Death During Wartime, or 8 Billion Ways to Die

As I said before, Enlightenment is the only answer.

It is necessary to explain to Trump that he can’t designate antifa as a “domestic terror group” because antifa is not any one organization– even if he could designate domestic terror groups, which he can’t, because the laws haven’t been developed yet, because Congress can’t agree on what a domestic terrorist looks like. It’s hard to sanction a group that doesn’t exist.

In fact, antifa is a concept, not an organization, namely the concept of opposing fascism. So any sane person could declare, “I am antifa” and they’d be right. It’s sort of like in the movie “Spartacus”, where the survivors keep saying, one after another, “I am Spartacus.” Just because they all get crucified doesn’t seem to deter them.

I forgot to mention that Trump is not just authoritarian; he is a true fascist. The definition of fascism particularly includes government cooption of key industries and the monetary system. Trump has done this by demanding a portion of revenue from chipmakers and horning in on business deals. He is also planning to issue a $1 coin with his image on both sides.

The urgency of opposing fascism is increasing but the weight of encroaching fascism is also growing. Many people will feel the need to be organized; others claim that Trumpists are so incompetent that they will fail on their own… There exists the possibility of unpleasant results if Trumpian fascism is not resisted. The first result will be extreme enrichment of the Trump family. The second result could be another Great Depression.

There are a few people who already claim to be organized under the name of “antifa”– historically, they played defensive roles against Proud Boys in street brawls, particularly in Portland. Those people might be found and captured or killed. That doesn’t justify the denial of due process to such people, any more than anything justifies blowing up a small boat on the open ocean without giving the crew an opportunity to surrender. Or striking a second time to kill any survivors clinging to the wreckage.

So, resistance may be justified as self-defense if the alternative is being blown up by faceless attackers.

Antifa can claim the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the perpetrator is willing to die for it (he considered killing himself). The death of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, by 3-D printed pistol, could also be blamed on the same group or at least a terror cell of one person. Even if antifa doesn’t actually exist. Someone calling himself “antifa” is likely to be a lone wolf.

These assassinations are not victories for a supposed anti-fascist movement. They are, in fact, tragic defeats for humanity. We are slipping further into chaos, horror, and death.

We feel helpless at the many blows that Trump has dealt: setting up punitive tariffs based on personal grudges that make no sense and damage the world economy, restarting oil drilling off the Pacific coast of the US, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, cutting off USAID so people in Africa are dying from starvation and AIDS (600,000 so far), harming the self-defense of the Ukrainian people against attacks by Russia, shutting off new wind power projects in the US, cutting off solar power credits, shutting down research at major US universities, changing vaccine websites to say that they can’t “prove” that vaccines don’t cause autism, changing websites to say that Tylenol can cause autism, attacking major law firms for representing clients Trump doesn’t like, prosecuting people who crossed Trump, deporting people willy-nilly and denying due process, pardoning the worst drug criminal ever sentenced by a US court (the former president of Honduras), blowing up small drug boats in the Caribbean and murdering their crews, and so on and on.

How can we possibly stop him? The appropriate response to these betrayals depends on how much each action personally damages your world. Unfortunately, those who are most likely to die as a result of Trump’s actions (such as the people of South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Democratic Republic of Congo) do not individually or even collectively have the power or authority to prevent them or retaliate for them.

You can see where this is going: no one will stop him.

Therefore, I pray for divine intervention: let the hand of G-d reach down and crush Donald John Trump.

Just kidding.

photo: Romanian mountains by David Mark courtesy of pixabay.com