Shows of Weakness

 Shows of Weakness

~~ recommended by newestbeginning ~~

Here's what it all means to me: What the birthday boy and all his sycophants and toadies and accomplices and normalizers and enablers are doing to show their strength actually reveals extraordinary weakness. I want to be careful, because to say such things is to risk underestimating the danger that these fascists pose in their deadly weakness. They have the tanks and the guns and the cops and their bribed supreme court justices and the legislature, and now that they have them they have done untold damage and harm, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, and will cause hundreds of thousands more. Not everybody is going to survive their show of weakness, and it feels as if few will emerge unscathed. But they are weak. They seek to control what cannot be controlled. And, because they don't value what they control, they don't ever seek to understand it. The power from all these things comes not from the things themselves, but from the actual country—the people. To a large extent, the power of the cops comes from a false belief that it is cops that make a community safe, rather than the stability that arises from a firm resolve to care for the needs of everyone in every community. To a large extent the power of the military, or the power inherent in a threat of a border invasion comes from the false belief that border security and military might makes you safe, rather than good relations with one's global neighbors. To a large extent the power of billionaires comes from our false belief that wealth's accumulation creates plenty, rather than its distribution. We can stop believing those things. Demonstrations give us hope that we might actually get there. The birthday boy and all his sycophants and toadies and accomplices and normalizers and enablers treat power the ability to deal death, and treat as enemies the true source of all their power, which is the people of the country, who are the country, and who we might dare hope might not be controlled. This to me appears to be the point of the demonstrations across the country, to say: "We are not a what, we are hundreds of millions of who. We will not be controlled or dominated or defined by you, and if you seek to do so, we will take your deadly power away." Who is an immigrant? An immigrant is somebody who feels they belong here, so much that they actually paid the extraordinary price to come here, leaving what they knew for what they did not. And now they are here, and they enrich our lives by being themselves; they are a part of us, and because of this they are the country. Who is an immigrant? Few aren't. Who belongs in this country? Who doesn't? show of strength