As Donald Trump, in plain view, lays out his plans for fascism, aided and abetted his cabinet of criminals, it's disappointing the lack of organized response to meet and liquidate this threat.
Our movements - what we had of them - are in disarray. They've been in disarray since the late 80's and earl 90's when the destruction of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, had the West declaring victory.
The West had been declaring victory ever since.
The broad left never knew its place in that victory. The broad left had been sold the lie that they too were now free of this Red Menace.
The heightened attacks on the poor and working class escalated in the wake of this so-called "victory."
Reagan. Bush. Clinton. Bush. Obama. All these men served their neoliberal masters, enriched the rich, and impoverished the poor.
Trump is an escalation of these same forces, and we on the broad left - even the radical left - are not meeting this moment. History is not making us fast enough into a fighting force to stop Trump, his MAGA movement, and the real threat of fascism in this country.
The Democrats, a false ally and a source of much of the Left's confusion, is showing once again they don't have the back's of the poor and working class. They don't even care for the base - to stretch this metaphor too much.
When a previous president crossed constitutional lines and used the powers of the Oval Office to menace the people, the Democrats sat on their hands. They sat on their hands until they themselves were attacked.
Richard Nixon should have been tried to a myriad of crimes - using federal agencies, like the IRS and FBI - too attack, undermine, assassinate members of political movements in this country.
He was not impeached for any of that. The Democrats sat by and essentially let Nixon attack us.
A burglary at the Watergate Hotel brought Nixon down.
His organizing a break-in of the Democratic National Committee's offices and theft of its strategies made the Democratic Party stand up and turn on Richard Nixon.
The parallels today are obvious.
Trump came out of the gate attacking us, our unions, our cities. The Democrats said there was nothing they could do.
His US Supreme Court stripped our voting rights and women's rights. The Democrats were powerless to respond, they said.
Then Trump, emboldened by this, directs the governor of Texas to "find him five more Congressional seats." That governor obeys.
Democratic congressional seats are threatened. Now the Democrats find their feet to stand on and their voices to complain!
This is the Watergate moment
But the Left needs urgently to unify. In our faces, and in broad daylight, Trump is rehearsing the lockup of masses of people without due process, the liquidation of our unions under the pretexts of "emergencies," the occupation of our cities by federal and military police.
He wanted ballot boxes seized in a prior election. He will get his wish on the next election if he's not stopped. That day will be too late.
The Democrats have already shown us - in the post-USSR 40 years, and in the last postwar years - their are very strict limits to its alliance with the poor, with women, with Chicanos and Blacks, with lesbians and gays, and workers in this country.
We on the Left cannot let this Watergate movement dull us [even further] into mistaking that for our movement.
We must unify, and we must fight.
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