Thread by @mhbx

There is the original Pandora's Box.
And there is the current version, Trump's Box.
There have been many boxes before.

We stand at the crossroads of choice...Having learned nothing about how fragile progress is & how easily destroyed, we seem poised to fight over the basics.

https://twitter.com/lifesafeast/status/1337072762603663361

What Trump seems to have done, like the many authoritarian power hungry before him...examples are obvious, is to first tap into the unconscious dreads & fears of a sizable percentage of the people, then focus it into an external rage against the feared. With this base, unleash

a few wildlings who will function as the #Brownshirts, who will incite fear into the disorganized public by damaging, setting fire to, harming "those people". The poem "...but it wasn’t me, so I did nothing", comes into play.
But the effect of disruption is rippling through the

society, the country. Some conscious, mostly subconscious dread & fears. The "Orks" unleashed get to fulfill their purpose, and get to feel important as part of the powerful. They bring guns to the statehouse. They threaten public servants at their homes. They don't need to be

told what to do. They have been unbuckled. The "box" they have been constrained in has been "opened". They know who they can terrorize, & who to leave alone. They know instinctively who is the master, and everyone else is fodder for their unrestrained impulses. We are not fully

subsumed into this state. Yet. Now Limbaugh is calling for his believers, and Trump is appealing to his, and the GOP , no longer a functioning political party, but a system taken over by Trump/ism now is starting to openly coallese these forces.
Solzhenitsyn has insight into

this step. Once crossed it is hard to get back. At least until the darkness burns itself out. Which it always does. It is unsustainable on its own. Such desperate, destructive, anti human, anti life, systems have to feed on their victims.

In the Soviet Union is was the BlueCaps

who were unleashed to inflict their sociopathic harm/pain/death on those who had been declared "enemies of the people". Sound familiar?

More well known are the #Brownshirts of Nazi Germany as it was instantiating its power.

Eventually, when that level of control and the

subjegation of the population into acceptance, or at least silence, these forces are put down in favor or more systematic, official forces.

IMO these examples that are becoming daily headlines by these forces, including the article above, are indicators that we are at that

choice point whether those forces will tip us into this regressive state, our new "Brave New World", or whether the systems and institutions are indeed strong enough to resist this cancerous infestation and reject it.

The election seems to me an indicator of an answer.

The general mood is to reject Trump/ism. But the energy to focus on it is diffuse.
Trump/ism is just a place holder term for this version of the authoritarian spirit. Soon it will be someone else, not Trump, likely worse, for being actually competent.

The central point I intended to make in this thread, which now has too many leads to other thoughts that also need to be well articulated, is that it is far easier to destroy than to create. It is easier to dismantle than it is to build.
What is built over a life time, or an era

can be burnt to the ground in a day. Or month. Or a few months, as we are currently experiencing. Or a 4yr administration whose heart is set on destroying the system that enabled it to get power in the first place.

Ref: Why Democracies Perish. Revell.

The question that needs attention now, as our attention is captured by the impact of COVID, as well as the economy, is first whether these dark forces can be put back in their dystopic box...Or whether that fabled line, the 'Rubicon' has been crossed?

Today we are in a battle for the 1st level fundamental stability of Constitutional government. We have a man who occupies the office of President who is actively, intentionally working to destroy the system he is suppose to serve.

And this is the great mistake.
Trump was never going to be a servant of the public. One holding the commonwealth for its own purpose. He violated his oath on the very first day, & continues to daily reek havoc on the system he is supposed to serve, not be served by.

Remarkably the pre-Trump GOP luminaries (a cynical nomen) knew this. Look at the Rubio, Graham, Christie, McConnell et al, statements pre Trump about Trump. They knew.

And that they knew, & know, & still offer themselves as fodder and tribute to Trump is all that we should

need to know about them and the party that needs to be renamed.
The Founding Fathers so revered in ignorance,so violated in the fact by the right-wing, as well as the religious branch of this atrocity, political evangelicals, told us “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance”.

Another way of saying Freedom is fragile.
It is easily destroyed.
It requires a frameword to embody its foundational precepts. And a system to work out "its salvation daily".

@TimothyDSnyder & others have told us exactly the state of things.
It no longer is a philosophical ponder.

Trump's box has been opened.
Now the work is to get it closed again, with all the screamy, dark, angry, and even sociopathic, forces contained.

There is a modern proverb that applies

"When you open a can of worms...
It takes a larger can to put them back in".

Lincoln said it better:
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We have not yet gotten to the level of outright "Civil War". Though the outright calls for it are starting to take on serious importance.
The so-called "red states" seemingly idiotic, quixotic joining of the Texas AG's lawsuit against the states that voted for Biden is just one

example of this pathetic, vapid, call. This has no value other than as a barometer. And the indications are not good.
Notice, the institutional accumulation of what has been fringe and dispersed agitation. This is the initial rumblings of the

transition from "Brown to Black shirt" function. The process of reifying the stoked dissatisfaction, enflamed into anger, provoked into rage, manifest in guns, fires, and intimidation. Sometimes murder. Now being taken on by the dyspotic state.

It is insufficient to be tricked into thinking such superficial nonsense as the Texas AG's gambit is just a silliness without meaning or import.

It is like so much of Trump's nonsense over the years, starting w his decree that they change the body count at his inauguration,

a chip with the intention to breach the system.
The system is designed on a few axiomatic principles. Essentially 'Rule of Law', 'The primal authority of the consent of the governed', Distribution of power, and the primacy of facts, truth, science over nonsense. These, & more,

encapsulated in the oath of office. An oath taken to protect and defend these foundational Constitutional principles.

This is what is being adjudicated in these days.
These are the forces being brought to bear on the issue.
What happens next is pending and, IMO, uncertain.

It depends, I suppose, on whether our social and political systems have a 'can' big enough to get the 'worms' back into.

Else, we will experience another of Lincolns sad observations: "...and so, the war came."

The original tweet has been deleted apparently.
Here is the image and the AP version of the article...
newsbreak.com/idaho/boise/ne…

The original post I referenced in this thread got deleted or removed.
This is the report I am referencing as example in my thread.

newsbreak.com/idaho/boise/ne…

This is the report I am referencing as example in my thread.
Idaho Anne Frank Memorial defaced with swastika stickers

apnews.com/article/race-a…