The extremist side of child-drugging internment camps, Obama effigies, Roy Moore, sexual assault, and mocking the disabled doesn’t care about civility; what they want is compulsory compliance, and dissent silenced in their administration’s persistent crimes against humanity. There is something seriously wrong with a nation showing more concern for wealthy operatives of administration rampant with human rights violations being kicked out of restaurants than said human rights violations. There can be no civility — no silence — in the face of caged babies, Muslim bans, and SCOTUS-approved gerrymandering thanks to a stolen seat. Civil disobedience is free speech that fights against hate and injustice. Tolerance of intolerance only empowers the intolerant to carry out their crimes. There is no reasoning with people like Trump who think abused, caged immigrant children’s stories are “phony stories of sadness and grief.”
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
-Albert Einstein
To Trump’s America, civility isn’t defined by the civil disobedience of publicly questioning public officials, it’s defined by complacently standing silently in the face of oppressors. Also, defined by sending death threats to a restaurant unaffiliated with the one who asked a neo-nazi operative to leave (after employees democratically voted.) Republican civility involves Trump’s White House adviser calling for journalists to be gunned down.
We do not have to offer an olive branch to an administration that burnt down the tree. To an administration who’s made it its grounding philosophy to target immigrants , Muslims, the media, and Democrats while embracing nazis as “fine people” qualified enough to run our agencies and craft policy oppressing the lives of millions. The masters of spin have made the problem not the policies themselves, but the targeted groups not gleefully jumping into internment camps and embracing their oppressors.
There exists a cognitive dissonance between what those more outraged by oppressive administration’s propaganda minister being asked to leave a restaurant, than children being beaten and drugged in concentration camps, consider “civil.” Asking a customer to leave your restaurant is civil. Publicly confronting public officials by questioning their baby concentration camp policy is civil. What’s uncivil is the 45th President and his klan’s character, dehumanization of immigrants, and oppressive, unjust policies. We are asked to coddle an administration who has marginalized every non-white group in America for the sake of a ‘civility’ ideal severely lacking on the morally bankrupt right.
It starts by silencing protest against police brutality by making the argument about the flag while calling players “sons of b-tches.” Their agenda involves making semantics the argument over the definition of concentration camps, instead of, the policy of jailing 3-month-old babies after ripping them from their breastfeeding mothers. It’s lambasting the “lugenpresse” for showing images illegally obtained of crying children, instead of blasting the policy of detaining immigrant children.
Respect is earned. We are expected to respect a man who’s mocked the disabled, called countries with majority brown citizens “sh-tholes,” called murderous neo-nazis in Charlottesville “fine people,” endorsed pedophile Roy Moore, bragged about sexual assault on tape, or called his daughter a “piece of ass.”
A man who has called Mexicans rapists, was sued twice by the DOJ for housing discrimination against blacks, pardoned Arpaio, a barbaric, convicted racial profiler who ran concentration camps, attacked a Mexican judge for his ethnicity, enacted bill curbing legal immigration, retweeted neo-nazi false crime statistic reports about blacks, rolled out voter suppression commission, hired nazi Gorka and white supremacist Miller, threw out Latino names and hypothetical crimes they’d commit, described immigrants as invaders, constantly touts immigrant crime and claims “it’s not true” that immigrants are “better people” than others.
Trump has encouraged his supporters to “rough up” protestors and they did cheerfully, he told cops to “rough up suspects,” and “second amendment people” to get Hillary, made a thinly-veiled threat to Maxine Waters, and endorsed Greg Gianforte who body slammed a reporter.
Republicans do not only support the most vile, racist, misogynist monster, but they claim false moral high-ground. Where was all this “civility” talk when birther, “anti-PC,” MAGAs: sent death threats to the Red Hen D.C., when a WH adviser affiliate called for journalists to be gunned down., when they were burning Obama effigies, started an “anti-Obama” campaign in Congress the night of his inauguration, called the Obamas monkeys, started the birther movement, used Seth Rich’s death to smear Hillary Clinton.
They’re upset that a member of a racist administration destroying the environment, sabotaging healthcare, slashing the educational budget, and dividing America, can’t eat out in public. Well, guess who hasn’t been able to even breathe out in public since the fuhrer’s inauguration? America’s ethnic minorities. The U.S. citizens unlawfully detained by ICE-Gestapo.
They’ve all suffered racist harassment from Trump conservatives after being emboldened by the President and even nazi-retweeting U.S. congressmen. When a white woman cited Trump while attacking a college-educated Latino man as a “rapist, animal, and drug dealer.” When a New York City lawyer berated and threatened two Spanish-speakers for holding a conversation in Spanish accusing them of being illegal welfare leeches. After he previously hunted down a man through the streets who he called the police for being an “ugly, f-cking foreigner.” When a Hispanic woman was told to “go back to Mexico.” When a Trump supporter shot up a mosque in Quebec killing 6 people.When another set fire to a Florida mosque. Is it a mark of civility for hate crimes to have risen to a 5-year-high after the election of Trump?
