Saturday, April 18, 2020

Trump is a danger to the nation


Note: I have been writing and rewriting this piece over the past few hours. Originally, I just planned to talk about the oh-so-spontaneous protests that oh-so-mysteriously sprung up in several states attacking the shelter-in-place orders. This is what I wrote:


I read recently about the groups of people who suddenly appeared to protest the stay-at-home orders in their states. Michigan, Kentucky, North Caroline, etc., all yadnsuch gatherings.

What interests me about them is not the rightness or wrongness of their cause but rather that they have several odd characteristics. First, they all came out of nowhere. Second, the protestors were often surprisingly furious. News pictures show faces absolutely contorted with rage. Third, at least some came armed, with some rather fearsome weaponry. Fourth, all of the protests were marked by people wearing MAGA hats,  flying Trump signs, and otherwise stating their loyalty to the Trumpian branch of the GOP. Fifth, and lastly, at least some of the protestors demonstrated links to far right-wing organizations.

All of which makes me suspect that the real intent of the gatherings was not to protest shelter-in-place orders, but rather to say “fuck you, libtard,” to the whole wide world, and to support Trump in the process.

Which brings up a question. Exactly how spontaneous were these protests? How local? And might they really have been organized elsewhere, under the command of other men and women...

Say in the White House itself?

Okay, so far so good. But then this morning, I discovered that, yes, indeed, there was evidence linking none other than Betsy DeVos to the protests. So, I added this:
So there have been developments in the case of the mysteriously “spontaneous” demonstrations in several states against stay-at-home orders. It seems that, at least in the case of Michigan, there were, indeed, other hands involved. A group affiliated with Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education (who has devoted her life to shutting down public schools) was heavily involved with the demonstrations, and may have helped create them in the first place.

In other words, once again...

Evil reaches out from the Trump’s White House to infect the world.

You’d think I’d be at an end here, wouldn’t you? But, no, by this afternoon, I learned that Trump himself had been tweeting encouragement to the demonstrators, sending them tweets like “LIBERATE Kentucky” and “LIBERATE Michigan.” Meaning that Trump was involved in the affair up this beady little eye-balls. So, I added this:



Now we’ve learned that Trump was, in fact, behind the the protests. In fact, he was tweeting the protestors things that sound a bit like inducements to violence. And given that some of those people were heavily armed...

Well...

Doesn’t this all sound a bit like treason?

sources:


‘You Have to Disobey’: Protesters Gather to Defy Stay-at-Home Orders, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/coronavirus-rules-protests.html

Armed protesters demand an end to Michigan's coronavirus lockdown orders, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2020/apr/16/armed-protesters-demand-an-end-to-michigans-coronavirus-lockdown-orders-video

Trump Supporters Protest Shutdowns And People Say It Looks Like A Zombie Movie, Huffpost, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shutdown-protest-zombie-movie_n_5e97c9f6c5b6ead14007841e


“Conservative group linked to DeVos family organizes protest of coronavirus restrictions in Michigan,” Salon, https://www.salon.com/2020/04/16/conservative-grouplinked-to-devos-familyorganizes-protest-of-coronavirus-restrictions-in-michigan/


“The Usual Suspects, Including Betsy DeVos, Behind Michigan ProtestsWe saw right-wing groups fund the Tea Party protests, and now we're seeing it again.” Crooks & Liars, https://crooksandliars.com/2020/04/usual-suspects-are-behind-michigan


In Trump's 'LIBERATE' tweets, extremists see a call to arms, NBCNews, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/trump-s-liberate-tweets-extremists-see-call-arms-n1186561




He is destroying us.

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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