It was Saturday, December 20, around noon, when my son Eddie and I drove down Reagan Parkway. We were on our way to see Spider-Man: No Way Home, an early birthday present from Eddie to me. We knew what we would see at the intersection of North Court Street and Reagan, but that prior knowledge did nothing to minimize the abject disgust of the scene before us.
A dozen masked racists were gathered around an under-construction Taco Bell holding signs telling motorists to honk “if white lives matter” - no rational person has ever suggested they don’t - and “to have more white babies.”
Various Democratic office holders and organizations condemned the protest, saying the white supremacist message of bigotry and hatred is not ever acceptable in our community, especially not during the time of the year - Christmas and such - when the message should be one of bringing together in peace and harmony. They have a more rosy concept of Medina and Medina County that honest examination would give much credence to.
I’ve a vague memory that the Republican mayor of Medina might have echoed these sentiments that racism and hatefulness is not what we are as a community. His argument might hold water if the city did not overwhelmingly vote for racist and white supremacist Donald J. Trump and other toxic Republicans.
If the Republican mayor did say such a thing, his comments didn’t make it into the very short article the Medina Gazette ran on the incident. Which makes me doubt my memory, what with the Gazette’s coverage of the news almost always slanted toward the Republicans in our area. The Gazette normally bends over and spreads its cheeks wide for Republicans.
Anyone who was in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, or who was watching the live coverage of that day’s events, knows exactly what happened on that day. A treasonous President Trump, who refused to admit he lost the election and whose massive ego wouldn’t let him honor the will of the voters, incited a violent insurrection with the intent to subvert democracy and remain in office. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen a president do in my seven decades living on this planet and in this country.
There were countless people backing this vile assault on the very basics of our democracy. Even the Republicans who could easily have been victims of the Trump-inspired mob continued to subscribe to Trump’s big lie, the absurd claim that, in the most fair election in history, victory was somehow stolen from him.
Simple logic dictates otherwise. If Democrats could have manipulated the results to deny him victory, why didn’t they do that in other races? Why did they not give themselves a bigger margin of victory in the Senate and the House? No Republican has ever even tried to answer those questions and, of course, the media lacked the courage to insist on the answers to those questions.
January 6, 2022. In Medina, “A Day of Remembrance Vigil” was held on Medina Square in commemoration of the insurrection that happened in 2021. The event organizer said:
“This is a day to remember a day that compromised our democracy and we want to make sure that the event is remembered so that it never happens again. We want to make sure people know we are responsible for our democracy, in that we need to vote, we need to respect our votes, that we need to be part of the democracy process by also telling our representatives what we need and want.”
Sidebar. What I need and want is for Republican lawmakers to stop worshiping Trump and his big lie. What I need and want is for them to support the investigation of the obvious crimes committed by the former president and to call for the prosecution of him and all of the Republicans who were part of this insurrection, even if those perpetrators are members of Congress. Don’t worry. I’m not holding my breath waiting for Republicans to do the right thing.
The Medina community groups that participated in the vigil included Our Revolution Ohio, Medina County Indivisible, Sustainable Medina Country, Medina County Democratic Party, Brunswick Democratic Club and Medina Democratic Club. You know who didn’t participate? Not a single Republican organization.
That didn’t surprise me. The Cult of Trump now claims those violent insurrections were just average American citizens exercising their rights of free speech. Others have described the insurrection as a “normal tourist visit.”
You fucking treasonous morons! This isn’t Orwell’s 1984. We heard Trump unleash his mob. Live and on television, we watched what the insurrections did. It happened and all your bald-faced lies to the contrary do not change what happened before our eyes.
Medina residents can pretend the white supremacists are not what we as a city are like. They are lying to themselves. They supported a man they knew was a racist. They support that man’s big lie. They will likely vote for him again.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim you’re not a racist if you support a racist. You can’t claim you support democracy if you excuse criminals who attempted to overthrow it. You can’t claim you support the Constitution if you follow a president and a party who ignore and subvert that Constitution. And you definitely aren’t a decent person if you sit back and say nothing as Republicans try to game the system so they will never lose power.
I get flak when I talk about Republicans as if they are monsters. A convention I’d attended for years stopped inviting me because its promoter didn’t like my being “mean to Republicans” online. He was fine with hosting a toxic bigot like Dean Cain. He’d probably shit his pants if he could get Scott Baio.
Naturally, it’s his right not to invite me. Never mind that, unless asked a direct question about something in my work or my views, I didn’t bring up politics. It’s his right.
I enjoyed the several of his conventions I attended and even wrote glowingly of them. Except for the last year I attended the event, I never asked for anything beyond hotel and mileage. In that case, he pretty much insisted I accept an appearance fee. So I took it. But, as I said, it’s his right to stop inviting me to his convention..
Here’s what I believe:
The Republican Party is a criminal treasonous organization. It does not serve the American people. It serves only the insane ego of its leader and, of course, its obscenely rich masters. If a Republican does the right thing, the party considers that to be some sort of crime against nature. It is the party of deceit and ignorance and is threatened by and is the enemy of science and accurate history.
Most Republicans are monsters. You can’t follow the dictates of a monster like Trump and not be a monster. You can lie to yourself, but you can’t change what you are unless you also change your mind and your heart and your soul...and I’m fast losing hope you can do that.
Medina can’t afford to kid itself. There are monsters on Medina’s streets. That is exactly what and who we are as a community.
Goddamn it.
© 2022 Tony Isabella
No comments:
Post a Comment