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Why We Fight

Frank Capra, the legendary American filmmaker is most famous for his dark Christmas parable “It’s A Wonderful Life.” What is less known about Capra is that he enlisted in the army shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was assigned the cinematic task of producing seven films intended to explain to American soldiers and the country at large what was at stake in the war against Germany, Japan and Italy - the “Why We Fight” series.

If we scroll forward seventy five years from the era of Capra’s films and World War II, we find ourselves at a similar historical crossroads. The fascism that arose in Germany, Italy and Japan in the 1930s is having a resurgence in Europe and the United States. Nazis, nativists and white nationalists are once again on the march. In place of Adolph Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan , we have an expansionist Russian despot and former KGB head, Vladimir Putin, a white nationalist and declared homophobe, who has murdered his opponents at home and devotes his nation’s resources to sowing ethnic conflict abroad. With his army of hackers and internet trolls he is attempting to subvert democratic elections around the world and was able to reach an estimated one hundred and twenty four million Americans with fake news designed to discredit Hillary Clinton and help get his favored candidate, Donald Trump, elected president of the United States.

I have often asked myself why I have such strong feelings about politics and why I sometimes reach the point where I am ready to fight. Is it that I came of age in the 1960s and was imprinted on the notion that the world should always be moving forward in some progressive way? Or is it that I just don’t like the way that the tenure of Trump intersects with my own life, that I am growing old facing the possibility that I won’t be passing on to my grandchildren and succeeding generations a society that embodies my core beliefs? Along with my emotional and family life cycle issues, I am worried as a student of history that nations and individuals can repeat old patterns with disastrous consequences and that we are currently at one of those historical tipping points.

When I think about the words, “Why we fight,” I think about D-day and the thousands of American soldiers mowed down by German machine gun fire on Omaha Beach in their attempt to liberate France from Hitler’s army. I recall the actual footage and the movies about the gruesome battles to retake the islands in the Pacific occupied by the troops of Imperial Japan who had been ordered to die rather than surrender to the Americans. And I have images of emaciated corpses photographed during the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald, the death camps in which Hitler’s mechanized holocaust and racial genocide against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other “non-Aryans” was committed.

The fight against fascism, Nazism and authoritarian regimes is what America once stood for and the cause for which our soldiers gave their lives in the 1940s. Yet, every morning since the election of 2016 many of us have woken up to what should only have been a bad dream - the realization that the current occupant of the White House is a Nazi sympathizer, a white nationalist and an admirer of and collaborator with Vladimir Putin, the Russian dictator and enemy of democracy around the world.

There is a temptation to turn away or deny what is staring us in the face when the truth is so frightening and stark. To soften the blow of what on some level we already know, we may entertain thoughts like, “an American president can’t really be a Nazi sympathizer and a white racist” or, in imagining what the thoughts of a Trump supporter might be: “Underneath some of his nasty tweets, tough talk and bravado, he is really a good guy looking out for people like me.” Trump’s drip, drip drip of lies, along with his daily assault on decency and the institutions that underpin our democracy is designed to inure us to things that we should be outraged about. This is the way we begin the dangerous slide into accepting what Trump is inflicting on our country as “the new normal.” Even our free press which has been attacked by Trump with the big lie that it is they who are the purveyors of “fake news” tend to normalize what Trump is doing when they do what they are trained to do as journalists, merely report on his erratic and authoritarian behaviors objectively.

Thus far our press and our judicial system have not folded. They have held the line against Trump’s authoritarian attacks on rule of law and our first amendment rights. But entertain no illusions that it can’t happen here - that we can’t lose our rights and freedoms if the person at the top places his own ambition for power above the constitution that he swore to uphold. If you have any doubts about the ways that democracies can yield to fascism and want to learn some effective ways to respond I suggest reading, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century” by Timothy Snyder.

Democracies have deteriorated into police states in other nations when the institutions that protect personal freedoms become compromised. The following are just some of the ways that Trump has acted to undermine our free press, our judicial system, our regulatory agencies and our civil norms:

● By attacking truth itself, tweeting lies by the hour, and trying to create an alternative reality based solely on what the “great leader” wants us to think.

