Building the resistance movement

 The No Kings demonstrations on October 18th stirred up backlash from the right and left. You can find many examples for yourself in written postings and in videos from the many aspiring and established influencers.

Firebrands on the left want to fulfill the regime's wish for violence. Bullies on the right have been looking forward to violence for decades. Russia and China would be on board. The real losers would be the American people, no matter who "won."

Wiser voices have reinforced that the demonstrations of opposition encourage others who may more quietly oppose the regime to feel more confident and become more active. They energize the already committed. They show the regime and its supporters that their actions and policies are unpopular.

Because the regime has many fascistic qualities, and a visible percentage of their base openly displays Nazi imagery and expresses Nazi sympathies, resistance discourse has looked for parallels in the rise of the National Socialists in Germany, their use of power once they had it, and the opposition they faced within their own country and, ultimately, from the combined military forces.

The sad story of Sophie Scholl and the German anti-Nazi White Rose movement inspires many with her courage and tragic end. She and her older brother Hans, along with Christoph Probst, were beheaded by guillotine after a show trial in 1943. Their heads were cut off. They were young people in their 20s. Shoved into an execution device, and thunk.

Their movement and murder have motivated many in the years afterward to honor their sacrifice, even though it failed at the time. As I read the story, they weren't on a suicide mission when they set out leaflets for their fellow university students to find. It was just bad luck that their littering -- tossing their last 100 leaflets from an upper floor into a large space, just as one of the people charged with keeping that space tidy happened to be passing through -- spurred that person to chase them down and turn them over to the Gestapo.

Human sacrifice is a terrible recruiting tool. Christianity didn't really take off until it became the state religion of Rome instead of a great way to get nailed to a wooden fixture or get to meet a bunch of lions face to face.

As for the ultimate defeat and removal of the Nazis from power, that required years of military action, and the deaths of millions. The time for internal resistance against the Nazis to work was way back in the 1930s, when they seemed like a good bet for Germany. Even Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst were Hitler Youth and served in the German army. Political resistance before it was too late just wasn't going to happen.

The circumstances in Germany were not the same as what we have now in the United States. Political resistance has a very good chance here, without the strong risk of summary execution for those who speak out and act up. So far, anyway... Which leads to the other half of the comparison to de-Nazification in Germany: the world war itself.

Hitler's big mistake was in pushing for more and more territory. If he had stayed more or less within his own borders, he could have committed atrocities to his heart's content. Other nations might condemn, but they wouldn't interfere. It would be like Russia today, where political opposition faces arrest and/or unfortunate accidents, elections are for show, and everyone knows who is and always will be in charge. The German citizens might not be extremely happy, but they would get by.

Even when the United States was finally dragged into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the armed forces didn't magically spring into full size and strength on Dec. 8. Over the course of the war, 61 percent of the people who served were drafted. They served with valor, but they waited to be called, and probably hoped that they would not be needed. That wasn't recruiting. Patriotic films and whatnot served not so much to trigger a flood of volunteers as to take the sting out of inevitable induction.

Moving forward in time to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, there again the front line people faced injury and death at the hands of adversaries who would in most cases never face punishment or, if they did so, it was so many years later that it was a formal gesture at best.

Every murderer gets away with the crime. Even if the killer is caught, tried, convicted, and serves a sentence, the victim is still dead. This unfortunate inequity is even worse when the killer has gotten to live a long and prosperous life. In the case of unrepentant racists, their legacy is the continuing culture of bigotry that shows no sign of just dying out on its own. Younger generations aren't born at the highest level of enlightenment. They're born empty, blank, to be filled in by whoever is around them.

Humanity faces a huge challenge now, as every neglected area of concern reaches a crisis at the same time. Economic disparity, gender bias, racism, environmental disregard, and general paranoia all need to be addressed. They can't be addressed by one single thread of appeal, because not enough people connect the dots to get the picture. All are related, but have been treated as separate for eons. Our species needs group therapy, but avoid getting homogenized into a bland blend or forced into a mold under restrictive authority. On the other hand, restrictive authority has the power to act quickly to respond to the crises that can't wait for the slowest students to reach consensus. Like, the planet is baking right now. Resources are being devoured right now. At least two factions of super wealthy power mongers have different -- but both unpleasant -- visions of the future that they are poised to impose on the rest of us.

