Gun Rallies???

Gun right's rallies - where are the hunters in their Elmer Fudd Caps and bright orange jackets?

These gun rallies are not for hunters and hobbyists; they're full dress-rehearsals for militia action.

With semi-automatics, masks, body armor, camo clothing.

They are Mussolini's Black Shirts, Hitler's Brown Shirts, Franco's anti-Communist Catholic fanatics, and Hirohito's nationalists and militarists.

Read your darn history people - this isn't about gun ownership, it's about gun supremacy, and a host of horrible beliefs and behaviors.

These guys and their molls are ready for action, just waiting for the moment to "cleanse the nation" and install Jesus Christ as King, and woe to anyone who stands in their way.

This is no joke - history makes clear this possibility - our very own history, of course, is rife with violence, and violence begets violence, and no violence is quite so terrible as that endowed with a "holy purpose."

Money, Franco and Trump

April 26, 1937, a church bell in Guernica tolled an air-raid warning - a single German plane dropped a load of bombs, and flew away.

When it became apparent that Guernica had no anti-aircraft defense, the raid began with 23 bombers and several dozen other aircraft flying from nearby Nationalist fields, leaving some 200 dead and the town a charred ruin.

Guernice was Basque, and the Basques were a part of the Republic which treated the Basques with fairness, allowing them considerable freedom, and allowing the Catholic Church there to preach in Basque.

Later, when Franco and the Nationalists conquered Basque territory, under threat of death, no more Basque language sermons, and priests who disobeyed were summarily shot.

But the larger question concerning me right now, as I read and write, is this: from whence came the fuel for those planes?

As it turns out, from Texaco, and in spite of American neutrality laws, Texaco, and ultimately other American oil companies "sold" oil to Franco, along with Firestone tires and trucks from Detroit.

The head of Texaco, a creep and bully by the name of Torkild Rieber, was "banker" for Franco, extending essentially unlimited credit, and providing a huge lobbying effort to insure US neutrality (which Rieber and his gang routinely and easily subverted.

Of course, here in the States, the Roman Catholic Church sided with the Nationalists, in spite of the brutality of the Nationalists against the Basques.

The Republic wasn't without "sin," frequently killing priests and burning churches, as well as confiscating the property of the rich and redistributing the land, something feared above all else by the aristocracies of the world, including those of the United States.

The Church, and the rich, quickly realized that if they wanted to protect their landed and powerful privileges, they needed to side with Franco with his monarchial and clerical sympathies

And so the war raged on until Franco, a friend of Hitler and Mussolini, was victorious. His German and Italian planes and his American trucks fueled with Texas oil.

Once again, so very sad to note that great wealth in the United States was sympathetic to, if not outrightly supportive of, these dictators.

Today, many of our wealthy families, and the corporate owners of American business, support Trump. Given our history, and given the sickness and fear pervading the soul of the wealthy, along with their religious counterparts in the evangelical churches, it's not surprising, in the least. They gravitate toward those politicians who can front for them, and manipulate the government in their favor, protecting their interests against any and all forms of justice.

Rieber bankrolled Franco, and the rich here in the States continue to bankroll dictators around the world and the one currently in our White House.

A Clear and Present Danger?

At a certain point in time, when does a political ideology cease being merely just so many alternative ideas/programs to much the same goal to which most everyone aspires and become a clear and present danger to the wellbeing of a society's life?

We're at a time now in America when a constellation of ideas and brutish behavior have coalesced into a dangerous mix threatening to undo our democracy and bring the American Experiment to an end.

I'm distressed by the brutishness and ignorance of a lot of our current politics and religion - all of it mixed up in some kind of noxious brew, highly addictive apparently, and, yes, a clear and present danger.

If only the people of Italy in the Twenties and Germans in the Thirties has been alert enough to see in the Brown and Black Shirts a threat to everything they held dear. That the rhetoric and posturing of Mussolini and Hitler was nothing less than evil, a contradiction of everything sacred and everything good.

People in Italy, with Mussolini's rise to power, and folks in Germany, with the advent of Hitler, believed that such extremism just wasn't possible, but it was, and what a price was paid, by the whole world, as fascism took the world into the darkest of places.

The Party of Restoration

The GOP has become, more so than ever, the Restorationist Party, holding before America a vision of white picket fences, little girls in flouncy dresses, boys shooting marbles in the schoolyard, date night at the local soda fountain, families going to church, women in the kitchen, Mom rearing children, Dad going off to work in the office: home at 5:30 for dinner, the children glad to see Daddy, and, oh, by the way, racial dominance and purity, no foreigners, and a military, always prepared to defend freedom, wherein every young man can be a hero to his girl back home.

Last night’s Democratic Debate had none of this backward look, but only forward, as it must be. 

While a certain portion of our population hankers after what is believed to have been lost, the message of restoration is a quest for fool’s gold. It never works, and always ends badly. 

Mussolini preached restoration to Italy, with images of a revived Roman Empire.

Hitler preached restoration to Germany, with images of revived glory and racial purity.

The Democratic Debate last night was refreshing, to say the least, with its focus on the future, moving ahead with science, new ideas, and its courage to identify the real problems confronting us: income inequality, the near-total victory of an oligarchy, global warming, our persistent racism, prisons filled to capacity, universal health care, immigration, equality for LGBTQ persons, women’s choice, college education, our ceaseless wars as of late, the intransigence of the Republican Party, and the general welfare of all.

It is no accident that the rearview mirror in a car is small compared to the windshield ... the backward look is needed from time-to-time, but looking backward all the time leads only to mishap, most like a lethal mishap.

The Dems are the Party for the Future ... eagerly looking through the windshield to see where we’re going, and how to avoid the bumps in the road and the careening truck of global warming headed our way, and all the other challenges coming our way. 

By looking forward, we’ll see the way, we’ll find solutions, we’ll work together, to continue fulfilling the American Dream, a dream far larger today than it was yesterday, a dream that will continue to grow all the more as forward thinking people add their own vision and energy to “liberty and justice for all.”

It was fun last night to watch thoughtful people examine the real issues and problems of our life together.