Protests are popping up around the nation like spring flowers, that is if spring flowers hate authoritarian co-presidents that include an unelected guy who is also the richest man in the world. Which I imagine they do.
Flowers don’t seem fascist to me.
One happened this week in my neck of the woods at a local office of our district’s Congresscritter, one Representative Glenn “GT” Thompson. There were about 200 folks there, including several of my friends.
GT is of the same party as Co-President Orange Lump and Co-President Drug-Addled Failed Auto Company CEO. His district includes Penn State, where I do my Clark Kent day job when not doing my night job, political blogger.
Our local land grant university employs a lot of us and any threat to it is a threat to our local and state economy. You may have heard Co-President Lump and Co-President Failed CEO want to take down universities under the guise of that they are being mean to white people or something. At the same time, our co-president cretins also want to go after the conservative dream of gutting Social Security because how can you put old people getting a check ahead of those poor, overtaxed billionaires finally being blessed with their rightful tax cut.
This for some reason seems to have people ready to give our congressman what we call here in central PA “what for,” which means in normal English “give them hell.” We are an optimistic bunch here in central PA so we hope that we get a similar result to when the ridiculous man we had as governor in 2011, Tom Corbett, wanted to cut Penn State’s and other PA university’s appropriation by more than 50 percent, which would have wrecked our local economy. We yelled at our local Republican leaders enough to get that reduced, so we are once again yelling at our local Republican leaders, except with even higher stakes.
So goes it across America at the moment. The few Republicans who dare to hold town halls are more or less getting figuratively pummelled by angry folks who are not at all pleased by the fact we have something called DOGE destroying our government. This is only going to get worse as Co-Presidents Lump and Failed Auto CEO’s approval sinks.
Americans have a funny relationship with protests. As a country, we seem to like protests by Black people when they happen 60 years ago but are not so crazy about ones in the current time. Black protestors are often told they are not doing it right, often something about being too loud. The Black Lives Matter protests were at first accepted but then more and more Sensible Centrists began to label them as violent, despite most not being violent. Then there was Colin Kaepernick, who did= silent kneeling protests that he ran past a veteran to make sure it wasn’t offensive and ended up being blacklisted from the NFL.
Now, the idea that the BLM protests were violent was driven by the far-right and found a welcome audience among some white moderates because one aspect of being a modern American is giving absolute zero shit about people other than you and others like you. But now we have a bunch of billionaire morons who are wrecking the country, so the protests are not going to be only Black people, but a diverse group of angry people.
Protests against ruining Social Security are going to have pretty wide support, and this is not going to be well-received by Donald Trump. One huge mistake that we cannot make is to discount the level of danger here.
I mean, Republicans are already talking about the death penalty for people torching Teslas.
Fox News is now talking about people getting the death penalty for attacking Teslas
This is a controversial take perhaps, but while I am not endorsing property damage, the death penalty for burning a car is fascism.
The protests are going to continue to grow and grow as things worsen. There will likely be huge protests once more people realize that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are in danger. This will make the Co-Presidents angrier and angrier, and no doubt there will be incidents. Individuals in law enforcement and even our military will quite possibly find themselves in situations where they must make a choice: Capitulate and kill Americans for expressing their freedom of speech, or refusal.
This is a transcript from Chris Hayes’ podcast interview with California Democratic Representative Robert Garcia. It has stuck with me over the last week (this is a transcript so forgive the stilted grammar). The letter Garcia is referring to is explained here.
Rep. Robert Garcia: Look, what we’re going to do is continue doing. I mean, we didn’t formally respond to that letter.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Rep. Robert Garcia: It’s not worth a formal response.
Chris Hayes: No.
Rep. Robert Garcia: And we’re going to continue to speak out and call out Elon Musk, and I will continue to use metaphors in my life and in the halls of Congress. I think the best response is to continue to speak out and continue to do what they’re trying to stop us from doing. That letter was meant to intimidate, not just me —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Rep. Robert Garcia: — but it was meant to intimidate other members of Congress from speaking out. And I think that would be a huge mistake. We have to put ourselves. This is going to be also a dangerous time. I’ve been telling my colleagues in Congress, I think if we, personally, as members of Congress, aren’t at this moment willing to put ourselves also in some level, oftentimes —
Chris Hayes: Could danger.
Rep. Robert Garcia: — of danger.
Chris Hayes: Yes. You have to, yes.
Rep. Robert Garcia: I think this is not the right job for you at this moment. I don’t —
Chris Hayes: Correct.
Rep. Robert Garcia: — this is not the right job for you at this moment.
Chris Hayes: No. Absolutely correct. People have to take risks, and they have to understand that. And I totally agree with you.
This is where we are, unfortunately. We need valor from everyone, from the protestors along a central PA road to our elected Democrats.
The last word goes to Midnight Oil.
I wonder if auto insurers will start refusing policies to people with Teslas. If it were my decision, I’d say they were too great a risk.