From:
Date: Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 10:22 AM
Subject: Fw: An Interesting read..
To: Kim Cooper <kimc0240@gmail.com>
There was a rather lengthy article in Alternet News today. Below you will find the link to the entire article. I have copied some of the most profound parts of this article, "if you have friends or family who support Trump" ...
Writing in the June 28, 2018 edition of The New York Review of Books, philosopher Cass Sunstein reflects on the troubling similarities between how everyday "good Germans" supported the Nazis and an America in the grips of Trumpism.
Continue reading...
And so, a proposal.
If you have friends or relatives who support Donald Trump you should confront them. Explain to them that they are complicit with Trump's cruelty and sadism. Then communicate that you will no longer speak with them, nor will you offer them emotional, financial or other types of support until they denounce Donald Trump and what he represents — and make amends through speech and action.
This will not be easy. Doing what is right rarely is. But it is necessary.
Some will protest, saying that you can't know what is in a person's heart based on who they vote for. This is untrue. Voting and other types of political behavior are in many ways actions which are based more on emotion than they are reason. As such, a vote for Trump and continued support for him is a clear signal to a person's deep and sincerely held values and beliefs.
Others will intervene by highlighting how American voters are unsophisticated and tribal, voting based on group identity and not really cognizant of the policy issues and their implications. My response: numerous very rigorous studies by the country's leading social scientists have repeatedly shown that it was racism and nativism and authoritarianism which motivated Donald Trump's voters. While many of his voters may have been supposedly "confused" or "unsure" about his policy specifics they most certainly understood and were attracted to his bigotry and racism.
What of party-line voters, who, for whatever reason support the Republican Party in every election regardless of the candidate? This too is neither an excuse or defense. Such a rationale provides no excuse for supporting a petit-fascist authoritarian in Donald Trump and all the social ills that he represents. Moreover, to support the Republican Party as a matter of habit and tradition means that one endorses an extreme revanchist political organization that for decades has been working against the common good and to subvert democracy.
And what about voters who support Trump because of a single issue such as taking away women's reproductive rights or because they are rich and want more money from the government? They too are still culpable. They ignored the rot to take a bite from an apple — but said apple is still poisonous.
How about the argument that by cutting Trump's supporters out of your life that you will actually make them support him even more? Thus removing any hope that they can be freed from his thrall? Because Trump's supporters retreat into shadows like political Nosferatus when exposed to the light is no reason for decent and good people to keep such people in their lives.
And there are those people who would like to claim that somehow Donald Trump is anathema to their values and that they were tricked, bamboozled, or hoodwinked into supporting him. Such a defense is easily rebutted.
If there are Republicans and others who actually feel such a way they should in fact be the most vocal critics of Donald Trump because the betrayal would feel intensely personal. "Not in my name!" would be their battle cry. Moreover, they would be leading the resistance against Donald Trump. Instead Republicans have rallied around Donald Trump even as he undermines American democracy, engages in a coordinated campaign of cruelty, and likely coordinated with a foreign power to steal the 2016 presidential election.
The proof? Donald Trump is now the second most popular Republican president among his party in the history of modern public opinion polling. This is not a measure of tacit lazy support. It is full-throated and enthusiastic devotion from Republicans and right-leaning independents.
Writing in the June 28, 2018 edition of The New York Review of Books, philosopher Cass Sunstein reflects on the troubling similarities between how everyday "good Germans" supported the Nazis and an America in the grips of Trumpism.
Sunstein warns how:
In their different ways, Mayer, Haffner, and Jarausch show how habituation, confusion, distraction, self-interest, fear, rationalization, and a sense of personal powerlessness make terrible things possible. They call attention to the importance of individual actions of conscience both small and large, by people who never make it into the history books. Nearly two centuries ago, James Madison warned: "Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure." Haffner offered something like a corollary, which is that the ultimate safeguard against aspiring authoritarians, and wolves of all kinds, lies in individual conscience: in "decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large."
We ignore these lessons of the past at our own peril. Everyday people must take a stand against Donald Trump and all that he represents.
In short, to save American democracy we must live our politics like we mean it.
I am not feeling secure.
McCall
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment