We’ve all seen the movie. The multi-car train runs peacefully through mountains and valleys, puffing smoke. In the passenger cars, people eat, play cards, sleep. Ahead, however, we see that the bridge is out. Will the engineers do something in time? Unfortunately, they are busy telling each other stories and, thanks to their self-engrossment, the engine plunges off the bridge, pulling the helpless passenger cars and their clueless occupants down with it. There is no choice involved, the cars are hooked to that engine and must go where it takes them, even plunging to certain death.
We are on that train.
Perhaps this time, however, the plot will run differently. Perhaps the passengers will be interested in what lies ahead, climb to the tops of their cars, see that they are in grave danger, take control of the engine and stop it before we all plunge over the cliff.
We are at such a moment in time.
First, we are all plunged into a war being waged on our own immigrants, as the runaway engine devotes millions of our tax dollars to randomly kidnap and incarcerate our nannies, our child-care workers, our gardeners, our construction workers, our car wash workers, our restaurant personnel, and people simply looking for a day job in the parking lot at Home Depot. We are pulled helplessly along as books, stories, statues, and celebrations are snatched from us because the stories the engineers are telling each other, instead of actually driving the train safely, is that our tales are dangerous, a threat to the lies they have foisted on us for centuries about the superiority of their particular, elite, group.
As if that’s not enough, we are then pulled along, helplessly, as our federal workers are purged and thrust out, in the name of “government efficiency”. And we are the ones who pay the price, as it crashes around us, because, even though, as one teen-age DOGE slash-and-burner put it, “I was disappointed that I didn’t find any fraud”, we still can’t get through to our federal offices on the phones, wonder every month if our Social Security checks will continue to arrive, and can’t, for the life of us, get a reservation at a national park for the summer.
Then we are made helpless accomplices to the purging of libraries, including the Library of Congress, the removal of monuments, the de-funding of celebrations, the obliteration of art, all in the name of exorcising “DEI”. God forbid we should know the fullness of our own history, the heroes who were never celebrated because of their gender or race, the monuments that remind us that we incarcerated thousands of Japanese-Americans, the celebrations of Emancipation, the act of creating and thinking for yourself. Of course, it all makes sense when you understand the mindset of the Texas cattleman, Charles Goodnight, who, upon hearing of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, cried, “It looks like everything worth living for is gone.”
We are the threat. And we need to rejoice in that.
This train is seriously off the tracks, as are the engineers. It’s time to stop singing “I don’t care what train I’m on….” and start singing “Right track, wrong train….”. Democracy, equality and anti-dictator tactics have always been the right track. Now, we just need to change the engine.
The Toxic Trickle Down Effect
That kindly old President, Ronald Reagan, promised us long ago that trickle down economics would be good for everyone. He swallowed the theory, lock, stock and barrel, (a rifle reference), that tax cuts and other benefits for businesses, and the rich, would eventually stimulate the economy and benefit everyone, including the poor and the middle class, through job creation and increased spending. Well, the benefits accrued, alright, but only for those who got the tax cuts. The rest of us simply got trickled-down on.
Now, we are seeing the effects of a new kind of toxic trickle that is, actually, affecting those of us who live below. It is the acid rain trickling down from the top carrying the noxious brews of cruelty, anger, fear, and lies.
Over a very short time, we have witnessed increasing attempts to normalize this sort of behavior and give explicit permission to others to act in the same way.
Vigilantes dress up in ski masks from Amazon and jump in to augment the unauthorized violence of ICE officers, HSI personnel, and other, unidentified people in combat gear with POLICE written across their backs, glorying in rough-handling, cuffing and beating people chosen at random based on their skin-color. Who are these vigilantes? Why are they masked? Perhaps because, as Batman said, “I don’t wear a mask to hide my identity, but to create it.”
The orange would-be dictator orders one of our most highly-decorated units, the 82nd Airborne Division, to sit in front of him like movie extras, and cheer him on as he bloviates about the founding of the army (forgetting, apparently, that it was founded to liberate us from a king) and dances, in his weird, jerky way, like his platform is some kind of nightmare runway.
Of course, not all paratroopers in the unit were chosen to perform as a loving audience. Oh, no. The only ones chosen were those who were loyal to Trump, unquestioning of Trump and, oh yeah, not fat. I kid you not. His memo about who would be “allowed” to appear, cheering him on, said “No fat soldiers”. The most destructive result of this charade, however, was the division it sowed in one of the most decorated units in our Army. From now on, you don’t know if the colleague you are relying on to have your back is with you or against you, politically. This is the main reason that the Army, until now, has had a strict rule against soldiers in uniform participating in any kind of partisan activity.
This activity, however, was nothing but partisan, raunchy and mean. Trump whipped up the hand-picked supporters by viciously attacking California’s leaders, joking about his predecessor, and trotting out all his crude, partisan and self-serving tropes, while the men facing him laughed, jeered and applauded.
Now let’s all go into battle, together.
Want more? Well, the worst-president-ever insults heads of state who visit him, setting the stage for others to do the same to anyone not like them in their neighborhoods and schools.
And the lying! Those supporting the resident of the oval office feel free to confidently lie about everything, with disastrous results for those who are the victims of those targeted lies. Cabinet members regularly avow they didn’t have any idea those budget cuts were affecting their Departments THAT way!!! Really? Do you read anything?
Then these federal thugs dressed up like an army say they had to arrest people because they interfered with “lawful” kidnapping. Really? Would you like to review the video once more? Then, like the rest of the country, you will see that those arrested were the victims. And now, we are all potential victims of this new gang of uniformed vigilantes.
“You’d like to buy a mask, sir? Would you like to add a sheet with eye holes in it, a hood, and a burning cross to that?”
The behavior of those at the top has affected the driving habits of those who endanger all the rest of us on the freeways, has changed the language habits of those set free to assault the rest of us with words, and has led us to the end of truthfulness and fact as the default position of leadership.
It’s time for the eleven million of us who showed up on June 14th to make our voices trickle up, to fill the skies with our voices, like powerful weather balloons (which they are also phasing out). I can feel it. Change is gonna come.
Sheila
