I will not celebrate President’s Day. As a teacher, I don’t believe I can be both moral and participate in our pledge of allegiance, nor as a citizen find solace this week. The state of our democracy is perilous with a new fascist administration – scapegoating minorities for our own failures and presenting ‘real Americans’ as ‘stabbed in the back’ by everyone else. This administration, and the Republican Congress that enables them, have exposed our politics as spectacle. 

            The administration’s brash, faux-libertarianism targeting federal aid and oversight assumes the big tech CEOs can navigate our collective wellbeing better, akin to the nobility under a feudal state.

The end of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will mean workers will be further immiserated and exploited. The American worker, already with almost zero unionization, will be broken by an absent Department of Labor. As a global superpower, we have refused our foreign aid, a pittance of what we should be offering, depriving nations in need of humanitarian support.

            America’s president has normalized classic fascist rhetoric toward non-white, non-straight, non-traditional families and individuals. “Vermin, poison, and snakes” are used in the name of preserving American identity, as if we were magically once a great culture lost to women, blacks, gay and trans people, Atheists, and the political left. Young immigrants today face a society ready to jailed, taken from churches and classrooms. With queer Americans, they face normalized bigotry from adults and peers.

            Young men of all colors, in a post-Civil Rights world, are also victims, as powerful companies and politicians capitalize on their alienation and resentment towards ‘wokeness.’ The liberal class risks complacency and intellectual indulgence. Community leaders who seek neutrality risk enabling evil.   

            Radical solidarity is needed. We should be ready for protests and mass non-compliance. Dissent is patriotic.

Chenjeri