In 1971, I saw a movie with the title:"In the Garden of the Finzi-Continis". It was a low-budget in black and white, made from a novel by the same title, and it was about a family--yes, the Finzi-Continis--in northern Italy. They were semi-affluent, roughly upper-middle class, and every Sunday they had a family gathering in a very nice back garden, complete with topiaries and a nice northern Italian ambiance.
I don't recall if they specified what year it was but it was during the 30s and Italian Fascism, under Mussolini, of course, had already taken root. But, the family....that was Jewish, by the way....repeatedly came back to discussing what might come of this German fellow, Adolf Hitler. Most of the members present were unable to accept the idea that Hitler would become a very dangerous despot. It just seemed too far out there....to most of them. At the end of the movie, the viewer is left with an uncomfortable sense that these people were going to be blind-sided and likely swept up in the horrors of the Holocaust.
So, the first article that popped into my consciousness this morning was on Huffington Post and it was about events taking place in Portland Oregon. In fact, paramilitary operators, wearing full combat gear and traveling in unmarked vans and other vehicles, are going around snatching people off the streets. These 'snatchees' are identified as 'protesters' and Black Lives Matter is their apparent cause. The mayor of Portland, and Oregon's congressional representatives and senators have put out letters and are demanding a 'cease and desist' be issued. Dept. of Homeland Security is the offending agency and its acting head is one Chad Wolf.....who insists.....and this is where you really want to pay attention......Portland has been under violent assault from these 'far-left' terrorists and agitators for the last 47 days. Of course, most of the citizens of Portland would read that and go, "What is he talking about?"
I was stunned when I read this. To use military personnel, even if it's DHS agents dressed in full combat gear, and be grabbing people off the streets who are well within what the city feels constitutes 'peaceful protesting'.....is an act of terror in its own right. In fact, it's wholly reminiscent of Germany in the 30s. The Nazis used terror as a means of forcing people to be complacent and pliable. If you became identified--either by the Gestapo or were ratted out by another civilian--as 'non-compliant', in need of an attitude adjustment....you could hear a slamming rifle butt on your door at 3 in the morning and a terrifying squad of thugs would come barging in and drag you off to Gestapo headquarters....and thence to a 'camp'. Dachau was one of the earliest such camps, and when people came back after being 're-educated' they didn't even want to talk about what happened there. I read an account of one fellow who would flee the room if the subject even was broached.
So, here we are. It's 2020 and we live in what was once the most respected and revered democracy in the world. It was so admired and respected that people all over the planet wanted to come here to live, or at least to get a good education. Not any more. We are now the laughing stock of the rest of the world. The Orange Idiot has seen to it that every single challenge of his presidency has been met with total incompetence and foolish denial. We have a pandemic that has killed more people than all but two of our many wars....and, he just keeps finding ways to make it all worse. If you read all of this in a pulp novel, you might be thinking the author was simply a bad writer, or at least just a lousy story-teller.
But, sadly, it's all real. We had gotten used to the term 'terrorist' referring to some hairball radicals like the ones who hijacked the planes on 9-11. It's time for a re-adjustment of that term. Now, we need to begin thinking of 'terror' as something that our own government is using against us, and acting as if we both deserve to be treated as victims, and that we don't have the right--as specified in the Constitution--to protest peacefully.
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| This is TERROR in action...... |
Oh, yes we do. And, nothing this Orange Idiot does should go unacknowledged or be written off as somehow necessary or acceptable. Of course, our best means of getting our point across will occur on November 3rd. But, even that is in jeopardy because we are dealing with an administration that has zero respect for the rule of law, and is self-justifying the use of whatever means it feels it needs to keep us under their heel.
Here is a link to the piece on Huffpo that is reporting the events in Oregon:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-wyden-oregon-portland-homeland-chad-wolf_n_5f12184ac5b6d14c336731f2
This is not the time to take our eye off the ball.....or, we risk getting smacked upside the head if we do.
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