Trump-Miller are attacking our entire democracy
Comprehensively and simultaneously
At all levels, on all fronts.
While we have been responding to individual threats.
To feints and maneuvers meant to distract us
Unable or unwilling to acknowledge the scale
The enormity of what they are doing.
We have been defending ourselves with peashooters.
With platoons and regiments, getting absolutely nowhere.
When what is needed is for the entire country to rise up as one army
With everyone doing their part.
If it is democracy that is under attack
Then democracy itself must respond.
We can't leave the fight to someone else.
We've got to take a stand.
And challenge everyone to do the same.
Democracy depends upon it.
Democracy needs us.
Our planet needs us.
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln – marching together.
Beneath American flags, fifes and drums playing.
Every school child’s image of our founding.
Their cause was Democracy.
Our country stands for nothing if it does not stand for Democracy.
This is our cause, and it is being taken away from us.
Our country is being taken away from us.
Trampled underfoot by dictators at home and abroad.
When the Beast invades our homes, our places of peace
With intent to harm, our only choice is to resist.
If, in defending our homes, our country, our planet
Someone is offended, someone gets hurt, so be it.
Our cause is forced upon us.
To save our country for democracy.
Gently and with loving kindness if possible.
Aggressively if necessary.
But always: to hear and be heard.
1930’s National Socialism has metastasized to our shores.
All who would defend democracy
Reason and science, compassion, truth, and civility
Must take a stand.
Our Generation’s Civil War Has Begun.
Standing Up to the Beast.
Is where I stand.
Not the end, but only the beginning.
To my Republican friends, so very kind in person
So very cruel, insensitive, and disrespectful in your beliefs
Challenged by facts and logic, addicted to lies
Indifferent to personal character
Heedless of the catastrophe bearing down on us.
Heed this.
Admiral Yamamoto’s warning:
I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant
And filled him with terrible resolve.
Democracy is a cause unlike any other.
Countless millions have fought and died for it.
Hong Kong fights and dies now.
Many millions more will rise up here with terrible resolve.
How then will you take away our democracy?
Our rights, our freedoms, our civil liberties?
Over our dead bodies!
To the rest of us
We are not passengers on a plane that’s just crash-landed.
Strapped to our seats, immobilized by shock
Waiting passively for the end to come.
We are soldiers in a cause. taking the fight to the enemy
Secure in the knowledge that our cause is just.
We will prevail.
The time to change minds ends
When there are no longer minds to change.
When there is only unreasoning hysteria, hatred, and madness.
Rampant guilt projected onto “them.”
Our skies are inflamed with the fires of hell.
It will be time enough to make peace, to trust and make friends
When the light of Reason and respect shines again.
When guilt is banished for the lie that it is
And truth is restored.
Innocence -- our sanctuary and our strength.
It will happen.
But for now: Uncle Sam wants YOU!
David C. Harrison
Redondo Beach, California
7 December 2019 - Pearl Harbor Day