Daddy Warned Me About Fascism

I am conflicted. 

I am gloriously happy. 

I am deeply sad. 

I am righteously angry. 

I am completely exhausted. 

I am so proud of my state. 

I am so ashamed of some of my neighbors, relatives, and friends.

After working so hard, hoping against hope, for months on end to save our republic from the Trumpists by helping elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff we have amazingly triumphed! We have a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, A Democratic President. Two Democratic Senators from Georgia. I am thrilled.

There are folks I truly love who are still supporting what I consider outright evil. I do not believe THEY are evil; I believe they are tragically deceived and/or else blindly loyal to undeserving, even evil, leaders. I am literally nauseated sometimes when I see their fact-free posts spreading Trumpian lies. How that tempers my joy.

How do I express myself, help call out the evil, hold those who incited and/or committed these atrocities responsible, and still maintain relationships with folks I love who have chosen to excuse the inexcusable?. 

One of the great regrets of my life is that, as an adult, I never had a conversation with Daddy about his experiences in World War Two. 

Oh we had some brief stories about my Mother's visit at Camp Pendleton in California before he shipped out to the Pacific. But we did have a converstaion about it when I was about 12 or 13. 

Daddy's home office was in what may have once been the second auto bay of our garage in the parsonage where we lived in Ellijay. Daddy was pastor at Watkins Memorial, the Methodist church in Ellijay, just off the square. To get to Daddy's little office you went out the back door from our kitchen into what we called the "breezeway" then through the garage to the office.

During the war Daddy had taken up photography and had taken and developed and printed photos which he kept in a small album. I saw that album many times. It included a lot of pictures from Ulithi -- if you don't know the story of Ulithi you need to read it -- including shots of the grass-roofed huts, island women walking around without tops, native men in traditional dress, he and his buddies posing disrespectfully with captured Japanese flags, himself with a cigarette in his hand, etc. 

But there were also photos of the bodies of Japanese soldiers splayed awkwardly in ditches. 

I don't really remember how the topic came up. Perhaps I brought it up, or maybe he did. Just the two of us were in that little office and I remember that Daddy became very serious, even somber. In that one conversation Daddy allowed himself to describe very graphically some of the cruelty and depravity of the Japanese in the Pacific where he fought and of the fascists in Europe where two of my mother's brothers put their lives on the line. I think he wanted me to know the importance and justice of the risk he took, half a world away from his young wife and two little girls. I was terrified and nauseated especially by the his second-hand description of atrocities he had heard about from those who liberated Nazi concentration camps. 

Here's a snippet of film from Ulithi in 1944 as my Daddy might have seen the (at the time) largest naval base in the history of planet Earth.

Last Wednesday our current President who, his first wife reportedly said, kept a book of Hitler's speeches near his bed, incited a huge group of white supremacists,

QAnon extremists,

and American fascists

 ...to attack our capitol. 

They planted pipe bombs, erected gallows, carried zip-ties often used as handcuffs, wore Nazi slogans on clothing and tattoos, shouted threats to hang the vice president, destroyed a memorial to John Lewis, beat Capitol police -- murdering one by bashing his head with a fire extinguisher. AFTER that obscene assault on our republic a BUNCH of Republicans (so-called) STILL voted to overthrow our republican election of 2020.

Daddy died in 1986. I cannot know how he would have been affected by the events that have occurred in America during the last 35 years. Perhaps he would have been influenced as some others have been to believe the unbelievable and excuse the inexcusable. I'm sure I have relatives who will go to their graves believing Daddy would have been on Trump's side. I don't believe that. I do not believe my Daddy went through the hell of World War Two so that we could let traitorous cowards like Donald John Trump trash our republican traditions, our elections, our Constitution. That some of the very ones for whom Daddy sacrificed so much in 1944 and 1945 and whom I still love and in other ways admire, now support the fascistic, supremacist, autocratic wannabe is -- literally --nauseating. 

I would point out that the TWO great Presidents of the United States who were my daddy's commanders-in-chief (FDR & Harry Truman) were BOTH Democratic presidents, like Joe Biden and Barack Obama NOT socialists. And like the great commander and future great president whose wartime biography Daddy gave to me when I was in fourth-grade (Ike) they were supporters of Social Security, unions, the GI Bill and other stuff labeled (deceitfully) in those days by the right-wing extremists of the day as Socialist or even Communist. Being labeled by John Birchers and their intellectual successors as "Socialist" or "Communist" or "fellow traveler" did not make Ike, or Harry, or FDR any of those things. Liberal Democrats believe in capitalism tempered by regulation and programs to protect and promote the common good.

I was first called a "Communist" during the 1968 campaign because of my support of (get this!) Hubert Humphrey. I was recently, half a century later, screamed at, thrown middle fingers, called words I choose not to repeat here shouted from dozens of threatening screeching trucks flying MAGA, rebel, and American flags emblazoned with political messages, all because I, with many other patriotic friends, peacefully promoted the election of Joe Biden, one of the most beloved by BOTH sides of any U.S. Senator or Vice President in our history. 

I am so proud of Daddy for the sacrifices he made for our republic. And I have placed my hand on my heart and sworn my allegiance to that republic hundreds of times. I have done my best to live up to that pledge during these five horrible years of watching the rise and reign of Donald John Trump. During these terrifying years I have watched supposed conservative patriots bow to, excuse, promote, defend, and even extol the closest thing we have ever had to a fascist in our White House.

My Daddy warned me about fascism.