Saturday, February 4, 2017

Real “majority” will make itself heard, despite ideologue desire to silence us

When women rose up in protest a couple of weekends ago to express their contempt for newly-elected President Donald J. Trump, the general reaction from conservative ideologues was something along the lines of, “Those silly broads!”
Was the Daily News onto something over a year ago?

As though they thought the crowds of hundreds of thousands of people gathering across the nation, including Chicago, could be laughed off. Ignore them long enough, and they’ll go back to the kitchen and fix them a chicken pot pie.

BUT IT SEEMS the negative sentiments expressed by those who find the concept of “President Trump” to be a national embarrassment are not limited to the women.

There are going to continue to be protests held by activist-types concerned about immigration policy and the president’s executive orders that he tries to spin into something that only impacts a few select people from certain countries.

But the reality is that such policies stir up the nativist element of our society – the xenophobes who are inclined to view this as merely the first step (after all, Trump has only been president a couple of weeks now). It’s just a matter of time before restrictive policies can be spread to cover many other parts of the world.

So I expect the protests are going to become more vociferous. More outbursts. More vocal. Particularly since U.S. District Judge James Robarts in Seattle on Friday issued an order that, for now, has halted the Trump action that they counted on to enforce their non-Muslim vision of the world. 

BECAUSE THEY’LL BE on behalf of people that the conservative ideologues want to believe never had any right to be in this country at all (or casting votes in this election, which is the base sentiment behind Trump’s cheap rhetoric that he really won the popular vote last year in the presidential election), the reactions will become more mean-spirited than the laughs that were generated for the women.

They’re going to be hostile. We’ll see how close they push to being violent, when some group of crackpots decide they’re taking matters into their own hands and fighting on behalf of the United States of America in telling those foreigners where to go!

There have been protests all week in places across the nation, including in Chicago on Wednesday night when people marched from the Homeland Security offices to the federal plaza (the site where the women wanted to wind up, but couldn’t because their crowds of possibly up to 250,000 were too large).

There also will be another protest and rally Saturday in East Chicago, Ind., giving those people a chance to express themselves without having to make the trip into the city. It’s not just the Chicago malcontents upset their support for Hillary Clinton wasn’t enough to win her an Election Day victory.

EVEN THE WOMEN had a similar counterpart rally for Northwest Indiana, held in Valparaiso. Although this one is being held in a community where just over half the population is of Latino ethnic origins. Immigration sentiments spread across ethnic labels.

Which also means the hostility will be there. I already have seen countless statements being posted on places throughout the Internet expressing the idea that these people have no right to complain, and that no one will listen to them or ought to pay them any mind.

I saw one Facebook crackpot (who insisted on using a picture of himself in military uniform, which I think ought to constitute a violation of good taste) say that the protests will be successful in 90 days – which is when Trump’s restrictions are allegedly going to cease to exist.

But that’s only because the permanent policies that are now being crafted are to take effect then. It becomes important to make one’s opposition known before the changes become permanent.

I FIND IT reassuring that people are not falling for the Trump-ite spin that says his immigration restrictions merely impact a few individuals – and not even all people with Arab or Middle Eastern ethnic origins. Meaning the bulk of us shouldn’t care.

It really doesn’t matter how few there are. Because any hostile policy reflects poorly upon us as a people. We lose a lot of the moral high ground our society always claims to have when it asserts itself over the rest of the world.

And perhaps seeing the women and the Latinos and just about everyone else who wasn’t in the 46 percent of voters who actually thought Donald J. Trump was fit to be president is a sign of a lesson truly learned; the one expressed in that poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller about cowardice during the Nazi era in Germany – you’re all aware of it:

First, they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Socialist,

Then, they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Trade Unionist,

Then, they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then, they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

Whether he likes it or not, the masses are going to let their opposition to Trump on many grounds be known; regardless of how much the ideologues wind up being annoyed at the realization they’re outnumbered.

 -30-

No comments: