My declaration of determination to resist dictatorship

Yesterday, I posted two missives to some of my correspondents, one saying I wasn't going to watch the State of the Union diatribe of the Mad King, and the other posting a draft letter to Congressional Representatives and Senators, of both parties, demanding and explaining why I believe articles of impeachment should be drafted, introduced, and prosecuted, no matter how unlikely to succeed in any near future. My idea was that I would send this letter anonymously, because, let's face it, the prospect that we may actually face direct retribution against dissenters is very, very real. But I've changed my mind. I am going to edit the letter to include my real name, because if I am asking these politicians to take the risk of losing their careers, and even subjecting themselves and their families to potential violence (as has actually happened, already), then I need to have the courage of my convictions to risk sacrifice and retribution myself. After all, the core concept of the American revolution was that a king or state could not legitimately alienate its citizens from their inalienable rights. And long before the Declaration of Independence, and the 1789 Constitution, the concept that citizens have a right to petition their government for redress of grievance, without fear of retribution or suppression, was widely accepted as a human right, indeed a pillar of modern liberal civilization. Fearful that this core pillar was not clearly enough expressed in the main body of the Constitution, some of the framers saw to it that it was explicitly added as the first amendment. Last night the Mad King made pretty clear he doesn't believe in that, that he believes only in autocratic power, and he will try to erase it from our laws. (I didn't watch the diatribe, but I did inform myself). We cannot accept that. 

Get it straight. I used to say that the Right Wingers wanted to erase the New Deal. Then it seemed, no, they wanted to go back to before the Civil War, erasing the Reconstruction reforms and enshrining White Privilege as some kind of diabolical principle. Now I have come to realize, no, they don't want to stop even there. They think democracy itself is a mistake, a concession to the rabble that should never have been made. They think John Locke and the principles that led to the American Revolution, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution itself will have to be trashed, so they can have straight up dictatorship. England had that kind of government under Henry VIII. Even Elizabeth I, who presided over what amounts to a police state, was forced to accept some dissent and give and take. And with the 1832 Reform Act, Britain actually probably exceeded the United States in the overall dedication to inalienable rights (although their freedom of speech and dissent was never quite as robust as ours... until now, sadly). This is not in any sense conservatism. Conservatives want to preserve institutions and establish and maintain civil order, not tyranny. Not rule by a tiny elite of the powerful, with the populace kept in line with lies, coercion, suppression, oppression, and sops. That is radical totalitarianism, not conservatism, and it is manifestly what the MAGA movement and their Mad King explicitly stand for, whether the bulk of the cult followers that elected him realize and understand it or not. 

But we must have courage. We must resist dictatorship. And we must stand up and say it, with our names and faces, and say to them, no. We will not comply. We must demand of our elected leaders that they resist; that they grow a pair, in the lovely if unavoidably sexist au courant language of ordinary people. We will not passively stand by and let the American fascist oligarchs do this. We will peacefully protest, en masse. We will demand that our elected leaders fight them, fight their illegalities, use their Constitutional powers to resist and remove them, and demand and ensure that elections be free and fair. We will organize the people till a great majority turns them out and restores representative democracy in our country. There can be no giving in, no obedience in advance, no hiding our heads in the sand. There is no guarantee of success, but we must persist, and never give up. We will resist, we will continue to speak out, proudly and loudly, and we will not accept autocracy, not now, not ever. 

--

.............

RESIST. BOYCOTT.
ORGANIZE. CONTRIBUTE.

NEVER GIVE UP. 
DEMAND IMPEACHMENT.