There are plenty of 'bad guys' complicit in the criminal actions of the Trump administration. More are likely to be exposed. But until then, people living in the United States share responsibility to acknowledge the horrors perpetrated in their name, and demonstrate determined resistance to the cruel and brutal future advanced by America's executioner-in-chief.
"Assault on truth has been slowly building for years. It took the election of Donald Trump to make frighteningly clear the civic consequences of living in a world in which the truth is not respected," blogs Bill Scheinman. "But a community denial of truth -- which is what we can call it when millions of people, on the political left and right, choose to believe patent falsehoods -- this community denial of truth can only happen if we, as individuals, are also denying the simple, basic truths of our own lives."
The Trump/Pence regime not only subverts the separation of powers, the separation of Church and State, and calls for a new nuclear arms race; it demonizes the press and substitutes "alternative facts" for scientific reality.
Dr. James Waller, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College, explains that "what makes perpetrators of genocide and mass killing different is the group dynamic. Any type of group amplifies a situation, either for bad or for good. Individual killers in these groups believe that killing itself is wrong but it is a worse wrong to not kill. That subtle difference may be the key element in what separates the mentality of "them" and "us."
Dr. Waller also points out that perpetrators have a very high sense of morality "BUT their morality goes in the opposite direction of ours. For the perpetrator, the victim means nothing to them morally speaking, but for us, we will empathize for the victim and with the victim's loved ones. Perpetrators are able to reconfigure their mindsets, justifying their actions."
The process of 'normalization' attending these crimes, enhanced by codification into law by ruling parties, plus the bombardment of justification by news media, threatens to make monsters of us all -- if we let it. Say NO! The Trump/Pense Regime Must Go!
