Fight back, because they’ll come for us sooner or later
Here’s a great idea: Kick the Joint Chiefs of Staff off the National Security Council and install a neo-Nazi white supremacist instead!
It is a plot no Hollywood producer would ever buy. It’s just too implausible!
But it’s not too implausible for Donald Trump’s administration. We have entered the Bizarro World, where everything is possible and we have a narcissistic, petulant child as the ruler.
It is only a matter of time before Emperor Trump issues a decree affecting our LGBT community, despite his promise this week not to rescind President Obama’s executive order protecting LGBT federal employees against discrimination.
We must be vigilant.
I refer to Trump as “emperor” mainly because he has stepped outside the Constitution and has started ruling by decree. Congress seems impotent — or at least complicit — and has not resisted his actions in the least.
A few have postured and even offered lame bills that will never get out of committee. But the rest are sitting there watching our democracy be flushed down Trump’s golden toilet.
How could we be affected? Imagine the easy stuff first: a presidential decree that nullifies the same-sex ruling handed down by the Supreme Court.
That can’t happen you say? Well, neither could the travel ban. Except that it did, and it caused havoc.
Low-level bureaucrats will try diligently to carry out Emperor Trump’s orders and deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples as a start.
To sort it out will take legal action and months — perhaps years — of court battles. The executive branch could tie the litigation up in the courts for the next four years with no trouble at all.
What else? Imagine the worst: shuttering of all LGBT businesses citing “health concerns.” The tired trope that all gay people have AIDS will undoubtedly resurface as a scare tactic, and the lemmings of America will respond by complying.
Again, it will take court battles and money to refight the same fight we won years ago. All our progress could be wiped out with the stroke of a pen if our Congressmen and women continue to sit on their collective asses.
The stream of “alternate facts” vomiting from the White House will keep the press busy fact-checking and refuting while Trump, (actually Bannon and Pence) go their merry way, remaking our country in the image of Nazi Germany. The Internet will burn up with indignation, accomplishing nothing, and we will all merrily tweet our way into oblivion.
Am I getting your attention now? Good.
It is time we made our elected representatives take notice, Democrat AND Republican. We must call, email and actually put pen to paper to write them.
And we must visit them in person.
Yes, you can.
Call their offices and get an appointment. It will be difficult, but they need to see a face, lots of faces.
Then we must continue to march, speak out and keep the pressure on them to do their job, which is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.
And if they don’t, and if we still have elections in two years, we need to work to vote out of office every one of them who was complicit in this travesty.
Mid-term elections are more critical than ever before, and though not as sexy as the general election, they are what got us to this deplorable condition we are in.
Now comes the money part: We have to open our wallets and support candidates who resist Trump, and we have to support organizations that stand for true democracy and our freedoms.
This will come at an enormous cost, and the sad thing is we will be fighting our own government and depleting the coffers of the U.S.
Treasury as well as our own bank accounts to make it happen. Sad but true, and Trump’s advisors know this and figure we will run out of energy and money before they do.
We have to prove them wrong.
The alternative is to let this play out, hide in our basements behind our computer screens and do nothing.
Until they come for us.
And they will come for us.
I have told the story before of my grandfather’s advice to me about how to train a mule: “You train a mule by tapping it on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. But first you have to hit it over the head with a two-by-four to get its attention.”
I have my paper rolled up in my left hand and a two-by-four in my right.
Hardy Haberman is a longtime local LGBT activist and a board member of the Woodhull Freedom Alliance. His blog is at DungeonDiary.blogspot.com.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition February 3, 2017.
