That Damned Fire Bell Again

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/12/black-flag-understanding-the-trumpists-latest-threatening-symbol/

 Yes, I have said it before but I think this may be the time I mean it the most. Please read this entire article.

The Republican party has turned into an active terrorist organization.  They have declared war on America. They have declared war on our democracy.  They have declared war on the rest of us.

Way back when George Bush was pushing for his insane war, I was standing with my grandson at the DMV and said I was more afraid of Bush and company than I was of the terrorists because they could only kill me while Bush and company could turn me into a slave. I got an awful lot of dirty looks because at that time the vast majority of the American population were eager to go to war. Yes, that same war that we now so bitterly regret having ever gotten into.

Although Junior didn’t make me into a slave because he actually still had a shred of respect for democracy and left office peacefully, Trump has picked up the torch and used it to set fire to our nation.

I can only go back to my history books and agree with Thomas Jefferson. The issue is a different one, but the results I fear will be the same.

> Discussing the question of Missouri's admission to the Union, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Holmes, "... but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence."

- Jefferson to Holmes, April 22, 18201< Quote from monticello.org.

>Trump’s rallies and gatherings continue to celebrate violence and the prospect of revenge — and specifically of "getting even" with Trump's "enemies."

... In one troubling new development, Trump supporters have begun flying all-black American flags, in an implicit threat to harm or kill their opponents — meaning nonwhite people, "socialist liberals," Muslims, vaccinated people and others deemed to be "enemies" of "real America." 

... Black American flags are the flags that mean "no quarter shall be given." They are the opposite of the white flag of surrender.

According to the people on TikTok and the Sun (British tabloid), the black American flag originated in the civil war and was flown by the Confederates.

It means that they will not surrender, will not take prisoners, and are willing to die for their cause. It means they will execute their enemies.

Who are their enemies? Pretty much any non-Conservative. You know, Democrats, Liberals, LGBTQ, BIPOC, and the vaccinated. ...

... And a new poll from the University of Virginia's Center for Politics even suggests that more than 50 percent of Trump supporters want "red states" to secede from the Union. 

... Nance also noted that Cawthorn's propaganda video is thematically similar to the type of propaganda used by Islamic terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida to radicalize and recruit members.

... I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence — while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury as, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a "lock and key" relationship….

"Shared psychosis" — which is also called "folie à millions" ["madness for millions"] when occurring at the national level or "induced delusions" — refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person's symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence — even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.

Trump and his regime gave permission and encouragement to his followers and other supporters to engage in antisocial and other anti-human behavior on a national scale. 

...As Hussein Ibish warned in a recent article in the Atlantic, "The cancer of political violence is not an endemic American disease. At the moment, it is a Republican disease. No one but Republicans themselves can cure it. Until they do, the violence of the right is only going to keep swelling and crashing. From a Middle Eastern perspective, this is all appallingly familiar."