As the people rise up against brutality, Trump and his enforcers move to criminalize dissent [View all]

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Trump and his regime have again turned crisis into an opportunity to advance their neofascist authoritarian agenda

Chauncey DeVega
June 11, 2020 11:25AM (UTC)

In his 1838 Lyceum Address, a young Abraham Lincoln warned:

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

In the year 2020, the United States in the Age of Trump has arrived at one such moment. Donald Trump is an authoritarian and a neofascist. Such a description does not need the modifiers of "apparent" or "would be" or "impending" or "inclinations" or "autocratic."

That language is all too often deployed by journalists and others to soften the hard blows of the full and horrible reality that the United States is a failing democracy where Donald Trump is now only barely restrained in his anti-democratic behavior by the country's now much weakened political norms, institutions and culture.

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The American people will have to be their own heroes in the centuries-long story of defending and improving American democracy. In doing so they should heed journalist and political commentator Bill Moyers' recent warning and advice that, "because truth is the foe he most fears, he has banned it from his administration and his lips. Yes, Bernie, you are right: the man in the White House has taken all the necessary steps toward achieving the despot's dream of dominance. Can it happen here? It is happening here. Democracy in America has been a series of narrow escapes. We may be running out of luck, and no one is coming to save us. For that, we have only ourselves."

https://www.salon.com/2020/06/11/as-the-people-rise-up-against-brutality-trump-and-his-enforcers-move-to-criminalize-dissent/