Justified?

by Groff Schroeder

Trump Administration policies including the president's self described "Muslim Ban," Attorney General Sessions' apparent abandonment of protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination, and the president's ban of transgenders from the US military, etc., appear to violate the "golden rule," and America's Constitutional rights to equality, privacy, due process, freedom of association, and freedom of religion. Furthermore, the armed neo-Nazi protests in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11 and 12, 2017 – as well as President Donald J. Trump's repeated divisive statements about them – are deeply saddening, dismaying, disturbing, and troubling.

Government discrimination against minority groups and armed "alt-right" protest events like Charlottesville create (at least) the appearance of widespread political intimidation of minorities. This is especially true when those participating in government sponsored discrimination or armed protest appear to even remotely advocate the ideals, revere the leaders, co-opt the symbols, or recite the slogans of nations that have previously enslaved human beings, murdered millions, and waged costly wars on the United States of America. The appearance of anti-American/pro-Nazi political intimidation was greatly intensified at the "Unite the Right" event when apparent neo-Nazis displayed (brandished?) firearms outside a synagogue on the Sabbath, a former Ku Klux Klan "imperial wizard" used a racial epithet while shooting at counter-protesters, and a protest leader stated in a widely distributed film that the murder of an unarmed non-violent female counter-protester from Charlottesville by an armed (with at least a vehicle) out of town violent male "Unite the Right" protester was, "justified."

Political intimidation and violence advances anarchy, authoritarianism, dictatorship, oligarchy, and totalitarianism because it is destructive to Constitutional ideals, free speech, shared respect, and democratic principles. Violence involving armed anti-constitutional speech and violence accompanied by Nazi flags and slogans may boost profits for media mega-opolies, but they are anti-American and direct threats to living holocaust survivors and their families and anyone else aware of how weaponized propaganda, "meddling" in electoral processes, and slowly increasing government discrimination and armed political violence spawned genocidal fascist totalitarianism in 20th century Europe.

What if the Charlottesville protests had not become violent? The American People might have been appalled not by yet another senseless political murder, but by the anti-American/pro-totalitarianism messages the apparently heavily armed "alt-right" protesters allegedly came to Charlottesville to deliver. What if the "breaking news" about Charlottesville had not covered murder and repeated divisive statements, but rather a small number of armed anti-American/pro-Nazi protesters advocating the destruction of Constitutional freedoms safely dwarfed by thousands of pro-Constitution Americans singing "We Shall Overcome?"

President Trump, members of Congress, and all Americans should vigorously support and defend human equality, freedom of speech, and the United States Constitution – while embracing non-violence and sincere efforts to overcome the issues that divide the American People, and heal the many types of wounds these divisions cause. We must rely upon non-violence, shared sacrifice, and mutual respect to outgrow America's current social reality – in which clearly unconstitutional government sponsored discrimination, and political intimidation, violence, and murder increasingly present direct threats to individual Americans, groups of Americans, minorities, the United States Constitution, and the American democratic republic itself.

We are all Americans, we are all equal human beings, and we are all in this together. We must defend the United States Constitution, equality under law, due process of law, and the rule of law – and reject the immoral foundations of political intimidation and violence.

Justified?, by Groff Schroeder appeared in the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs' Freethought Views column in the September 6-13, 2017 edition of the Colorado Springs Independent with the quotation below.

“Intimidation, harassment and violence have no place in a democracy.”

Mo Ibrahim