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“FREE AMERICA!”
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By Robert McElvaine of Musings & Amusings of a B-List Writer
“I don’t understand Americans,” a German academic visiting the United States for the first time said to me in the late 1990s.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You have speed limits on your expressways, but no one obeys them,” he explained.
“In Germany, the autobahns do not have speed limits. But if they did, they vould be obeyed!”
I have been thinking back to that exchange as the new Trump administration is rapidly moving the United States toward an authoritarian oligarchy. It had immediately struck me how profound
the contrast the German scholar made is and what it suggests about how different the basic American worldview is from the traditional Weltanschauung of Germans and, indeed, of people in most cultures around the world. The long-established view of civilization assumed the natural, innate inequality of categories of human beings and, accordingly, that there must be an ordered
hierarchy of rule from above and the subordination of “lesser” people.
The United States emerged out of a radical alternative conception of what civilization should be. That new understanding arose in the Enlightenment and was given expression by Thomas
Jefferson in 1776: It is “self-evident” that humans are born equal, with an “unalienable” right to liberty. Of course, neither Jefferson nor the nation he helped to found came close to living up to that ideal either at the time or long after. But it remained the goal.
“The mass of mankind,” Jefferson wrote shortly before his death a half century after the Declaration, “has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.”
Elon Musk and Donald Trump beg to differ. They are hellbent on re-subordinating all the classifications of human beings that have in recent decades been moving closer to enjoying the equal rights that constitute the American promise.
Willing obedience to authority is not in Americans’ cultural DNA. We do not like being told what to do. As the German visitor noticed, we see speed limits as suggestions. The nation was born in rebellion against monarchy—and aristocracy. Americans do not take to calling people “your majesty,” “my lord,” “your highness,” and so forth. The Founders wrote that attitude into the Constitution. Article I, sections 9 and 10 provide that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States” and “No State shall ... grant any Title of Nobility.”
It has become clear that neither Trump nor Musk sees the Constitution as much more than an old piece of parchment and they likely envision an array of supplicants with titles of nobility
bestowed—and revokable—by the king.
Whenever Trump makes up a fake quotation of someone speaking to him, he begins with the person calling him, “Sir.” Surely, he would prefer “My Lord” or “Your Royal Majesty.”
♦ ♦ ♦
The attitude of Americans going back to the period leading up to the Revolution is well represented in the 1775 Gadsden flag with the phrase “Don’t Tread on Me” beneath a coiled rattlesnake. It symbolizes a determination to have and maintain freedom.
The adoption of that flag and slogan in recent decades by right wing groups was part of the authoritarian forces now dominating the American government playing the long game by appealing to Americans’ nearly instinctual opposition to being ruled over. The precursors of Trump called themselves “libertarians” because they know Americans love freedom. They hid their radical, extremist, anti-American agenda by saying they are “conservatives.” And most of the media abetted and still abet them by calling even the most extreme rightwing fanatics determined to overthrow our Constitutional Republic “conservatives,” making them sound
normal and unthreatening—the defenders of traditional American values. They are the opposite.
They gained power in part by convincing voters that Democrats want big, oppressive government, but it is now they who are installing big, oppressive government. If the “jackbooted thugs” and “men in black helicopters” they warned of ever show up, it will be the Trumpist government that sends them.
A declaration made by Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye in the 1992 Michael Mann incarnation of “The Last of the Mohicans” has long seemed to me to neatly capture the foundational American attitude. A red-coated British officer says to him, “You call yourself a patriot, and loyal subject to the Crown?”
The Day-Lewis character speaks for Americans by replying,
“I do not call myself subject to much at all.”
The redcoats now wear red hats and they have succeeded far beyond the last significant invasion of the United States, by the British in 1814. Then, the enemy burned the Capitol and the Presidential Mansion. Now, they have control of both. As more Americans come to realize that they are attempting to turn all of us into subjects, the rattlesnake depicted on the Gadsden flag will coil to strike at the internal enemy.
Anat Shenker-Osorio’s wonderful suggestion for a slogan around which we can unite would appeal directly to Americans’ deep-seated aversion to being subjects: “Free America!
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Rick Wilson RIPS TRUMP for Disobeying Federal Court Order
Donald Trump's unconstitutional move to ship human beings to a Nazi-Style concentration camp in El Salvador rips the band-aid off for anybody still denying it; This is fascism. We are here. With every policy announcement, his vision becomes more clear and realized, and our need to stop him becomes more pressing. We’ll see what the Robert’s court does,& if Trump will even listen to them if they try to uphold the constitution.
NEW EPISODE: That Trippi Show with Joe Trippi
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Trump's Tariffs & The Pro-Democracy Fight | That Trippi Show
Joe Trippi and Alex Shashlo have some HUGE news for the pro-democracy fight!
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When I see the explosion of sexual orientation hate coming out of the Republican Party under the false pretense of it being limited to anti-trans hate, I can’t help but think of the powerful role closeted gay men have played in the modern Republican Party. Below is the first of a series of pieces I’m writing reflecting on my experiences with what was widely known as the GOP’s Pink Mafia.
My first entry into politics was through the hidden world of gay Republicans. I didn’t know it, but looking back, odds are I never would have become a political consultant if it were not for what I later learned was known as the “Pink Mafia.”
Watch Rick’s and Stuart’s ridiculously entertaining LIVE discussing the Pink Mafia.
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