That Rove was a spokesman for an administration which governed on this philosophy, and that the leadership of that administration had nothing but disdain for the con artist who has currently seized the handles of power, speaks volumes to how deeply chaotic and unsustainable our political climate has become.
The Internet was supposed to provide the final key needed to unlock a world connected in truth, humanity, and justice through transparency. Instead we are, as a nation, watching the evidence of a burgeoning fascist dictatorship, complete with secretive paramilitary state police force destroying communities and murdering onlookers with impunity, yet we do not see the same evidence before our eyes. What I’m seeing – what I’ve been seeing for a decade now – is a clear and present attempt to wrestle reality away from those who have, in fact, spent their lives judiciously studying history’s actors.
Now it divides us further, by using the power of the state to try and forcefully gaslight us into believing that a young mother, a U.S. citizen – legally observing a federal agency which has become notorious for its lawlessness, in the act of executing yet another massively unpopular operation against yet another state's sovereign citizenry – was a domestic terrorist.
Those who study reality – judicially, as you will, and I, had many discussions throughout the War on Terror regarding the implications of the consolidation of federal agencies, and expansion of federal punitive powers, including the damnatory and politically expedient classification of perceived enemies as domestic terrorists.
I’m not sure who, exactly, we expected they would use this label against. Perhaps political dissidents speaking out against an out-of-control authoritarian regime? Those making the determination that armed rebellion was the only effective redress of grievances against a government gone rogue? Perhaps one of the many demoralized individuals who, after internalizing the stochastic terrorism we’ve been normalizing as a nation the past decade, decided to massacre innocent people in a public space?
We did not, nor could we, have anticipated that it would be a 37-year-old mother of three. Executed in broad daylight. On video. From multiple angles. How could we have foreseen such an atrocity in a world that made sense? But the world no longer makes sense, and this is supposed to be our new reality. Our marching orders. Comply or die. This is a reality that ceases to be based in a shared system of rules, and legal order. With such a system there is only one option left for those who reject the antiquated, ignorant adage of 'might equals right'. For those who believe in the inalienable right of all people to exist in a free, democratic, and peaceful way. For those who reject the fascists' attempt to rend reality meaningless, so that they may serve as the undisputed arbiters of truth.
Fight back.
This doesn't, nor should it, be understood exclusively as a physical fight – though it would certainly appear that the time and place for that may be imminent. Fighting back can mean simply not giving in to fear, to disillusionment, to despair. Not giving in to the constant and increasingly aggressive attempts by the disingenuously aggrieved to demoralize and demonize those their lair of glass ideology perceives as outcasts.
Fascism seeks not only to break systems, but to break people, to break spirits. It is incumbent upon those who wish to continue the grand experiment of democracy to stand between the lawlessness and perversion of this illegitimate, rogue regime of clownish, evil gangsters and opportunistic, imbecilic henchmen, so filled with hatred for the freedom and diversity that have elevated this nation to whatever level of greatness it may ever have attained. We must throw our minds and bodies on the levers and gears of their machine of retribution and criminality, masquerading as grievance.
We must fight back. We must be brave. We must stand together and support one another, as we bear witness to the most recent attempt to destroy the democracy for which our fathers and grandfathers fought and sacrificed. They defeated the impotent scourge of fascism, and went on to build the most prosperous working class the world has ever seen. We can do the same. And we can do it without the hatred, the condemnation steeped in ignorance, and the blind faith in leaders who do nothing but exploit our worst impulses.
We must fight back.