Bill Ayers

Step 46: On the last day of 2016, Donald Trump tweeted his unique New Year’s greeting to the nation: “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”

Step 47: On December 30 Donald Trump had his private security force remove Harry Hurt III, author of the 1993 biography, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, from the golf course at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Hurt’s book is unflattering, to be sure, and among the bits he documents is Ivana Trump’s allegation in a sworn deposition that Trump had “raped” her during their divorce battle. Hurt was a guest of the notorious billionaire David. H. Koch, a club member. You’re fired!

Step 48: I’m on the Trump/Pence email list as a result of having gotten a ticket online to the notorious Trump rally in Chicago during the campaign. I get fund-raising pitches constantly, and this one arrived at the start of the new year: “Friend, With Inauguration Day just weeks away, we’re launching an Inaugural Collection of special-edition merchandise to commemorate this historic day in American history. First among the Inaugural Collection is a set of two Made-in-America 16-ounce pint glasses decorated with a special seal honoring the 45th president. Get your Official Inauguration Pint Glass Set now to celebrate the swearing in of President-Elect Trump.” Cheap.

Step 49: One hundred corporate CEOs possess company retirement funds totaling $4.7 billion—this is equivalent to the entire retirement savings of 41% of US families. Donald Trump’s pick to direct the Office of Management and Budget says: “We must end Medicare as we know it.”

Step 50: The new Republican-led Congress voted behind closed doors to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, dismantling reforms adopted in the wake of a previous Republican ethics scandal. The measure would take away authority and independence from the investigative body and give more power to lawmakers to self-monitor—the good old days. A firestorm of opposition—much of it raising the specter of Donald Trump’s embedded conflicts of interest and pending kleptocracy—forced an almost immediate reversal.

Pay attention! Resist and be heard!

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/trump-zionism-israel-palestine-zoa-free-speech-sjp-activism/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/31/israel-palestine-two-state-solution-flaws-john-kerry-plan

I know, I know: the word  has become an electrifying political pejorative, stripped of substance, and further, it’s so historically freighted and so overused and misused that the word can seem wildly inappropriate if one hopes to speak plainly. But “fascism” does have a precise meaning beyond the optics of swastikas and jack-booted SS men. Fascism is not consigned to a particular place or a specific moment—Europe in the mid-Twentieth Century, for example; fascism is not necessarily the result of a coup or a military putsch, and in fact the most notorious fascist regime in history came to power through a legal and democratic process. It’s long been said that if fascism ever came to America it would come with a familiar face wrapped in an American flag. YIPES!

So, yes, let’s talk about fascism.

Simply put, fascism is a right-wing form of government that opposes liberal democracy, Marxism, socialism, and anarchism, and attempts to forge national unity under an autocratic leader with a totalitarian program advocating  stability, law and order, and more and more centralized power, claiming all of this is necessary in order to defend the homeland, and to respond effectively to economic instability. Fascist states attempt to mobilize a mass base through deliberately constructed fear and hatred as they prepare for armed conflict and permanent war by appealing to patriotic nationalism and militarizing all aspects of society. Fascists agitate “popular” movements in the streets, apparently spontaneous but in reality well funded and highly organized, based on bigotry, intolerance, and the threat of violence, all of it fueled by the demonization of targeted, distinct racial, religious, or gendered vulnerable populations and the creation of convenient sacrificial scapegoats who are repeatedly  blamed for every social or economic problem people experience. Fascist regimes promote disdain for the arts, for intellectual life, for reason and evidence, as well as deep contempt for the necessary back and forth of serious argument or discussion. And fascist states favor protectionist and interventionist economic policies as they entangle corporations with the state.

That’s fascism.

Step 41: The US—breaking a shameful historical precedent with a significant (if entirely inadequate given US culpability) half-step— abstained from vetoing a UN Security Council vote condemning the Israeli settlement movement, in effect allowing the rest of the world a voice to state the obvious: Israel is an illegal occupier. The next day Secretary of State John Kerry (too little/too late) noted that Israel’s practice of seizing Palestinian land while denying Palestinian people equal rights cannot continue indefinitely; that occupation and democracy are incompatible; and that criticism of Israel’s racist and murderous policies is not anti-semitism. But Israel has no incentive to comply with Kerry’s moderate talking points—the US had just committed billions more in military aid, and that aid was greeted with unrestrained settlement construction. Donald Trump tweeted, “Stay strong Israel, January 20 is fast approaching.” Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been in full tantrum mode, stomping his feet and issuing threats, replied with a gushing thank you note, and the bromance escalated.

Step 42: When the Obama administration expelled Russian diplomats and imposed sanctions in retaliation for an alleged hacking incident involving the US national elections, Vladimir Putin had an unexpected response, announcing he would not respond in kind, descending to the level of squabbling, but would await a more reasonable Trump administration. Donald Trump tweeted that it was a “great move” by Putin. “I always knew he was smart.”

Step 43:  Donald Trump (with the full support of the incoming Republican leadership) has proposed a giant tax cut with YUGE benefits to the “makers” and the “job creators” (aka the richest Americans) with an average cut of at least $1,100,000 to the richest 0.1%.

