A few weeks ago at an event in Washington, D.C. I had the distinguished honor of chatting with one of the Capitol police officers who was there on January 6th; an American public servant who was gravely injured on that day. In the course of our short conversation he mentioned that he still sees so many Trump flags in the DC area where he lives. I asked him why so many people out there continue to pledge undying fealty to Trump. I asked, “what is the appeal, anyway?”
His response was haunting. It was a sentiment that went something like this: “I truly believe that’s what they really want. They really want to see this entire country burned down to the ground.”
Wow. “Straight from the horse’s mouth,” I thought. Remarkable. Remarkably terrifying.
Seeing “Trumpsters” always brings the following to my mind. I have heard repeated stories of what the Russian people were being told by state-run, Russian propaganda “news” media reporters when Putin launched his unprovoked war on Ukraine in February 2022. It seemed so unbelievable at the time, but when I see what has happened in America? Not so much.
Russians who were more “in the know” about Putin’s aims, along with the means he would take to get there, were saying that family members were actively and fiercely defending Putin’s indefensible, unprovoked act of overt aggression on the innocent Ukrainian people. Why?
What they were being told by the Kremlin was preposterous, but Putin has his evil and conniving ways of making people believe it. Here is a basic summary of Putin’s “Big Lie.” Lies are a “thing” with fascist dictators.
“Ukrainian Nazis are taking over Ukraine. They are killing and torturing Ukrainians. We Russians must be noble and courageous, and save our friends. We must have a ‘military operation’. (he emphasized, with the threat of punishment to not call it a ‘war’). We are the ‘good guys’ who are going in to put an end to Ukraine’s suffering.”
Sounds preposterous, yes? And what proceeded to happen was that Russian families, friends and neighbors became divided by this deadly lie, on a very large scale.
Consider this, if you will. The relationship we have here at home between the USA and our neighboring friends in Canada could be regarded as very similar. to the one between Ukrainians and Russians. They were friendly. Many families have family members in one country or the other. Then Putin started a war he needed to lie to justify. Prior to this, the people from these two countries had no problem with one another.
Putin CREATED the problem.
On mainstream media news this past week, JD Vance said to CNN’s Dana Bash that the Trump campaign “created” the story about Haitian immigrants in his own HOME STATE; the preposterous lie about legally-here Haitians stealing and eating the innocent pets of Springfield OH residents. He admitted it was to give the media something to talk about.
How dare he.
And now, just a few short weeks from our 2024 Presidential election, we see that the rhetoric and lying is heating up, and getting crazier. It also is so reflective of the United States people being influenced by Russia. It is hard for me, personally, to imagine a fellow American not being able to see the connection; the similarities.
Dictators dictate what news the people hear. What we are bearing witness to here in America very, very similar to what is the outline of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Say the thing enough times, get people to hear it so often, make it just unbelievable enough that they keep it in their minds and keep tossing it over in their heads. Wondering…
“Gee,” the gullible and vulnerable, the ones who only watch and listen to right-wing extremist media think, “I guess that COULD be true. Since I keep hearing it over and over again, therefore, it MUST be true. For why else would I keep hearing about it?”.
You catch my drift.
In a column in The Washington Post this past July, Max Boot reported, “In his short time in the Senate, Vance has been a leader in opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine. The reporter cites what JD Vance has said regarding Putin’s stance on the young democracy of Ukraine and her people.
“I gotta be honest with you,” Vance said, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” he told fellow fascist Stephen K. Bannon in 2022. Trump, it’s worth mentioning, at the time called Putin’s invasion “genius” and continued to call for the dissolution of world-peace keeping NATO.
You can almost hear the Kremlin’s exquisite bottles of the most expensive champagne popping their collective corks. One of them publicly proclaimed that they now have a United States VP contender in their midst that was even “Trumpier than Trump!” Translation? Another useful and compliant American idiot. In a position of potential power.
Like music to their evil ears, JD Vance was completely on board with obliterating Ukraine. He has been “all in” on the psychological wartime technique older than the hills. Hitler himself had employed these tactics in the early 1940s to get millions of people to inadvertently and mostly unconsciously agree to the need for extermination of 6 million plus innocent Jewish people.
JD Vance is an angry young man, all too eager to be spreading crazy lies about “the other.” The fascists in the Kremlin, led by their smirking Putin were overjoyed to see JD on the campaign trail to do their bidding. The objective is to promote and go for the weakening of America and our sacred democracy, by appealing to the bloodlust of the cult base.
THIS my friends, is what is happening in America. Right now. Right under our collective nose. Our enemies are interfering in our public conversation. It is a war between actual TRUTH and actual LIES.
Putin and MAGA are all in on getting us to believe the lies. We must outnumber them and tell the truth. Over and over and over. We MUST get mainstream media to stop the destructive and criminal behavior of “sane-washing” and refusing to report the truth. It is up to us.
Democracy is on US; we-the-people. It is up to all of us, doing our civic duty to save our democracy right NOW.
Drop what you are doing. Check your voter registration. Have they purged your name from the rolls? Tell the others. Vote early so that they have less and less opportunity to perpetuate the deadly misinformation.
Participate. Vote as if your life depends on it.
It does.
If you are wondering what else YOU can do, every Thursday at 7p ET, our group meets online for a 1-hour discussion on the news and actions we can take to fight fascism and save our democracy I invite you to join us.
Email grassrootsofdemocracy@gmail.com to express your interest and to receive the Zoom information. I look forward to seeing you there.