There is no tolerating those who unlawfully lock brown children of asylum-seekers up while claiming “civility.” Republicans gleefully ignore these human-rights crises, even rejoice in them, and expect us to sit quietly without peaceful protest. We can’t hold hands and sing kumbaya with an administration who empowers an extrajudicial, authoritarian force who’s killed 97 migrants beaten and sexually abused children,and released them to abusers and trafficking rings. We can not stand by idly while Trump seeks to turn ICE’s de-facto practice of prolonged detainment – without legal counsel or due process – de-jure. We can’t coddle and serve the propaganda-artist gatekeepers who gaslight America while children are given psychotropic drugs, beaten, locked in solitary confinement nude, shivering in concrete cells. While the sick are neglected and chickenpox is spreading like a wildfire, all whilst the Red Cross is being denied access their detention centers.
Silence in the face of oppression is complicitness. Compromise in the face of injustice is defeat against injustice. There is no compromising with the hypocritical “pro-life” crowd who take joy and show indifference to the suffering of innocent children at the hands of the U.S. government. This isn’t politics as usual. We can’t tell the oppressed to treat their oppressors with a respect they don’t hold for them. To a 10-year-old girl with Down Syndrome Trump’s former campaign manager says “womp womp,” Trump calls asylum-seekers crisis actors, and Laura Ingraham says the abusive detention centers for children are “basically summer camps.” While Fox and Friends says, “Like it or not, these aren’t our kids. Show them compassion, but it’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas” But it isn’t just top conservative figureheads, it’s the public. A public so blinded by their hatred and indoctrinated by Trump’s dehumanization of immigrants campaign
These are the inhumane cretins we’re supposed to be civil with?
Real civility would involve a regard for honesty and justice not human rights violations and a policy of separation of children. Civility, to “individual liberty” touting republicans, should involve trials for the U.S. government’s crimes against immigrants.
There is no debating policy with people who can’t even agree on facts – people who have bought into the criminal caricature Trump and his nazi-style VOICE has attributed to all immigrants, much like Hitler did with his Jewish crime tracking organization. He’s a man who’s made it his life’s mission to dehumanize immigrants – painting a criminal, subhuman (“animals”) picture of brown people regardless of their legal status as leeway to concentration camps, doing away with due process, and enaction his white supremacist vision an America with a growing migrant population. All in fear of the political majority-minority.
This white victim complex – resulting in mass death threats towards an establishment for lawfully refusing service to a nazi-operative – is the source of their faux outrage. Where was the civility when they rejoiced in their right to refuse gay wedding cake customers service? For the first time, somebody called the manager on them.
Voicing political dissent is a hallmark of this country’s creed – of the birth of our nation. Slavery, women being second-class citizens, and Japanese internment camps were once the law. Progress wasn’t made by people too afraid of calling public officials out on their policies in fear of being deemed “uncivil” by the party of: baby jails, conspiracy against the United States, child medicare cuts, science denial, white nationalism, sexual assault, Roy Moore, Puerto Rico’s deadly disaster, racially discriminatory gerrymandering and white supremacists. Why should we be courteous to people ruining millions of lives through the aforementioned policies, to members of an administration that is detaining 3-month-old babies to deter immigration?
The “high road” hasn’t accomplished anything for us. Remember how ugly the right was for 8 years of Obama and how diplomatic and professional he was? The tea party began its anti-Obama campaign in Congress the day of inauguration despite his high diplomacy and professionalism. What complacency got us was “anti-PC” Trump.
Being tolerant of intolerance yields more power to the intolerant. It yields more power to those who brag about sexual assault, those who cage babies, enact Muslim bans, and approve of racially-discriminatory gerrymandering. You can’t tolerate a political group’s policies who doesn’t even tolerate you as a human being. Being civil to bigots in hopes of getting crumbs is like being nice to misogynists in hopes they’ll change. Unaffected white moderates have to stop tone-policing the ones affected by this fascist administration’s policies on how to properly protest within their First Amendment rights through an administration who set a precedent of hate and division.
Civil disobedience is free speech that fights against hate and injustice. It is in the classic Republican Southern Strategy fashion to accuse the other side that which their hate-crime-committing, minority-harrasing, dead-threat sending side is guilty of. There can be no civility — no silence — in the face of caged babies, Muslim bans, and SCOTUS-approved gerrymandering thanks to a stolen seat.
There is something seriously wrong with a nation showing more concern for wealthy, operatives of administration rampant with human rights violations being kicked out of restaurants than said human rights violations. Civility walked out the door when breastfeeding babies were ripped from their mothers’ arms. In fact, kicking people out of restaurants is a million times more “civil” than any of Trump’s pedophile-endorsing, racial-profiler-pardoning,Charlottesville-nazi-defending, immigrant-family-separating antics. Maxine Waters didn’t call for the assassination of a political opponent like Trump did by calling for the NRA folks to kill Hillary.
“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
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