Fear and Loathing in North Carolina

The last time I attended a rally, I was in high school.  I have always been under the impression most rallies involved sports teams.  After all, the purpose of a rally was to unite everyone behind your team, get them so excited and self-confident that their endorphins alone would convince them they could beat anyone.  Then you send them off to the slaughter against a far superior team for at least one quarter of competitive football.

That was what rallies were for.  Sports teams need rallies.  They're fun.  They get people excited.  They fill stands in stadiums. 

I suppose causes need rallies too.  Civil rights, gay rights, unions have rallies, although usually while striking.

In my memory banks, and I admit they are becoming more porous by the year, politicians gave speeches.  They didn't attend nor hold 'rallies.'  They fired up their base by telling them how the problems we faced could be overcome, and what they were going to do to fix it.  Sure, they spoke about their competition, but generally about why the policies in place or being suggested would fail or were failing.

The only politicians I can ever remember calling their events rallies?  Fascists. Dictators.  Hitler held massive rallies.  Mussolini.  Franco.



The intent behind rallies of this nature were not to fire up the base.  They were to convince people outside of your base of your power and that that power was warranted.  They were meant to make it clear that no other way was possible.  For people who spoke, out against the leader, the intent was to smear them as traitors or outcasts against the common good.  Chants were invoked and repeated over and over, and sometimes, in the case of Hitler, people swore their loyalty to the leader.



Last night, in North Carolina, President Donald Trump held a rally.  Yes, it was a rally.(watch low lights here)  Let's be clear that the President has been holding these 'rallies' since he came into office, despite the fact his power was all but guaranteed for four years.  If he did a solid job, he was likely to have eight years.  Yet, this leader felt the need to hold rallies during his entire term.

This was a rally, meeting every single criteria of the efforts of past rallies.  Those who disagree are labeled a disgrace.  Specific political foes, not of any threat to the President directly, were called extremists and haters of our country.  The blind mice that followed chanted in response "send her back, send her back," as all of these particular foes were minority women. 

It hearkened back to those exact times when thousands gathered to watch a regally dressed Adolf Hitler, his hair swept back and parted on the right, his toothbrush mustache trimmed, resting perfectly on his upper lip, his military outfit complemented by newly shined leather boots, declare that his country needed more room, needed to expand.  That Germany was the greatest country once and could be again, only if they had the audacity and courage to defeat the parties of hatred and arrogance, mostly led by the Jews.  The response was an overwhelming, seig hiel (which means basically, "hail victory").

In seeing the rally that was held in one of our oldest states, I can only wonder where on earth the values of the members of Greenville's community are.  It's easy for a leader to use a pulpit of access to slander whomever he or she wants.  In fact, it is the most simple form of bullying. It's the reason why the FCC created the Equal Time Rule, so that people in opposing parties get as much chance to respond as the candidate who spoke first.  When one person has a pulpit larger than all others, it doesn't take courage to shout from it.

It's a sign of insecurity, of weakness.

The leader secure and determined in his or her mission uses their pulpit not for retaliation or the stepping up of personal rhetoric, but instead to inspire, invigorate and raise up those he/she leads.  Americans, of all people, know this.



What I saw in North Carolina was the pinnacle of the most frightening version of this man so far; a man who once feared his Presidency was ending due to his own missteps and an investigation into dubious choices, now stands arrogantly dismissing the fact articles of impeachment were given ONLY 95 approval votes.  So proud he is of that victory, it doesn't dawn on him that 95 votes in the House were cast for impeachment is a reflection of a President who has completely lost over one-quarter (1/4) of the representatives in the House.  They are willing to send him packing.  That is not their misjudgment.  That is a cause-and-effect from a President, and a party, unwilling to speak up against the rhetoric of hate and divisiveness.

For his followers, it appears they are only listening for what they want to hear, while eliciting chants of support tantamount to a frightful seig heil.  And for those that will now argue all rallies have chants in them, when was the last time a political rally in America used a chant that wasn't meant to uplift something, as in "U-S-A or U-S-A", or "Four More Years" but instead fell back on chants meant to vilify a specific person or people such as "Lock Her Up"--- "Send Her Back"?  You need only look at now.

