The big questions right now are how will the great majority of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, react to having their basic government services mangled and dismantled by right-wing billionaire extremist cost-cutters? How will they react to having older members of their families tossed to the wolves if Social Security is slashed and Medicare and Medicaid butchered beyond recognition? What degree of rage will they express when climate-change energized storms wipe out more and more American cities and small communities? If there is an enormous uprising, how will Trump handle the back-peddling, the denying and the bald-faced lying? What kind of putrid baloney will he sling? When will the Trumpian GOP pay the political price of its folly?
So much remains to be seen over the next six weeks. But one thing is coming crystal clear to me. Trump has already stepped over the line and committed the greatest political sin of all in a democracy.
He has injected into American culture the fear of violent, political — police state — retribution against his political opponents. He’s even gone so far as to call these staunchly loyal Americans, conservative and liberal, “enemies within.” There is no greater political crime in a democracy than to chill and suppress the loyal opposition with the threat of legal or even physical violence. It’s an even more egregious wrong to me than breaking the presidential vow to “serve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” which strong evidence suggests Trump has already done many times.
American democracy is grounded in the idea of a free “marketplace of ideas.” The Founders, especially Thomas Jefferson, following John Milton and others, believed that the truth would win out in an unrestrained and fair-minded conflict of differing of opinions. It’s been a long wait in America for that to happen, but many of us still believe it will. The point is that a difference of opinion is not disloyalty. Opponents are not enemies — in a legitimate democracy. When it comes to the press, truth “is naturally separated from error in the collision of opinions made possible by the unrestrained publication of differing views,” writes Jeffrey A. Smith of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
To threaten “punishment” and revenge for a difference of opinion, and to say that those who oppose your views are “the enemy within,” goes a long way in starting to make democracy impossible, and eviscerating the protections granted to every American by the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
Even if Trump’s opponents aren’t dragged off in the middle of the night, tortured and shot in the head, a political version of a SLAP suit (a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), charging them with all manner of unprovable political and even treasonous wrongdoing, could break their financial backs and destroy whatever peace of mind they might have for the rest of their lives. It would amount to a sledge-hammer version of McCarthyism, a vile political trauma which came close to ruining my family, and thousands of others, in the 1950s. Trump’s many threats against those who oppose him are much more dangerous, in my judgement, than even Nixon’s enemy list. It might seem like blather and bluster to some. To others of us it has the suspicious stink of a Putinesque purge.
There’s always the chance that using the powers of the state to punish Trump’s political adversaries might also become the fatal flaw that undermines the superstructure of the entire Trumpian agenda. Even MAGA operators might worry that when something like that starts to gain momentum it can jump its boundaries and threaten everyone’s sense of personal safety and freedom from the kind of lawless tyranny that the Constitution was designed to protect against. President Trump, however, seems to be suggesting that the Constitution itself, and those who uphold it, are the “enemies from within.”
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
Very well stated, Mr. Price. Damn, we are at the barricades again. Venceremos!
Rosenberg Angel Poem in Blue: A Death Reserved (Eros and Dust)
for Abel and Robbie and Michael Meeropol
“It was the Red White and Blue marching down on the poor, blind mother justice on a pile of manure. Say your prayers and the pledge of allegiance every night and tomorrow you’ll be feeling alright.”—Richard Farina, “House Unamerican Blues Activity Dream”
Sunday potluck at Albuquerque Peace and Justice Center
when a gray one asked who the FB Eyes here might be.
Robbie smiled, talked instead about children’s playtime glee–
his job, you see, the charity, and he’s
that kind of guy, avuncular, bald, kind, bemused.
Was it really just all about scaring Jews? Did Hiss really pumpkin- spy?
Did Venona shake you up? Why’d your uncle lie and let your momma die?
Did you both cry? You seem so calm–Why?
Was it bad then? Like now?
How . . . did you . . . keep faith?
What do you believe? Were your folks naive? Did Joe Stalin deceive?
Was it hard to be a famous son? Did you young guys ever have any fun?
Rocking slowly on his heels,polite son of proper Ethel, he waxed agnostic on the riddles,
dodged the well-meant gaffes, but rose gently to his bait:
“It’s worse now, sure. They only took the Bill of Rights away back then from communists
Subversives conspirators Blacks and “bad” Jews,
Yes in those days–Kookie days 77 Sunset Strip stop combing your hair, man,and kiss me days–
Fulton J. Sheen starving hysterical naked days duck and cover Lenny Bruce Le Roi Jones
Wright in Paris out of reach Mailer Naked and the Dead On the Beach
Paul Robeson Old Man Moon River Just Keeps Rollin’ Along
House Unamerican J. Edgar’s Tu Tu Blues Activity Screams
In Pleasantville before the color washed in:
Giant ants in the sewers and Godzilla Rodan Body Snatchers days,
Madeline Murray O Hare for God’s Sake days
Yet Howdy Doody had Flub a Dub and Buffalo Bob to hold him tight
and Batman had Robin and Sky King had his decoder ring to save us all from Stalin’s power
and some sharp stiff in a suit led three lives for all our own safety but
still we worried yet Milton Berle funny “good” Jew and other good ones walked free
and the USA saved them from evil doers, too
on tv Roy Cohn and that judge were good ones too, though Jews–you never knew, did you?
Back then, of course, the country killed only traitor spies and their wives who wouldn’t talk
Father mother . . . THESE days they say all of us Jew or not Black or not Arab or not Christian or not socialist or not good or not talk or not–must give up Constitutional niceties liberal vanities
for security–since the world changed, after all–
but, we’ll be okay if we’re good enough
conspiracyruns through every waking day and televison dreams jar us awake 24
dirty bomb in L.A. psycho Saudis withboxcutters in our showers
don’t sleep too sound you could wake up dead
you’re either with us or you’re with them with terror
Terror! Juneteenth, Fifty Three I was five and loved my Daddy who kept me safe and
who loved Joe McCarthy–Catholic and Irish, too–on our boxy tv:
“He’s against our enemies, Billy. He doesn’t hold back.”
“Patton should have pushed to Moscow and MacArthur should have bombed Peking.”
Victory at Sea–Dad’s pals burned up on carrier decks the smoke must have smelled so bad
before Christmas in Hawaii” that day of infamy
and I saw his picture in his Navy suit with a big black eye smiling
he never pulled a punch my old man
so, Dad explained Chinese torture drip drip drip enemies all about nails pulled out
like the Iroquois did to Jesuits or Korea War snow and blood snake pits Russian roulette
like Chris Walken-DeNiro later on too true too Hollywood true
Jap death march Bataan lessons give them a bayonet in the gut like this, Bill
he showed me the drill thrust, twist, kill–with a kitchen mop–so I grew up scared but
Robbie smiled that day at the good old P and J, all those long years now past
and I felt brave and safe, now at last as I once did in the Blessed Virgin’s blue embrace.
“Meryl Streep overdid Mama’s accent, still she was great” And Pacino nailed Cohn like Christ
In that too-public execution in Mel Gibson’s blockbuster Passion of the Christ
Conspiracy and Passion was the charge against the Rosenbergs–Not treason, Not giving Russia the Bomb
Two people passionately talking—Conspiracy in the eyes of Roy Cohn and The Law!
They fried her for unflinching love (passion). And him for discipline, loyalty, staying true
to his comrades, his beliefs, to his living love
As Wystan Auden advised “September Thirty Nine” when the Big War loomed—
“Love one another or die”
Those tender comrades stood together in separate cells cold time dripping
til that fast hot shock hit their heartsmoke rose from their skulls
private faith in public view godless believers in what they knew to be true in the long march of History Her Story His Theirs and Ours
The good peoples’ lawyer in his fedora held their sons’little hands in the newspaper shots
protected the kids when he could –yet, the headlines crowed:
“Your momma your poppa are dead!”
First time in America a family was wiped out“lawfully”, not just lynched
And in cold public view in cold blood too
Justice Douglas good man and true tried to stay their death shocks but failed
supremely over ruled history happens and then you die.
Yet, of late, it is said Saddam Hussein that awful man nd his horrid sons Did horrible things
as moms and dads watched their kids tormented as children watched their chained parents writhe and could never touch them again ever again
orphans–Jesus wept while his dad watched silent so they say Abu Ghraib Gitmo–all those backwater swamps where they drag the accused to the tree limbs of the gallant CSA now risen again in USA–Strange Fruit, Billie sang—
Abe Meeropol good father,gave the boys his own name to hide them from tv, press, killer eyes
after June 19, ’53 and hewrote that song for Billie, y’know–he was a commie poet, too
and he wrote Old Blue Eyes Frankie’s forgotten wartime hit, “The House I Live In”, which goes like this:
What is America to me? The house I live in
The air feeling free The right to speak your mind out
The million lights I seeBut especially the people
That’s America to me.
Their parents’s life lights sparked out when the State tripped the switch
but those boys did not die did not run grew to men
with sparks snapping in their hearts who conspire in the empire conspire in love
in mad sane calm raging undying fire of mortal angels in America
of course some nights still even they with us the less brave
might murmur dear old Wystan’s lost Times Square prayer:
“Defenseless under the night . . . Ironic points of light . . . May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.”
–Bill Nevins, 2006-2024
spot on