From the American “foundational atrocity” of slavery to the ascendance of German Nazification in the 1930s, a refusal of collective responsibility hindered a national reckoning for state-sponsored terror. It also enabled the forced displacement of millions of “undesirables,” a policy now embraced by President Trump, along with the hideous programs advocated by his new cabinet-designates: preemptive war and torture, both war crimes.
The impunity afforded Trump’s coterie of badass advisors facilitates the normalization of reactionary policies that threaten humanity and imperil the earth itself, notes Michael Canavan at medium.com:
What if we had seen CIA operators perp-walked, lawyers disbarred, generals forced into disgraced retirement? What if journalists who uncritically passed on sham intelligence found themselves unemployable? What if W. and Cheney actually couldn’t visit Europe for fear of justice in the Hague? Would that have failed to turn the country towards repentance? Would that have shaken the endowed chairs of the war’s most unashamed defenders? Would John Yoo be teaching at Berkeley?
“What year is it?!” exclaims Canavan, “how were these monsters [Gina Haspel and John Bolton] even in a position to show their faces in polite society, much less achieve high office?” Decades of US imperium demand the kind of public contrition and retribution manifest in massive, sustained resistance to illegitimate government.
The challenge has never been greater. The nightmare of a Fascist America must end. The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!