by: Marceline Donaldson

I am on a roll -maybe its age, but ‘deja vu’. It is like watching history repeat itself. What is that old adage – either you learn from history or you are doomed to repeat it. And we clearly are being doomed to repeat the worst of our history – for which we sent out a dog whistle when Trump became the Republican running for President and then the fog horn blowing out of control when he was elected.

I was once a Republican. For most of my adult life starting with the first time I voted – I registered as a Republican. Being from the deep south it was the Republicans who were there to make sure you could vote without being strung up to a tree or worse. My cousin, an African American, had been head of the Republican Party in Louisiana. And then things began to change.

Having a huge ego, I was sure I could fight this and keep my Republican Party moving in the right direction. Well, that didn’t happen. I knew it was all over when Trump won the Republican primary. That was the day I changed my party designation from Republican to Independent.

When I looked around. Most of the people I knew as Republicans were now in my category – Independents all.

My rude awakening came in Minnesota when I was precinct chair in Wayzata. I was also suing Pillsbury for race and sex discrimination and George Pillsbury was in my precinct with me having to help him with his re-election to the Minnesota Senate. That wasn’t so bad. I sat next to George and Sally Pillsbury in Church on Sundays and we smiled and talked after church so how could that be different? Or difficult?

Difficult happened, in my capacity as precinct chair in the Republican Party, when Reagan ran for president. His first run was astounding. The scales began to drop from my eyes as I saw just how dirty was politics.

At the first precinct meeting of the season, the room was filled with people I didn’t know. Given the informality of how politics worked in the Republican Party at that time – you talked to people, got a consensus of what they wanted and that is what you did at the meeting. This time was different. First, most of the new people who showed up had southern, Texas accents – in Minnesota? Second, they were appalled that I was precinct chair. Not because they knew me, but because I was an African American woman. Well, they took care of that promptly and after a very ugly meeting I was no longer precinct chair, but I had gathered a lot of information. They were all sent to Minnesota specifically to get Reagan through the primary process and then elected president. Some had jobs, some were living on other folks money. It was a baptism by fire. I knew about Louisiana politics and its fringy sides, but that didn’t hold a candle to what these folks were about. It was like having experience in the minors and then all of a sudden being thrown into the big leagues.

From that and my experiences after that in the Republican Party I can guess what happened to get Trump elected and Russia would have been only a small part. After Trump’s election folks couldn’t wash the dirt off their ethics, their values, their lives, no matter how hard they tried.

Now that he is here – just look at the mess. He has called on all of his past experiences and they were putrid. Today he is calling on and acting out of his experiences having had Joseph McCarthy as one of his mentors when he was a very young man and having seen first hand how McCarthyism developed, what it could do and the power it wielded over this society. Trump had a seat at the table or rather at the feet of McCarthy and Roy Cohn. Cohn sat right next to McCarthy as his right hand man and Trump was in the mix learning and doing and he is now in the process of bringing all of his experience and learnings back into the United States government as he uses “the Squad” as his first intended victims to bring in McCarthyism to attempt to win the 2020 election.

Instead of having Jews in his sightline as he aims, he has people of color hurling them at Jews leading to the destruction and maiming of Muslims. Notice how he has singled out the Muslim woman in “the Squad” as he and his cooperators attempt to use her to destroy both Jews and Muslims.

At first the call was to hold up Democrats as being Socialists. Now all pretense has been dropped and “Communist” has come to the forefront and will be the clarion call from here on in. This time, Trump will make McCarthyism look like kindergarten because he now has his masters degree in destruction, carnage, filth, lies, and all the rest.

He will make “the Squad” the first of those against whom he will fling Trump-style McCarthyism and then many more will follow until the primary and then the election when he sees this becoming a huge movement which sweeps him into office in such a way that he has total sway over this government and all of its people. He looks to the entire country to treat him the way his Republican followers treat him – scared to do anything except respond and act out – Yes sir, President Trump.

Think this is just a conjecture? – look at Lindsey Graham and all the others who are now in the position of doing little else except “yes sir, President Trump.” Remember when they regarded him as not much better than scum? Whatever happened to those opinions they expressed before he become president and before they realized and were faced with his expert ability at blackmail. At some point in life one has to stand up and be counted, no matter the cost. There is life after the attempt on your life of an expert, experienced, blackmailer who can do so without actually putting himself in any legal jeopardy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said – (paraphrased because I don’t remember the exact quote) – there comes a time in ones life when you must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but your conscience tells you this is right. The ultimate measure of a human being is not where you stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where you stand during times of challenge and controversy. – and the ultimate one – if you have nothing for which you will die, you have nothing for which to live.

We are living in a world where the “good and right” thing to do, the ethical thing to do is what the institution in which you function tells you is the good and right thing to do. To stand beyond that and to live, work, love, play in a universe which has ethical standards which you follow beyond those of a particular institution is a totally foreign concept to those in control, in charge in todays’ world. We honor Mueller because of his refusal to do anything outside of the structure in which he functions as “Special Counsel” or in whichever role he has functioned. Keep to the four corners. We need to live in a world in which we have ethics and take stands beyond that. If the institution is constricting our sense of right and wrong and allowing evil to thrive we need to stand up, break those chains of that institution and do and say what brings all of us back to a sense of what is just, what is righteous, what is merciful.

Nancy Pelosi needs to pay attention to what is happening and let go of the four corners of her box.

Donald Trump comes from a several generation racist, sexist, extremely bigoted family. He has chosen to be mentored by the most extremely evil people who have shown themselves to be so full of greed and lust and evil that they upheaveled this country for a time.

We need to see that and learn from the lessons of the past. We don’t need to return to McCarthyism; we don’t need to bring back the KKK or the White Nationalists nor the Nazis. That is Trump’s world and to allow him to replace what is with what he knows and sees where-in he can thrive at the expense of whoever is to engage in his evil and to become a part of his evil dream for this world while he is an inhabitant here and beyond when he is forced to leave this world leaving behind his evil being inflicted on the rest of us the way he is being inflicted upon us by Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy and others who he holds up as his examples for life.

Joseph McCarthy was an extreme alcoholic who wrecked havoc in this country as Senator in a political way using the forum of the U. S. Senate to destroy lives and institutions in an institutional way we now call McCarthyism. – what Donald Trump is very fast bringing back to these United States.

Trump’s father was a part of the KuKlux Klan and marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in a parade of some 10,000 plus people in white sheets and pointy hats.

We give Emmanuel Macron credit for being the genesis of Trump’s idea and fixation on this grand military parade. Was he really? Or did Trump’s own father put these ideas in his head by exposing him to what could have been for both of them. Ideas Trump has worked hard to bring into existence. We are all partially captive to our upbringing. Turn around and take a look at Donald Trump’s upbringing and several generation family.

We look at Trump’s criminality and we ignore his family connections. We ignore the rumor that his father’s business partner was a large part of the Italian mafia. Trump has graduated from that group to one a lot more horrific.

His grandfather, who came to this country from Germany bringing some ugly connections, wound up with a hotel for prostitution, which he obtained on the backs of women. And his grandson comes along with direct connections to that lifestyle with some 19 plus accusations against him of assaulting, abusing, raping women. That kind of disrespect is profound when it comes down the family and comes from that everyday family influence. Did you ever ask how a man with so many claims of abuse of women against him became president of these United States? We have an ever growing group of men somehow closely connected who has horribly abused women and moved into substantial, strong, positions in this society – besides Epstein – across the street in another town house we had Bill Cosby – and connected to both men we have Donald Trump.

Do I need to go on?

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