Unfortunately, ‘taking the high road’ is what led us to where we are now. Taking the high road fails to oppose people who don’t give a shit what road you’re on. I’ve been extremely vocal about this stuff for probably the last fifteen years – mainly because I can see where it is headed.
In fact, it’s why I left the USA to live overseas in 2008. It comes down to this: it only takes one side to wage a war. When that side has determined that war is its preferred / only option, they will proceed. Pretending that isn’t happening by the other side(s) only enables it.
The Republican party has been sleepwalking into war against our citizenry for the last thirty years.
They’ve had outlets for their (often religiously-inspired) violence overseas during much of that time. However, their latest batch of leadership took the racist trappings of the Teabaggers and dressed it up with the criminality of the Trump family, while adding in Trump’s own sympathies for the American Nazis and the KKK.
And those fucking people *NEVER* just “walk away” from power.
They (individually) almost had their hands on the brass ring. Their own guy did have it there, and despite the leashes on it, he nearly brought our country down. They can *see* it is in their reach. These filth are compelled to grasp for power, in their urge to abuse others with it.
For those who committed crimes while Trump was in office, Trump included, pursuit of that power is quite literally a life-or-death struggle.
So FOX, OAN and Newsmax, these are just the “pravda” wing, the modern apparatus that Joseph Goebbels would have jumped for joy to have at his beck and call. And they know they can pave their way to fortune with the racism, with the hate. So they’ll keep blathering it on, because that’s how they keep pulling in support for their attempts to create their own version of “America”.
And the only way to fight them without actually barricading the doors and burning down their office (which I think I would prefer), is to call them out for shame, for ridicule, for prosecution.
It won’t end there. They’ll never stop coming back, until we kill enough of them and their children to convince them that this is a bad path they are on. By opposing them though, one encourages others of good nature to oppose them as well, and it fights the fear that these would-be dictators want to use against the rest of us.
So yes, speak out against them. Even if you’d never pull a trigger against their forces. It might not feel like you’re doing much, but you’re signaling that what they are saying is not okay – you recognize it. And you endorse speaking out against it by your own action.
But be ready – it won’t end with just talking. They *will* convince themselves that war is the way, and when they stop sleepwalking it, we had better be ready to put them down like the rabid dogs they are.
I mentioned prosecution earlier. Justice must be served upon them, as I said in the title of this post. Prosecution, you ask? Yes, prosecution. There is a crime here, being committed in front of cameras and in broad daylight. Almost daily it is being committed. What might it be, you wonder?
Accessory After The Fact. Also, Misprision of Felony.
The perpetrator determined to be an Accessory After The Fact is someone who assists someone who has committed a crime, after that person committed said crime, with knowledge that the crime was committed, and with intent to help that person avoid arrest and/or punishment. It is a form of obstruction of justice, and can be prosecuted as such. So when Elise Stefanik steps in front of a camera and tries to levy blame onto a primary victim of the Jan 6th Insurrection – trying to deflect blame onto Nancy Pelosi, who was a target for assassination by the insurrectionists – she is committing felony obstruction of justice and is an Accessory After The Fact.
When Representative Andrew Clyde downplays the insurrection and claims the Republican terrorists were no more than “tourists”, he is an Accessory After The Fact.
When Trump himself attempts to gaslight the media with his blather of “so much love” and fabricates that the police “greeted them with open arms”, he is an Accessory After The Fact.
Misprision of Felony is itself a felony crime, prosecutable against anyone who, having knowledge of the commission of a felony, conceals said crime and does not as soon as possible bring that crime to the attention of a a judge or other civil / military authority under US code.
So when we do find that Jim Jordan, or Lauren Boebert, or their staffers have knowledge of collaboration with insurrectionists and failed to report those crimes, they are guilty of misprision.
And these crimes must be punished to the fullest extent of the law. To fail to prosecute invites a repetition of those crimes. These people, and their ideology, must be ended.
On top of that, we have discovered now that to allow fascist ideology to go unpunished invites insurrection. The American Nazi party, and all of its offshoots, as well as the KKK and its offshoots, are long past due to be declared as terrorist organizations, their membership hounded down and exited from society with extreme prejudice. People need to be made aware that their choices to follow vicious and anti-American agendas come with severe consequence.
We have coddled these freaks for far too long.