acquiescence on Full Display.” That sounds bleak because last night’s debacle was, in its totality, bleak. But I did not at all mean that it is the end of our fight, or that anything is hopeless.
Watching Donald’s continued degradation of this country and its people, was incredibly tough. It was tough to watch; it was tough to process; and it was very difficult to discuss afterward.
But doing so was and is necessary. Why? Is this all about being masochistic? No, this is about recognizing that we are living through history. This is about finding ourselves in a moment in which right now the most important thing we can do, not as Democrats, but as people who believe in American democracy, who believe that the American experiment must somehow be resurrected, is to understand the urgency and necessity of bearing witness to what is happening around us.
Looking straight at what faces us is the only way to find our footing and get out bearings. Only then can we, together, find the most effective way of moving forward. Because ultimately, in this instance, bearing witness is not enough. We must place ourselves in a position to change the course of history. And we can do that by doing our jobs as Americans who believe in saving democracy—by not giving up and refusing always to give in.
There are multiple ways of looking at last night's shitshow. We can criticize the Democrats for being there and, with few exceptions, acting like it is still 1992. We can see Republicans for who they are - racist, cruel, nasty, cult members cowed into submission by Trump. We can see Trump for who he is - unhinged, unfit, rapidly decomposing, deeply into paranoia and dementia, lying incessantly and totally full of shit. We need to make this about him and his abject failure as a leader. We need to make this about the Republicans who are more concerned with re-election than the country. We need to make this about the damage this orange motherfucker and his illegal South African immigrant co-president are doing to the country. Time to get off the floor and take the fight to them. Starting with doing everything we can to drive Tesla into bankruptcy. Elmo is $111B poorer today because the stock price is down 30% in a month. Keep up the pressure on investors and owners. Make Tesla toxic. Make driving a Tesla an embarrassment (I love flipping them off and shouting "for shame" at them). You get the point.
Mary - I knew what you meant last night. My partner said to me, "Mary has tried to tell everyone for almost 10 fucking years in a very polite and easy to understand way, what her uncle is capable of and no one has listened enough to stop it before now, thinking somehow it couldn't get any worse." Democrats should have coordinated a series of entire group stand-ups and screamed "liar, liar, lair, lair, lair" after every lie, which was practically every minute... get in Donald's face the whole time. (Maybe even wear fur collared coats like Marj) and then let's see what Mike Johnson and JD would do about it. They were not horrified by what Al Green did, they were horrified by what Donald would do to them, if they didn't stop Al. They're all cowards. From here on out, every time they lie, we need to be in the fucking faces every god damn minute.