One never knows where fascism “lite” might appear. We have one bumper sticker for our state which has confounded the foreign tourists along our coast:
Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire . . . Qué significa . . . was bedeutet es?
These French, Mexican and German tourists asked me last week, What does it mean when they pointed to a big jacked up dual-rear tire pick-up truck with this huge sticker in the rear window: Oregunian-Oregun-zed with six AR-15 rifles on the image.
Well well, I was at the Brooks Great Oregon Steam-Up (7/26) event, and ran into some of that fascism lite. At the outdoor swap meet one vendor was selling 1 Reich Mark postage stamps with Adolph Hitler’s bust (a real stamp) printed on it, alongside another one of those Trump fake items: postage stamps with the 47th POTUS in various odd situations printed on it.
This was not a Norman Rockwell moment. There were other items with swastika and SS and Gestapo emblems marked on them.
I have a client who works and lives in Newport and who lives with developmental disabilities. I am his support professional helping him navigate life and daily activities of living. He doesn’t drive.
I had to keep my mouth zipped at the Brooks event when I saw this 6 foot eight guy wearing a t-shirt with this verbiage on it: “If This Flag Offends You I’ll Help You Pack Your Bags.”
That is the American flag.
I did get a whisper in the hulk’s ear without my client hearing: “I’m offended by your t-shirt, buster.”
I kept walking through the Caterpillar museum and looked at the fabled E9 tractor-bulldozer. Another offense, but I’ll get to that later.
The beauty of my job is that I meet people where they are. I can’t or won’t start attempting to teach clients what I know and have read and experienced as a way to mold them to my thinking.
This particular client is worried about losing Oregon Health Plan, Social Security retirement – he’s 60 and has worked since age 18. He hates Trump in that sort of funny way: “He’s a real jerk.”
But my client has a smartphone and reads headlines like this:
• Trump administration’s budget cuts endanger Meals on Wheels: ‘Life and death implications’
• Trump’s “Health Reform Vision” Includes $1 Trillion in Cuts to Medicaid and ACA
• Nation’s Disability Services System Begins To Buckle As Funding Threats Intensify
The reality for my clients – and my own employment – is that this existential threat is more than some theoretical attack. They are seeing the evidence as they go to their service providers and hearing about this or that benefit being cut. They see it with refuse bins overflowing at national parks. They hear fellow Senior Center folk whispering about hot meals at the 60 Plus Center going the way of the dodo.
One adage has to be broken down, as my clients ask me for input, and I can only be that dude who is a journalist from the old school of daily newspaper grinds, balanced with my outspoken Substack columns and articles in dissident publications and even here in Lincoln County on my radio show, Finding Fringe, KYAQ FM.
I never heard this in my home growing up, but I sure did hear it at in-laws’ homes and other places: “Don’t talk about religion or politics at the dinner table.”
That’s been extended to, “Don’t talk about Biden or Trump or money or MAGA or socialism or sex or drugs or education at the dinner table.”
My other clients ask me about this local headline: “Man accused of assaulting elderly Army veteran during Newport political protest”
Sure, a Lincoln County grand jury indicted a Klamath Falls man on three charges as a result of his arrest for assaulting a 74-year-old anti-Trump protester in early June.
The conversations are what we call tough and difficult if people just do not understand the context, history and intent of protest in the USA.
How many suffragettes were injured and jailed in the fight to get the vote for women? Over 500 women were arrested in the U.S. for their involvement in the Silent Sentinels protests for women’s suffrage, with 168 serving jail time. In England, that number is 1,000.
For my clients’ own personal DD and ID journeys, most do not know that the disability rights movement, even though less visible than other civil rights movements, has roots going back to the 1800s.
In 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed and signed into law, prohibiting discrimination based on disability in employment, public accommodations, transportation, and other areas.
Those dinner and work water cooler conversations do matter, as this headline belies: “The Trump administration withdrew 11 pieces of ADA guidance. How will it affect compliance?”And that old adage,
“Love it or Leave it” never applied for social justice and civil rights activists.
Yep, some of us have had trouble with that flag, and find many offenses in and around it.
Now to get back to that E9 Caterpillar? This headline rarely gets put into small and medium-sized newspapers: “Caterpillar Inc’s Role in Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
CAT equipment has been used to uproot olive treesopens in a new tab and destroy other agricultural products and landopens in a new tab. During ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in the Gaza Strip two years ago, Israel used armored D9 bulldozersopens in a new tab to demolish wide swathes of homes, factories, agricultural land and civilian infrastructure, including water pipes and networksopens in a new tab needed for basic survival.
There have been several Palestinian deathsopens in a new tab during home demolitions, most of them occurring during the second intifada in the early 2000’s. A Caterpillar D9 bulldozer is directly involved in the death of U.S. citizen Rachel Corrie in March 2003. An Israeli soldier drove the armored bulldozer over Rachel as she protested an imminent home demolition in the Gaza Strip. An IDF investigation ruled it an accident, but the Corrie family has filed a lawsuit and the current trial underway in Haifa, Israel, ‘Rachel Corrie v. the State of Israel has uncovered discrepancies and short-comings in the investigation.
We have much work to do in order to reverse all those offenses, but the fear in my clients’ voices is palpable. Unfortunately, fear can cause stasis or inaction. And that’s the death knell of justice.
(July 13 2022) Nearly two decades before Israeli forces killed Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, shooting a single bullet into her head while she was reporting from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, an Israeli soldier drove a bulldozer over American peace activist Rachel Corrie, crushing her to death.
Both killings left little real doubt about the dynamics at play. Abu Akleh was standing with a group of colleagues, wearing a vest clearly marked “PRESS,” nowhere near the fighting that had taken place earlier that morning. Corrie was nonviolently protesting the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home in Gaza. She was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket with reflective stripes and had been on the scene for several hours, at times speaking into a megaphone.
Note: First published in the Lincoln County Leader, August 13, behind a Pay Wall.
The post Summer Days and Dark Nights first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.