Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Liars, Traitors, Cheats, and Thieves: Dear Assailant-in-Chief, Letter #13


11/29/16

Dear Assailant-in-Chief,


Elliot Lusztig was talking about Hannah Arendt's The Origin of Totalitarianism and its applicability to you and yours. Specifically, that fact-checking you is useless because you aren't dealing in facts; you are framing the narrative for what you want to do next.  The Nazis knew the Jews weren't to blame for Germany losing World War I, they were just ginning up a reason to murder them.  Likewise, you know millions of people didn't vote illegally in the election. You're just ginning up a reason to suppress the vote. As Lusztig says, "What Trump is saying is not that 3m illegals voted. What he's saying is: I'm going to steal the voting rights of millions of Americans."

But why would you do that?  The answer is the same reason Jim Crow laws were passed, the same reason Republicans want voter ID laws and are against early voting but for closing polling places.  You know you will lose if everyone who is eligible to vote actually does, so you machinate to take their voting rights away.  You can't win any other way, so you cheat. You...along with every Republican colluding with you...are a liar, and a cheat, and a thief who wants to steal democracy itself.

I cannot imagine anything more deeply un-American. To wave the flag and conspire to undermine the Constitution is more than hypocrisy; it's a kind of idolatry in the worst possible sense.  The symbol is nothing; the thing itself, the country, America, the Republic, that is everything. America isn't a flag.  America is us.

Yours sincerely,

Sara Amis
Citizen of these United States of America


From Dorine Jennette:

PLEASE JOIN ME IN WRITING THE ASSAILANT-IN-CHIEF
Please join me in bombarding the Assailant-in-Chief with letters: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/contact. I will write to him every day through his first 100 days in office, maybe longer if momentum holds. I am asking others to write just ONE letter. Let's not just vent our grief to each other--let's speak truth to power together. Please WRITE and please SHARE this plan with your friends. Pass it on!
You do not need to be a woman or an assault survivor to address the Assailant-in-Chief as such. If you are a man who has a daughter, a sister, a wife, a woman colleague or friend you respect, or a mother (hint: that last one is all of you!), then you have something to say to the Assailant-in-Chief. Your letter might be a brief one-liner. That's great! Please send it! Women need our allies now. Here's the link to DJT's contact page--this might take you one minute or less! https://www.donaldjtrump.com/contact
Or, maybe you will start a related project addressing any one of the many groups Trump has already harmed . . .
As we talk with each other, let's break the bubble and also send our complaints straight to the source. He won't read them and won't care if he does, so probably this is a placeholder action while we figure out what we're really going to do . . . but it's something.

Dorine's posts can be found here:  https://www.facebook.com/dorine.jennette

PS from Sara:  I've taken to just tweeting these at him.  He's not going to read them anyway, but I might as well use the platform that he actually responds to.  *snort*

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