It looks like I picked a really good time to extend my birthday celebrations into a long weekend of bluegrass music on the Chesapeake Bay where my main news updates came through my phone and pertained to the baseball pennant race rather than politics. I saw 13 different bands (coulda been 14, but I left for home and missed the last) and lots of great song performances. What I didn’t see or hear was one word about Donald Trump or the Republicans. I didn’t see it from the stage or the organizers who are major conservationists. I didn’t see or hear it from the audience. There were tons of great, amusing and cool t-shirts in the crowd, but I saw one “Resist” t-shirt all weekend and nothing else.
There was a tent that appeared to have some Brazilian connection that was supportive of immigrants’ rights, and they had some merch that got spread around a little bit. One thing that never ceases to astound me is that bluegrass bands and festivals are teeming with people wearing Deadhead gear. They look exactly like a Dead concerts. But, right now, there’s a difference. Back when I was on Summer Tour with the Grateful Dead in 1988, the crowd was wearing a lot of anti-Bush t-shirts. One that was particularly popular said “Lick Bush” on the front and had 10 reasons to lick Bush on the back. At the moment, it appears that kind of political energy is lacking. Everyone, including me, seemed to be there as a form of relief and escapism. The political energy of the festival itself is focused on mental health and replenishing the oyster population of the bay, both of which are highly worthy issues, but completely unresponsive to the need for organized resistance to fascism.
If it sounds like I’m complaining, it’s only in the abstract. On a personal level, this is exactly what I needed for my mental health.
Of course, the right spent the weekend quite differently. They were at a fever pitch of political energy. Here’s Elizabeth Dias of the New York Times:
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, paid tribute to Charlie Kirk by citing the gospel message of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Stephen Miller, a deputy White House chief of staff, envisioned a spiritual uprising in Mr. Kirk’s wake. Vice President JD Vance said Mr. Kirk’s influence had reshaped the balance of American politics and traced it back to Mr. Kirk’s faith.
Because of Mr. Kirk, he said, “I have talked more about Jesus Christ the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public office.”
At the memorial service of Mr. Kirk on Sunday in a packed football stadium in suburban Phoenix, the highest levels of U.S. government and evangelical worship were woven as one. Perhaps never before, at such a grand scale, had such a fusion taken hold in a public display. More than just a tribute in the style of Mr. Kirk’s evangelical tradition, the service represented a pinnacle event reflecting the degree to which conservative Christianity had melded with Republican politics in the Trump era.
The Ur-Fascist energy involved in elevating Charlie Kirk to the level of a Martin Luther King Jr. is remarkable to see. I think we should fully expect in the near future to get Kirk’s birthday off from work and not to expect any mail service. But that energy isn’t going to go into a day of service to help the needy and oppressed. It’s going to go into crushing Donald Trump’s enemies.
I may write a treatise on all this in the near future. For the moment there are three articles that came out this weekend that are worth considering. The first is from Betsy Klein at CNN and it’s just a straightforward report on President Trump’s demand that Attorney General Pam Bondi prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff of California, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump says, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.” None of them are known to have committed any crimes, federal or otherwise.
The second is from Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MSNBC. It describes how Trump shut down a DOJ investigation of “White House border czar” Tom Homan for taking a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover counterintelligence agents. Taken together, these two stories show a complete collapse of the integrity and independence of the Justice Department. It is now an instrument of coercion and oppression aimed directly at the MAGA movement’s critics.
The last article that I offer for your consideration is from Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post. It concerns a Trump supporter and federal employee named Edward Brandon Beckham who has every reason to be disillusioned and angry with the Trump administration but just cannot bring himself to take the leap. If I had to make an educated guess about what is keeping him in the fold, it all winds back to what we’re seeing with the deification of Charlie Kirk. It’s the successful melding of evangelical Christianity with Trumpist fascism. As long as these two are inextricably interwoven in people’s minds, no force can separate them.
I think the overall message here is they are coming for us and we’re neither prepared or preparing. But, more than this, it’s easy to see now that the window is closing on open and legal resistance.
To see where we’re probably headed, let me leave you with a tidbit from Umberto Eco.
On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties — among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party.
Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.
The message on the front celebrated the end of the dictatorship and the return of freedom: freedom of speech, of press, of political association. These words, “freedom,” “dictatorship,” “liberty,” — I now read them for the first time in my life. I was reborn as a free Western man by virtue of these new words.
We must keep alert, so that the sense of these words will not be forgotten again.
The Democratic Party still exists, at least on paper. It would be a mistake to believe its elected officials have the power to meaningfully resist. This is through no fault of their own. They have been castrated, now reduced to pleading for a restoration of health benefits in return for playing a role in a Vichy government. Every meaningful type of resistance will soon be underground and in a real sense illegal.
The next shoe to drop will be an end to the relatively peaceful nature of this fascist takeover. For now, only the most vulnerable are being transported to Africa on untraceable military flights. But we’re all vulnerable and we have no protectors. Bella ciao.
Keep alert.
