Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Never let it be called normal

Because it isn't. Joshua Foust says so:
The one thing authoritarians want you to do is to accept that their conduct is normal, even when it is not. They do not want you to yearn for a freer, less oppressive and less corrupt time, and they do not want you to think it odd when, say, a government agency is purged or a bunch of protesters are arrested and vanish into the prisons without ever seeing trial. They want you to think it is normal when the President is openly selling your interests out to a foreign power, or when he is using the levers of government to materially enrich and empower his family. The presumption of normality during abnormal times is one of the most powerful weapons the authoritarian has, and that is why it is so important to recognize how profoundly abnormal Donald J. Trump will be as president.

Foust then has a list of all the things Trump has done so far.


Zoey Williams says so:

Convincing ourselves the president-elect doesn’t mean everything he says is a fantasy that stops us seeing Trumpism for the barbarism it is.
and:
When the levers of power are seized by the small hands of hateful men, you work hard, you stand with those who are most vulnerable, and you don’t give up until it’s morning again. The rest is commentary.
 And over at the Daily Kos, scamperdo met a German student who was hurriedly leaving the US.
A chilling encounter with a German student left me shaking...
As a part-time Boston Uber/Lyft driver, conversing with the many international students filling our many colleges and universities can sometimes proved quite the eye-opener. But no encounter has ever left me as shaken as my Saturday ride with a German student coming home from a goodbye party. His parents came to the painful and hard decision some grandparents did not make 80 some years ago. He departs for home on Monday, without finishing his semester because fear is spreading across Germany.
 I was honestly and sincerely just stunned speechless to hear that his parents screamed at them, "the unthinkable has happened and America has fallen, you need to get OUT NOW before it's too late."

And Professor Danielle Armstorng:

"Like any number of us raised  in the late 20th century, I've spent my life perplexed about exactly how Hitler could have come to power in Germany. Watching Donald Trump's rise, I now understand."
- Professor Danielle Allen, Harvard University

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