How much should one person or one generation worry about the generalized future? You live, you die, you're gone. Maybe you think you care about your children and grandchildren, but once you're dead you can't hear them complain anymore. The planet itself doesn't care whether we're here, or even how we treat it. What reason does anyone have not to live completely selfishly to the fullest extent of their skills and budget? That logic exists at some level inside every human mind. "Why should I care?" You have to make a damn good case. Find out what motivates each individual with whom you interact. Not too many of them will be very enthusiastic about getting their head smashed like John Lewis, or get murdered by racists just for trying to sign up voters, or guillotined for a principled stand against one of the most evil regimes that ever rose.

Peace is most definitely possible, a productive peace with a high degree of personal freedom of expression and movement. All it requires is universal acceptance that it is the greatest good. Sacrifice in a case like that consists of mild things like forgoing seconds on dessert rather than submitting to lynching or state execution. A simple concept but a surprisingly hard sell.

Edited petition to Brooke Rollins

You probably get these too: emails asking you to contact various government officials to ask them to be decent human beings or good stewards of the environment or some crap like that. If they were either of those things, we wouldn't have to petition them. So in the part that I can edit I usually try to reach them where they are rather than call them to where the petition sponsor thinks they should be.

The most recent example is a petition to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, asking her to release the contingency funds to cover SNAP benefits during the government shutdown. The suggested language was conciliatory and deferential to human rights and values of which this regime has not demonstrated a single scrap. So I took my usual approach.

To: Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture

 At some point, your party's top-down approach to ruling has to become obvious, as it does now in this cold move to use Americans in need as hostages to coerce the Democratic Party to surrender to your party's overall plan to make life more precarious for the working class.

Your party's policies will increase mortality among children, the elderly, and the disabled, three groups that represent little value to a wealthy elite. Children have some utility as future workers, but only if they are sturdy enough to do the work required of them before they are discarded by your system when they get too old or injured. A good example here is how the Republicans pay lip service to military personnel and veterans, while cutting funding for support systems after their service. As for the elderly, just die already, am I right? And the disabled... they never had anything to contribute in the first place. Life ain't the Special Olympics. Eventually, it will be legal to just leave a defective baby out on a frozen hillside to die, won't it? Or maybe part it out for useful organs first. Just because some parts don't work doesn't mean that no parts work. All that lies a little further down the road, but we're at a critical fork right now.

Preventing 42 million Americans—including about 16 million children and nearly 7 million pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and young children—from being able to buy groceries seems unnecessarily cruel and dangerous until you consider that it's a first step toward necessary culling of useless people. The tough will survive. Anyone not tough enough to endure the test is just dead weight on society anyway. Am I getting this right? You know I am.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has an emergency contingency fund, and experts indicate that the US Department of Agriculture is able to use this or other funds to keep food on people’s tables. Or you can siphon off the funds to pay for CBP officers, golf trips, and Gatsby parties. Maybe pay to ship senior military commanders in for another pep talk by Major Hegseth over at the Pentagon.

According to your own shutdown contingency plan, the agency has a reserve of funds, which can be used to pay SNAP benefits directly. In fact, the SNAP Appropriation law’s own language makes the contingency reserve broadly available for program operations. Even in President Trump’s first administration, SNAP benefits were paid out during the government shutdown in late 2018 through early 2019—the longest recorded shutdown in American history—without interruption. You can come through again or admit that was a mistake, a moment of weakness you won't repeat.

I now return you to the earnest entreaty that assumes that you have a core of humanity that can be appealed to. Who knows? Maybe they're right. Surprise me.

I call on you to do the right thing for the American people and put politics aside to fund SNAP benefits so that millions of families can eat. You have the power to stop needless suffering and children going hungry. Please use it.

Sincerely,

(Your information here)