I Dissent

Back in October, Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, an executive order that basically overturned the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Anyone who criticizes fascism suddenly became a “domestic terrorist.”

Anyone who criticizes the policies of the federal government in any way was likewise declared a “domestic terrorist.”

Anyone who criticizes “capitalism” – a term which I sincerely doubt Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump can actually define – was also a “domestic terrorist.”

Anyone who criticizes Christianity as defined not by churches or clergy or even individual believers but by Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, lackeys, cronies, and slaves, is also a “domestic terrorist.”

Anyone who isn’t a bootlicking toady for the current administration is now labeled a “domestic terrorist.”

This is an attempt to criminalize dissent.

The Founding Fathers understood that this was tyranny. They understood, as George Washington said, that “If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.”

Yeah, no.

I am a goddamned American patriot. I have devoted my life to the study of this country’s history and I literally have a PhD in the Founding Fathers to go with that. My family has been here for two hundred years. I have at least three ancestors who fought on the correct side of the Civil War, for the republic created by the Founding Fathers and against the treason of the slaveholding South. During World War II the United States of America gave medals to my ancestors for shooting Fascists and we called them The Greatest Generation. I will be damned if I will disgrace their memory by kowtowing to these fucking losers now. 

This country was built on dissent. This country was built by people who looked at the shit being thrown their way and told the people throwing it that they could go to hell. It’s an ongoing process and we have a long way to go before we reach our aspirations, but there is only one way to get there.

I dissent.

To Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, lackeys, cronies and slave, I dissent.

From your cruel and inhumane war on American cities, your rogue personal army, your executions in the street, your kidnapping and trafficking small children, and your tyranny, I dissent.

From your promotion and defense of bloodshed as long as the people you hate are the ones dying, I dissent.

From your equally cruel and inhumane war on the immigrants who are here making lives and communities, following the processes and still being kidnapped and trafficked to foreign countries for pretend offenses in direct violation of legally binding court orders, from your campaign of ethnic cleansing in a nation of immigrants, I dissent.

From your Fascist “show me your papers” policies, from your use of a small child as bait, from your lack of ethics, morality, humanity, and decency, from your violent authoritarianism and small-minded bigotry, I dissent.

From your reckless assaults on education, your totalitarian attempts to rewrite history to suit your ideological demands, your refusal to accept the absolute fact that this country has always been a multi-cultural, multi-lingual nation with great virtues and great flaws standing side by side, I dissent.

From your obvious white supremacy and white nationalism, your soul-destroying racism, your brutal ignorance of actual Americans and the people living here, I dissent.

From your assaults on democracy, from your overt attempts to rig elections, suppress votes, and overturn results that don’t support you, from your weaponizing voter rolls as a tool of authoritarian control, I dissent.

From your eviscerating the US Constitution and its system of checks and balances, its limits on executive authority, and its safeguards against tyranny, I dissent.

From your destruction of American standing in the world, your attacks on allies, your coddling dictators, your clear subservience to a foreign power, your destructive trade wars, your catastrophic abandonment of everything that has made the United States a reliable ally, your refusal to recognize the contributions of American allies and your callous and ignorant dismissal of their losses, I dissent.

From your cruelty to the poor, the outcast, and the powerless, I dissent.

From your blasphemous twisted version of Christianity, I dissent.

From your eagerness to see hungry people starve, sick people die, and poor people suffer, I dissent.

From your overt war on women, on women’s health care, on women’s political and economic rights, on everything that the majority of the population might do that marks them as separate from breeding stock, I dissent.

From your desperate protection of pedophiles, all the way up to Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump himself, from your willingness to start wars and invade American cities to distract from the fact that you are now over a month late in releasing the Epstein files as required by federal law, from your lawless immorality, rampant perversion, and twisted sickness, I dissent.

From all of this and more, from the mere fact that you have installed yourselves into positions of power and are systematically destroying everything that better men and women than you have built over generations of sweat, blood, and effort, from everything that you are and everything that you represent, I dissent.

I am not alone.

We outnumber you.

We will not be intimidated.

We will be here when you are just a negative example in a textbook.

I dissent.