FIRST TARGETS?

By Ruth A. Sheets

I could not stop myself from writing a pre-inauguration blog.  We are about to enter a place we have never been before, one swarming with autocrats, rich child-men with no moral compass, and a president who has nothing positive to offer anyone but those child-man autocrats/billionaires, and he plans to offer and deliver a lot to them. We are not helpless, though, as he and they would like us to be and there are some reasons.  

 

On January 10, 2024, Prof. Robert Reich wrote a column on Substack describing Trump’s intension to attempt to take down what he calls “the 4 pillars of resistance.”  It was an important piece because it identified some major intended targets of Donald Trump and his gang of thugs who are out to dismantle our democracy.  The thugs, the child-men/autocrats mentioned above,  are doing it for a man who has no clue what any of this means, except that as always, he will be taken care of and be just fine, which is why I think of him as Toddler-Trump.  The targets are of course, all of us. 

 

The first “pillar is our colleges and universities.  Attacking those institutions makes us vulnerable to falling behind since so much of our innovation comes from college training in so many fields.  Trump knows nothing of that because he was hardly present at Penn when he was a student, but his daddy's money was.  I suspect he learned little which is proven by his bankruptcies and general mismanagement of his businesses.  He is choosing mostly college boys and a few girls for his cabinet etc., but not the ones who are skilled and talented in necessary pursuits for our nation, but the ones who chose the dark side. 

 

He wants to have a right-wing group of men and a few pliant women who will do the college/university accrediting, of course disqualifying any college/university that does not get rid of DEI, race and gender studies, inclusion of any kind and put white male history and white male approved courses as required for all students.  If they don’t, no government money can flow there and endowments will be taxed, not billionaire income of the accreditation team, but endowments.  The child-team gloats that they got University presidents of color to resign before being fired and they may be right.  It is clear our Universities have been graduating people whose goals include undermining our government; that has always been part of the process.  What We the People can do is stop pretending those institutions are the only places our young people can find a quality education.  Stop assuming that since they came from that school, they must be superior; they may or may not be appropriate for a specific job, but because of their skills, not their school.  States and communities can establish free centers for teaching and learning the skills the “accreditors stamp out and states can say that no one is eligible for a job in the state without those courses.

 

Another “pillar” is non-profits which now can have a tax-exempt status.  Trump and friends want to be able to declare non-profits at will to be terrorist organizations and drop their tax-exempt status.  Can you guess which ones those would be?  Religious entities are also tax-exempt if they do not endorse candidates and are not overly political, but white evangelical and Roman Catholic churches overtly supported Trump and well, Republicans in every election but have not even had a tiny bit of their exemption reversed.  I do remember one church in California that was Episcopalian dinged for even mentioning Obama.  Funny how that works.

 

Our non-profits provide so much of the work of this nation, again, Trump knows nothing of it.  His handlers have told him this is a target, but without their reinforcement, he would lose track.  That's why our Congress is working to set the hatred of non-right-wing, non-white-male-centered non-profits in stone through law.  That should be unconstitutional, but I suspect our Supreme Court (SC) 6 will go along because that is what they do.  We the People can challenge their “terrorism” charges every single time and point out that it is Trumpers who have caused nearly all the “terrorism” in the past 8 years.  We need to do it over and over until it sinks in where it counts, with the people.

 

Labor and unions are another “pillar.”  Attacking labor is just what is expected, but the crazy union members who chose to vote for Trump made a huge mistake, Believing lies spat out by a rich white guy were far more important to them than the decent future-thinking words of a middle-class woman of color, far more intelligent and caring than Trump could ever be.  I guess they think they got the libs while it was they who were "gotten."  I expect unions will stand strong in the storm of ignorance and corporate greed and abuse, even strike at critical points together.  

 

The last of the 4 targeted “pillars of resistance” is the “mainstream media.  That is nuts since those media bent over backwards to make Trump look normal and picked only his few words that made sense to broadcast.  Trump should be giving them huge kudos instead of trying to break them down.  They helped give him the win in November and continue to try to make us believe he is somehow a sort of decent guy; he isn't, and somehow, our mainstreamers never learn.  They never come out well when giving breaks to someone as despicable as Trump.   Maybe this time, they’ll wake up and start broadcasting the truth and calling a lie a lie, more than once a year.  A non-mainstream progressive media is building in a different way and won't be as kind to him, although by then, he won't have the ability to care.  Dementia is setting in more deeply. 

 

The problem we must keep paying attention to is who is behind the curtain pulling the levers?  Well, there are the old favorites like the Federalist Society, a wholly-despicable group of mostly white men who create anti-American lawyers and send them out across the nation to get onto our courts and do damage to our institutions, orchestrated by a rich white guy, Leonard Leo.  Most people don’t know what this organization and others like it are doing to us, so they need to know, not to scare them, but to wake them up to resistance to their actions, calling them out at every turn.  

 

So here we are about to get a man as president who knows nothing of the truth, but is great at fear, his own and fearmongering to others.  He is also good with being angry, although I think a lot of that is pretend.  He does hate very well and loves vengeance which has served him well.  He also loves having targets he can attack to make himself feel like a big man.

 

I hope we can stand up to this insanity that has been driving to take over our nation for 50 years and will get there on Monday.  How ironic that it is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a figure, Donald Trump could never hold a candle to.  Heck, he can’t even stand to have flags at half-staff to memorialize President Carter, a man, Trump can’t even see from the low position he inhabits.  So, folks, here we go.  I send love and some hope your way as we work together to keep our democracy.