● By attacking and denigrating journalists and other media outlets that don’t support him as purveyors of “fake news.”

● By beginning his election campaign with the racist “birther” lie, questioning the legitimacy of America’s first black president.

● By appointing unqualified members of his own family to positions of power within his inner circle, the practice of many dictators.

● By stirring up his shock troops on the far right with inflammatory language and hate rallies and polarizing the nation with an “us” vs. “them” narrative.

● By marginalizing and trying to turn back the clock on the LGBTQ community by issuing an executive order that would ban transgender people from the military.

● By withdrawing from the world community and advocating the type of nationalism that dangerously denies global issues like climate change.

● By activating and empowering the religious right with executive orders and blurring the boundaries between church and state.

● By placing the corporate enemies of regulation at the head of institutions like the EPA that are supposed to protect our water, our air and our rights.

● By further empowering his wealthy, corporate allies and dis-empowering working people by stacking the courts with conservative judges and appointing only the mega-wealthy as cabinet heads.

● By signaling to police departments across the country that he believes in “law and order” - the exact words used by Hitler and Mussolini - and defunding the oversight projects that make precincts accountable to the communities they are supposed to serve.

● By obstructing justice by firing an FBI chief who was conducting an investigation into his own campaign committee’s collusion with Russia.

● By racially attacking and impugning judges who are not ruling on cases in the way that he would like.

● By rounding up immigrants for deportation and ending DACA, the Obama-era act that grants immigrants’ children who were born in the United States the right to stay.

● By targeting, criminalizing and scapegoating Muslims, Mexicans and other minorities as groups to be hated and feared - and putting forth policies to ban Muslims from entry into the United States and build a border wall between the United States and Mexico.

● By attempting to cast doubt on an election system with a “voter fraud commission” that would only serve to further suppress the turnout for the opposition party.

● By having as his ally and original chief strategist Steve Bannon, CEO of Breitbart news and one of the leaders of the so called “alt-right,” a code-word for Neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

● By never fully repudiating the support of David Duke and other Klans members and neo-Nazis whom he has emboldened and activated by his statements and at times by his silence.

● By never clearly eliminating the conflicts of interests in his real estate empire or revealing his own finances and taxes so that there could be transparency in that arena, another practice of many dictators.

● By engaging in a foreign policy based on threats and militarism and understaffing the state department to the point where diplomacy is hardly an option.

● By touting the praises of the leaders of Turkey, Egypt and the Philippines, all military strongmen who have have eliminated democracy within their borders and created police states.

● By signaling America’s lack of commitment to democratic rights, thereby endangering political prisoners throughout the world.

It is Trump’s embrace of Russian dictator Vladmir Putin that is perhaps the most compelling saga in Trump’s anti-democratic narrative. And it is both telling and disturbing the way our president is attempting to create a new world order by shifting America’s loyalties away from the democracies of Europe, our allies for the past seventy years, and moving our nation into cooperation with the Russian police state.

An independent commission headed by Robert Mueller, a former Republican appointed FBI chief with a sterling reputation for impartiality is presently investigating the machinations of Trump’s presidential campaign committee. If you are following some of the early findings and evidence, it is remarkable to note that every member of the Trump campaign team, including Jeff Sessions, our attorney general, has a Russia connection of one kind or another and that the timing of statements that Trump made on the campaign trail coincided with leaks of hacked information from Russian sources designed to discredit the Clinton campaign and boost Trump’s then dim chances of winning.