Should this particular leader turn that arrogance and rhetoric toward violence, encouraging his followers to take action (he already has talked about wanting to punch people, etc.) what would make him different than any other extremist in the Middle East?

Nothing.

We are just a few steps away.

HOW TO CONTEXTUALIZE THE U.S. BORDER AS "CLOSED".

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES 

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”


The French gifted the Statue of Liberty to the United States in June, 1885.  In 1903, as invention and production continued its surge and America began what would be an era of great prosperity separated by a great war, Emma Lazarus' poem The New Colossus, from which the above is excerpted, was emblazoned on a plaque inside her.

It was a clear message that in the greatest moments of health and happiness we should never forget our roots; that we were once all immigrants, fleeing religious oppression and seeking our own opportunities.  The United States inspired the world as a place where everyone had such an opportunity.  Though imperfect to say the least, it would rise up as a nation among nations not just by offering freedom, but by opening its doors to those most needy and most desperate by taking them in.

Women's Suffrage hadn't arrived yet. The Civil Rights Movement hadn't happened yet.  World War Two hadn't happened yet.  Nagasaki and Hiroshima weren't even in the world's periphery.  Vietnam, Korea, Desert Storm, and Nine-eleven hadn't happened yet.

All of these events served to wear down the American psyche it seems, with perhaps The Vietnam War becoming the first true case where the American people didn't believe in the war their government was raging.  Since then, doubt has been cast repeatedly on actions taken by our armed forces overseas in the name of freedom.  While never doubting the dedication of our soldiers, leadership has been called into question as to motive, timing, needs, and cost.

With the use of constant fear-mongering by the political establishment, more and more Americans have come to feel unsafe, and to feel as if our leaders are not looking out for our best interests.  Recent Gallup Polls put Congress' approval at twenty percent.  The President sits at forty-three percent.

Somehow, The New Colossus has faltered.  And in our turn inward toward our fears, we have closed our hearts and lost the ability to reach outward.

Stories of tragedies have started to emerge from our borders.  The death of six-year-old Indian immigrant Gurupreet Kaur and sixteen-year-old Carlos Georgio Hernandez Vasquez, the fifth minor from Guatemala to die in U.S. custody show just how far we have fallen.

Regardless of your take on immigration, there is no doubt we can agree in the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take that we should "first, do no harm."  The border crisis is just that, a crisis.  The cause of the crisis can be argued ad nauseum by many, some of whom will deny the statistics and others who will claim just plain ignorance is part of the causation.  Nevertheless, immigrants running for their lives as children should not be forced to lose theirs at our hands.

The fears of those who would decry immigrants as people looking for a handout spit in the face of our greatest treasures and most sacred values -- that human life is cherished, and the freedom to seek your own version of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is encouraged.

Perhaps we should rewrite our textbooks and look at the Pilgrims as freeloaders instead of freedom seekers.

Certainly, Christopher Columbus, Ponce de Leon, Amerigo Vespuci -- all of these adventurers to the New World could and might easily be categorized as fortune hunters.

Fear allows for such changes in nuance and dialect.  It allows people once seen as desperate immigrants to be called deadbeats and asylum seekers to be labeled terrorists. 

No more under this administration's policies does our government acknowledge Lazarus, nor that beautiful lady beacon in New York Harbor, but instead categorizes groups of peoples so as to cast aspersions not only on their plight, but their character.

The country we once knew to be bold and bright, open and ultimately just, is now fearful and dim, frightful and closed.  We are not the leader of the free world because to be a leader means to inspire others in the face of fear, not to cower to it.

Images such as the ones below are disturbing.  Images such as the one above.... unforgivable.  If we are to blame our elected officials, then we must blame ourselves.  We voted and re-elected them, despite their inabilities to handle the jobs for which they were hired.  This blood lies on us, our hands, no matter in which living room you sit, no matter where you lay your head, no matter how large your land.

Your American entitlement came from the blood of your forefathers, all of whom at one time or another were like these suffering people.  They were the tired, the poor, the huddled masses.... and they were given by grace of our nation a safe passage, a new life in a new world.

The only way to view a closed United States, one that does this to the people seeking help, is simple: We have let them down.

Courtesy of the Huffington Post