Defeating 'the second American revolution'

We need to fight the far right, not each other

Few people were up and about at 6:30 AM on Independence Day. I sat in McDonald's enjoying a Sausage McMuffin With Egg and a senior discount coffee, and greeted my fellow customers: a friendly, bearded cop whose bulletproof vest made him look brawnier than he already was, and a man from a delivery truck.

My legs were stiff when I got up, a sign of decreased circulation that can cause inflammation, aneurysms, and thrombosis.

I mention this because ever since the presidential debate on June 27, political elites and the media have obsessed over President Biden's age and speculated on his possible falling-apartness, while showing far less interest in the threats to our freedoms from a similarly old and positively deranged Donald Trump, whose supporters represent the last gasp of the Confederacy.

I am old enough to have become mostly invisible. Happily, the loneliness of invisibility is assuaged by the dogs in the neighborhood, who see me perfectly well and are even friendlier than the cop in the McDonald's.

You may think I digress, but I am making friends with dogs and police officers to prepare for the second American revolution threatened by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who thinks "the pursuit of happiness" mentioned in the Declaration of Independence really means "the pursuit of blessedness," which is not what it says.

Mr. Roberts feels entitled—and is determined—to impose his idea of blessedness on the rest of us. He reminds me of Pope Benedict XVI, who was nostalgic for the Middle Ages and loved to tell us that our true freedom lay in surrendering to his idea of how we should live our lives.

Popes, however, have no army. Roberts, by contrast, eagerly awaits Trump's return to the White House, when the former president promises (among many destructive things) to use federal troops to suppress protesters. Roberts says the new revolution will remain bloodless if the left (meaning everyone who doesn't see things his way) allows it to be.

So we will be fine as long as we don't complain about the treadmarks left on us after we are rolled over by our new authoritarian overlords. Treadmarks could become so stylish that people will get treadmark tattoos on their necks to show their loyalty.

I don't know why Biden's bad night is of so much greater concern than the threat of tyranny that would rob us of our hard-won rights. Rebecca Solnit writes in The Guardian that the pundit class are "doing exactly what they did in the 2016 presidential race — providing wildly asymmetrical and inflammatory coverage of the one candidate running against Donald J Trump."

If fitness for office is a serious concern, shouldn't the journos in question behave better than a pack of hyenas?

Roberts, in his summary of his organization's radical Project 2025 (which Trump implausibly disavowed after it was widely denounced), attacks wokeness. Being "woke" simply means respecting diversity. People like Roberts feel entitled to govern exclusively despite their shrinking numbers. The very mention of diversity gives them nightmares of socialism (like feeding hungry schoolchildren) in which Black people, women, Muslims, and queers have the same rights and opportunities as Aryans.

Oh, pardon me. "Aryans" is a reference to Nazi Germany. As we have long been told, It. Cannot. Happen. Here. Now repeat after me: One Reich! One Führer! One Fatherland!

Earlier I referred to "the last gasp of the Confederacy." Alas, the storm trooper wannabes are not gasping. They are so confident of victory that they are not bothering to conceal their intentions.

The only way to disappoint them is for those of us who recognize the threat to vote in such numbers up and down the ballot that we hold onto the White House and Senate and retake the House. If Trump's MAGA mobsters don't get their way, they will launch another insurrection in which they display their greatness by smearing shit on the walls of the Capitol.

To defeat them, we need to stop fighting among ourselves and focus on the real threat to this country.

Two dozen Democratic governors met with President Biden on July 3 to pledge their support. My favorite is Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a military veteran, former CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, and bestselling author who is so easy on the eyes that it calms my nerves. He is with Biden, and I am with him. OK, I'm lying on my sofa, but I'm with him in spirit.

Now stop daydreaming and defend your freedoms!

Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at [email protected].

Copyright © 2024 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.