Colleen and I walked the bike trail in Jefferson every morning at 7:00 am. We both agreed it as the best possible way to start the day. Colleen was a year behind me in school and her sister Denise was in the famous Class of '61'. The O'Brien girls and I have had a nearly lifelong connection. Both of them are writers.
This column was in the Greene County News Online. Aside from that, this is my blog and I have the pleasure of posting what I think is good writing. This qualifies.
“Will you be a dictator?”
December 13, 2023
~a column by Colleen O’Brien
This question was asked of once-president Trump this fall in an interview with Sean Hannity, as well as by countless political columnists, broadcast news folks and authors of books on Trump from both sides.
He says, “Only on Day One.” This is when he will close the borders and “drill, drill, drill,” to cop a quote from Sarah Palin, a political has-been before she even started as a 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate. He sometimes says he’ll get rid of people and entities that have not been “nice” to him: CNN, MSNBC, certain prosecutors, some judges. It is a long list of things to do on the first day of a presidency.
Do you ever wonder if he’s seen the list of people he’s not been “nice” to?
The Donald, as he was known when he played a third-rate TV conman, pretends ‘Will you be a dictator?’ is a conspiracy question from the looney Left or a made-up accusation from the “fake news” media (his borrowed term for the legacy press like The New York Times, The Atlantic magazine, etc.). The “fake news” term came from the mainstream press labeling Fox News with that little bit of wit because of their continued lying about Trump winning the election of 2020. Thus, this is the Far Right being adept at blaming the Left for what the Far Right itself does – a bullying tactic. It’s a psychological trick that has become obvious and tiresome.
And he continues to throw in frightening ideas like dismantling the Department of Justice and the entire “deep state” – to him, this means the middle class bureaucracy of the United States – all those people who work in the government at ordinary bookkeeping jobs for $50 or $60 thousand a year and if eliminated would shut down the government. Do the folks working in these positions their entire lives realize this election is about losing their jobs?
Do women understand that the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade was heavily influenced by The Donald? That it is the beginning of the re-subjugation of women, one of the first things a misogynist who wants to be a despot pounces on to begin his reign? Talk about a sickening possibility: it makes me wonder if I would buckle under? Would I go along with being muzzled? Who knows? I’ve been challenged for writing something unpopular; I survived:
It was 1987, when I freelanced for a newspaper at Lake Tahoe in Nevada. It was Martin Luther King Holiday, and as had been going on for 20 years, a large coterie of Black wealthy and political from Oakland, CA, came to Tahoe for the weekend to raise money. They held dances, skied, ate in the expensive restaurants, shopped in the tourist stores and donated money for disadvantaged kids of color in the San Francisco Bay area. After the highlight of the weekend dinner dance, several partygoers retired to the posh restaurant on the Lake for after-dinner drinks. At the bar near them three upstanding white men from town (a bank president, a junior high principal and a wealthy retiree who lived on the Lake), held corks over candlelight and blackened their faces.
The sommelier of the restaurant called me at 1 am to tell me what was happening and asked if I could write about it because I worked for the local newspaper. She said she had tried to get her boss to “eighty-six” the three men, but he would not toss them out because they were regular customers as well as upstanding citizens of the town.
Soon, the black men in the adjoining room noticed what was going on – white men blackening their faces like in the minstrel shows of the 19th and early 20th centuries– a commonplace theatrical way to amuse white men by portraying Blacks as ignoramuses and buffoons.
It was a historic racist mockery played out in late 20th century time, and my friend, a black woman whose parents had been diplomats her entire life, was determined that the situation be publicized.
The next morning, I contacted the head of the Oakland group, the manager at the bar, the banker and the principal (I could not get a response from the rich lakeshore fellow).
The head of the fundraising group from California told me flat-out they would not be returning to this “once-favorite venue” for the annual fundraiser. That meant that after two decades of filling the coffers of a Lake Tahoe resort, they would find another place less racist, less rude, less behind the times.
The banker said he could not believe I’d publish something like this when his bank gave so much money to the community. The principal said I would ruin his career. These men obviously did not understand the role of messenger in a case like this; they were the ones who did the deed of racially dehumanizing behavior, not I.
I wrote the column, sent it to my editor, who did some checking and okayed it, warning me that things would hit the fan and to be prepared.
The publisher was the first to throw the dirt my way. “You cannot publish this column,” he said and turned away from me. I said I was a freelancer, not his employee, whose copy had been approved by the editor, and he’d better talk to him, the editor being his employee. My editor maintained the necessity of the column as a piece of reputable news in a democracy.
The column went to press.
And then the deluge. It was more than two weeks of letters to the editor, pro and con. It was phone calls to me – threatening, lambasting, sometimes with the caller’s name, mostly anonymous; it was also congratulatory and well-wishing people. And it was a note from a fellow columnist in the big newspaper in Reno, criticizing me for attacking a fellow he admired (the principal). I was shocked at this columnist hitting out, for he was a liberal like me, and I had admired his writing and been friendly with him in a professional way. He was defending a friend, fine; but he was denigrating his own belief in his country’s long, slow attempt at promoting the equality of all men.
~~~
The point of this is that racist behavior must be exposed to the light of day. We cannot pretend the most famous Tweeter of all Tweeted for the Mexican country’s benefit as a “caravan” of Latinos marched toward America: “This is an invasion of our country, and our Military is waiting for you.” He liked hyperbole. A young boy brought here by his parents illegally and who had finally become a citizen thought he could now be free from fear, but discovered the law still picked on him. “It’s because I’m brown,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that I’m a citizen now. I was naive to think it would change things.”
In 2017 The Don restricted legal immigration, and two dozen people died in detention, including seven children. Even before that, he said, “Mexico is not sending its best, people coming by the hundreds.” And his favorites: “Mexicans are drug smugglers, criminals and rapists. Some, I assume, are decent people”; and suggesting a judge should recuse himself from a case because of the judge’s Mexican heritage.
This is not a man to vote for again, so keep thinking about his threats/plans/lies and promises about being a dictator. He vociferously admires countries led by dictators – Russia, the Philippines, North Korea. Laugh at him if you can, tell jokes about him if that relieves you, don’t ignore him.
Take him seriously. It’s difficult to trust a lying man about anything, especially this one, because this liar could be elected by your vote as the dictator of your existence.
