THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE
The good people of Minneapolis are falling into T****’s sinister trap. He has deployed thousands of his private militia of masked, unidentifiable armed brownshirts. Their job is not to arrest criminal immigrants. It is to create panic and chaos, to terrify the population and goad them into retaliation. This will give him the justification he wants to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in thousands more soldiers, declare martial law, cancel elections and subjugate the civilian population.
A more appropriate path forward responding to these clear and present provocations comes from John Lennon in 1969: “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.” But it is time to act. As Thunderclap Newman sang:
“Call out the instigators,
Because there’s something in the air.
We got to get together sooner or later,
Because the revolution’s here
And you know that it’s right.”
However, with 12.000 ICE agents, some 20,000 CBP agents and all the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Christian Nationalists he can enlist in his insidious cause, T*** has a huge private army, all armed zealots who are not afraid to maim and kill. Again, we would be playing right into the Trumpfenführer’s hand if we try to match up with these killers.
A better way forward comes from a speech delivered by Mario Savio during the UC Berkeley Free Speech Protests in1964 as he stood atop a police car surrounded by hundreds of angry students. This is how patriots peacefully confront tyranny:
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gearS and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who own it, to the people who run it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
Those of us who march against him now are too few. Our strength is tries to suppresses the people, he suppresses our will as well. That will must awaken before we can confront and beat this madman. And so I wonder, in the words of John Kay as sung by Steppenwolf in 1969:
“America, where are you now
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster.”
We can beat you, Donald T****. It is our country, not yours. We let you run it in our name. But unless we are free, we can prevent the country from running at all. As John Kay reminded tyrant wannabes like you”:
“Remember, if you plan to stay,
Those who give can take away.
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” And so I say:
ON ON STRIKE, SHUT IT DOWN
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