Step 44: The Donald J. Trump Foundation announced that it planned to dissolve itself, but the New York attorney general’s office said, in effect, not so fast: “The Trump Foundation is still under investigation…and cannot legally dissolve until that investigation is complete.”

Step 45: Eric Trump, the president-elect’s son, announced that he will have no role in the new administration and will immediately cease his practice of attending high-level business and political meetings—while he would still talk to his father about many matters, they would never discuss or even mention business affairs again, since Eric will be running the Trump businesses with his brother, Donald, Jr. and their dad is the conflicts-of-interest are staggering.

January 20 is close at hand, it’s true. No time like the present to rise up and resist.

In order to combat anguished feelings of powerlessness, overwhelming sadness, or a sense of wretched hopelessness, organize a meeting in your work place, your classroom, your building or residential block. Gather together in the spirit of dialogue, speaking with the hope of being heard, and listening with the possibility of being changed. Serve cookies to your neighbors, students, friends, and fellow workers. Initiate a conversation in which folks name this political moment and talk about what is to be done now. Sanctuary, solidarity, resistance, rising up. History has surprised us before, and history can surprise us again—and, who knows?—perhaps we will be the agents of that surprise! 

Step 36: Donald Trump issued a tweet to the world:  “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability…” and a new and deadly arms race was underway. Call it, “Weaponized Tweeting,” or “Tweeting toward Armageddon!” He followed up in an interview: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” Imagine that: outlasting an adversary in a nuclear confrontation. Everyone in the world outside the small Putin clique, or the residents of Trump’s hermetically sealed and self-created parallel universe—call it Trumpsylvania—looked on with alarm and horror as the pea-brained moral midgets compared the size of their equipment with the fate of the earth in the balance. I immediately remembered the “duck and cover” drills every kid practiced in the 1950’s—training in compliance, and lessons on the inevitability of a nuclear holocaust. I also remembered that the US is the only country to unleash nuclear terror on a population, and I vowed once again: Never again!

Step 37: Donald Trump asked the State Department for a detailed list of programs, activities, and jobs that promote gender equality. This follows the request a few days earlier to the Energy Department to offer up a list of the names of people who had worked on climate change issues, or attended climate change meetings or conferences. The pattern is now quite clear—and ominous: a new “Black List” of dissidents is being actively assembled, and crushing dissent is one of the front burner priorities for the Trump mob. 

Step 38: Donald Trump’s New York campaign co-chair and member of the Buffalo school board, Carl Paladino, said that his wish for 2017 was that Michele Obama “return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla,” and that President Obama “catches mad cow disease after having been caught having relations” with a heifer.

Step 39: The leader of the Austrian far-right and anti-immigrant Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, claimed to have met with Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Donald Trump’s designated national security adviser. The Trump transition team had no comment. The Freedom Party was founded in the 1950’s by former Nazis.

Step 40: After the US abstained on a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction, Donald Trump tweeted that, “things will be different after Jan.20th.”

The antidote to political depression is political organizing and social activism. Making the American revolution great again!!

Step 31: Donald Trump tapped Rick Perry, a leading climate change denier whose moment of fame involved his embarrassed “Oops!” in response to his brain freeze during the 2012 presidential debates when he couldn’t name the Energy Department as one of three agencies he would close as president, to head the (Wait for it…! Wait for it…!) the Energy Department, of course! The three-term governor of Texas, a state on fire, has campaigned repeatedly and noisily against any environmental restrictions that would impact Big Oil or Big Energy. “I’m no scientist,” he concedes as he pockets another payment from the filthy extractors and the profit-hungry polluters. He vehemently opposes regulations that would cut carbon emissions or policies that would constrain expanding oil and gas exploration because these are essential to “economic opportunity” and “energy independence” adding that “CO2 is not a pollutant!” You can imagine the governor looking distantly out the window of his mansion with those vacant steely eyes and observing that the earth is plainly flat as far as he can see, or, as he might put it, “Hey, why am I not upside-down?” Oh, you are governor, you are.

Step 32: Donald Trump nominated Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana to be the Secretary of the Interior. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers was dropped at the 11th hour because Zinke, who also favors opening up public lands for private profit, had “incredible chemistry” with the president-elect during their one-on-one at Trump Tower, plus Zinke isn’t encumbered by, you know, “lady parts.”

Step 33: An auction item—a 45-minute private coffee with Ivanka Trump in exchange for a contribution to one of her favorite charities—reached $72,888 before her handlers shut it down after a few of the people bidding for the honor said that they assumed they were buying access to the White House. (Shhhhh! Didn’t they get the memo? The line is “I just wanted really good coffee and a chat with a fun person.” Get it right!)

Step 34: On another fund-raising/drain-the-swamp/pay-to-play note, the Opening Day Foundation (founding board member: Eric Trump!) is holding a gala event in Washington after the Inauguration. The promise of a multi-day hunting trip with Eric and Donald, Jr., or a private meeting with the new president for a $1,000,000 donation was rescinded when questions were raised about the “appearance of impropriety.”

Step 35: Donald Trump selected Rep. Mike Mulvaney of South Carolina, a founder of the Tea Party-inspired House Freedom Caucus and a leading member of the “Shutdown Caucus,” so called because of its willingness to force deep spending cuts and to shut down the government if they didn’t get their way, to be his budget director.

More to come!