Charlottesville
I’ve been making a point to avoid any new political posts on here as I’ve been wanting to keep it a fun, stupid blog devoted to anime girls and the occasional ill-informed Game of Thrones post. However I cannot keep silent about what’s happened over this past week, and 421A is my outlet to express myself. So I will.
I’ve worked in the news business for about fifteen years at this point. I’ve interviewed celebrities, firefighters, police officers, mayors, Congresspeople, and even our 44th President of the United States, Barrack Obama. Twice. Of course, he was little more than an upstart state senator in Illinois at the time, but still. Despite the hundreds upon hundreds of people I’ve spoken to over the course of my career, the people I have had the privilege – the greatest honor to speak to were World War II veterans.
We call them the greatest generation. They were. They are. These are men (and a few women) who, voluntarily or otherwise, risked their lives defending not only the United States but all of the world. They ran through machine-gun fire to storm the beaches at Normandy. They liberated countless countries in Europe from the Nazis.
Over a million of the Greatest Generation were either killed or wounded fighting this fight in Europe. A righteous fight to free not only Europe but the whole world of the scourge that was the Third Reich. They fought them over there so we would not have to fight them here.
But we are having to fight them here.
This idea – this concept – that today in 2017 we would have people marching through the streets of an American city displaying the symbols and chanting the slogans of the most repulsive and heinous regime to exist in modern history is ludicrous. Yet here we are. These are not foreign invaders marching down our streets. No, these are American citizens. People who have looked back at the Greatest Generation of Americans and told them to all go fuck themselves.
And our President has too. In the loudest voice, our President has told the 400,000 Americans who died fighting the Germans that they died for nothing. He has told every remaining World War II veteran that their sacrifice – that their struggle – that their injuries – that their legacy – means nothing.
Our President went on television and declared that there were ‘fine people’ on both sides.
No ‘fine person’ on Earth marches through a street supporting a regime – an ideology – that wishes for the deaths of nearly half our population.
Our President equated the Nazi murderer that plowed through a group of counter-protesters with the woman who the Nazi murdered. “Many sides”, he said. “Both sides”, he said.
ANTIFA are no angels, but I cannot find a single instance of them plowing through a line of protesters. Some of the BLM crowd riots, but given the frustration they feel from being marginalized with this ‘All Lives Matter’ dismissal of their grievances, I don’t really blame them. As Chris Rock once said, I don’t condone it, but I understand. However, the fact of the matter is that they were not rioting in Charlottesville. ANTIFA wasn’t rioting, they weren’t even smashing the windows at the banks and looting a Starbucks. Not to mention there were tons of counter-protesters there that weren’t affiliated with either group.
They just didn’t want Nazis walking down their streets.
The fact of the matter is that only one group drove their car through a crowd of people peacefully protesting, murdering one woman and doing their damnedest to try to murder 19 others.
That Nazi terrorist was quickly caught, thankfully.
Our President said he wasn’t quick to call out the Nazis and the KKK by name because he needed all the facts first. However, I guarantee you that if that had been a Muslim man driving that car he wouldn’t have waited one fucking second to call out him and 1 billion other Muslims. He would have been jumping up and down, crying about how this was all the result of people pushing back against his racist travel ban.
Had this man been a member of the Black Lives Matter movement, Trump would have called for the full force of law enforcement to break up and arrest everyone involved in any Black Lives Matter protest across the country. He wouldn’t have waited for ‘all the facts’ first.
But this man was one of his. He was on the alt-right, which I think is the politically correct term for Nazi. Somewhat ironic, I think, that these people who decry the idea of safe spaces and call liberals ‘snowflakes’ for simply not wanting to be assholes, need this term to make them feel a little bit better about themselves.
Our President shamed the violence ‘on many sides… on many sides’. Then, after someone in his office managed to convince him that he should probably call out the Nazis and the KKK, he did so, reluctantly. Then he backtracked. ‘Many fine people’ he said of the Nazis who murdered a woman. One of these many fine people in a Vice mini-documentary shot over the weekend claimed that the killing of 32-year-old Heather Heyer was just. Does our President think that there were fine people on both sides in World War II? Nazis did create the Autobahn, after all. They can’t be all bad, right?
Some people claim that they are good people who weren’t there to support the Nazis.
“Good people can go to Charlottesville,” said Michelle Piercy, a night shift worker at a Wichita, Kan., retirement home, who drove all night with a conservative group that opposed the planned removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee.
No.
If for whatever reason you feel compelled to drive to another state to support an idol of insurrectionists who nearly destroyed this country in large part to protect their rights to own other humans, do so. However, by marching side by side with Nazis you are one.
Literally, hundreds of thousands of Americans died trying to rid the world of the scourge that was Nazism. Many of those men are buried not even three miles from where our President lives. Our President spat on all of their graves by equivocating the actions of the Nazis in Charlottesville with those who spoke out for what is right, just, and American.
I use the term Our President deliberately. He is our President and a choice needs to be made. It needs to be made by all of us.
Vice President Pence, by standing by our President and his words, you are supporting the Nazis.
Speaker Ryan, by failing to condemn our President by name, you are failing to condemn the Nazis.
General Kelly, by failing to resign you are supporting a regime that stands against all you fought for.
Every member of Trump’s staff and Cabinet, by refusing to resign you are telling all of us that you are fine – you accept – a President that calls Nazis fine people.
Those in Congress who have not called out our President by name and admonished him for emboldening these enemies of American ideals, American values, American exceptionalism – YOU ARE SUPPORTING NAZIS.
Any man or woman in this great nation that continues to support a man who thinks chanting and inconveniencing a few people by blocking a road is just as bad as murdering, Nazi terrorists, YOU ARE AN ENABLER OF NAZIS.
A decision needs to be made. Our President has flipped off and said FUCK YOU to the Greatest Generation of Americans. Our President is on the side of the Nazis.
There are only two sides here.
Will you be on the side of the President and the Nazis?
Will you be on the side of the United States of America?
Decide.