It is not insignificant that Putin and the KGB that he once led, have a history of culling foreign persons of interest to use to their advantage when the time is ripe. The fact that Trump’s financial connections to Russia and Russian oligarchs goes back to the 1980s and as a bankrupt and failing real estate mogul he could be an easy and unwitting mark is not too much of a stretch. Without becoming too conspiratorial, is it not also possible that Putin and the KGB’s interest in personality types that are narcissistic, arrogant and easily manipulated could make Trump a perfect Manchurian Candidate? But, without even going that far, is there any doubt that Trump knew something about what his inner circle - Paul Manafort, Michael Flinn, Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner and his other campaign officials were doing in their secret dealings with Russia... and that these covert communications and the pursuit of Russia’s hacked emails were designed to undermine both foreign policy during the Obama administration and the integrity of the presidential election? And isn’t what I have just described something called treason, the very behaviors that people were executed for in the 1950s?

During the rise of Hitler and fascism in Europe in the 1930s there were Nazi sympathizers in England, France and the United States. It is also significant to note that American corporations like Ford and IBM were quite willing to do business with Hitler during that period. When war broke out some of the the Nazi sympathizers in France became collaborators with Hitler and The Third Reich and formed the Vichy government. But many in Poland, France and other European countries discovered ways to secretly fight the occupiers and began calling themselves “The Resistance.”

Scrolling forward once again to the present day, it is Germany, France and England that have held the line against their right wing, xenophobic parties, and unlike the 1930s, it is the United States, once the beacon of freedom, that has succumbed to right wing populism and elected a nativist and white nationalist to be its leader. Drawing from the legacy of the freedom fighters of occupied Europe, members of American organizations who once considered themselves liberals or progressives are now proclaiming themselves a part of the resistance to the Trump regime.

There are times when being an observer on the sidelines may just not be enough - when the question is no longer, “so how do you feel about the current situation?,” but rather “which side are you on?” This may sound polarizing and I am sure that there are many Trump supporters who do not know that he is on the wrong side of history and that his regime poses a clear and present danger to the many hard won entitlements and freedoms that they hold dear. One should always be willing to engage in a respectful dialog with anyone who is willing to listen, but there are also those who should know better - opportunists and collaborators like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and many others in the Republican Party who are clear that Donald Trump is a white nationalist, and a Nazi sympathizer but who are willing to do business with him anyway. They know he is promoting an agenda that solidifies rule by the super-rich and are willing to tolerate our nation’s dissolving into a banana republic as the trade-off.

On the basis of all that I have just described I have decided to join the new American resistance in the fight against authoritarianism, Nazism, white nationalism and the increasing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of several billionaires - the type of society that snuffs out any true possibility of democracy. There are many organizations that have joined together in this battle against tyranny including the American Civil Liberties Union, Green Peace, The Southern Poverty Law Conference, Planned Parenthood and “Indivisible,” a confederation of 5,200 chapters of like minded people across the U.S, who simply want to promote progressive candidates in the coming elections.

“Our Revolution,” the Bernie Sanders group, is also supporting a grassroots movement of very diverse candidates in elections throughout our fifty states from school board members to state senators, with much success in recent races in Virginia and even in very red states like Louisiana and Oklahoma. It is easy to go online, to get involved and to contribute some time and some money. I have committed to working for candidates across the nation who have progressive credentials and good values so that the 2018 elections may become the prairie fire that starts to burn away some of the reaction that has gained such a strong foothold in our nation's politics. It may also serve as a warning to the opportunistic politicians who have been willing to do business with the Trump regime and to let them know that there will be a price to pay for collaboration. It is important to remember that it is not just the press and the courts that need to resist the threats to our democracy that the Trump regime embodies. Standing between our country and the racist, police state that Trump envisions is mainly us.

Someday I hope that my grandchildren will ask me what I did during that dark period in our nation’s history when Trump was president and it looked like the country was veering toward isolationism and tyranny. I look forward to telling them why I joined the resistance and what I did to hold the line against the gathering forces on the right. It would be good be able to explain to them that although tolerance can be a virtue, tolerating evil and reaction can turn into a collaboration with forces that will eventually destroy everything that you value and love. I would also hope to teach them that we do not have to see ourselves as helpless victims swept along in the currents of history. We can also view ourselves as participants and active players in a drama in which each one of us can contribute in some small way to the possibilities of change. It will be important for them to learn that it is their duty to always work for peace but that sometimes they may be called upon to fight.