We are in the grip of America’s first Inquisition based on right-wing Catholic ideology as expressed in the Republicans’ plan to create an autocratic state and in the rulings of the revanchist Catholic justices on the Supreme Court. Political enemies are investigated and criminals set free, masked thugs in unmarked vehicles run through the streets like the S.A. (Sturmabteilung — paramilitary troops) in 1936 Germany, people disappear like the Desasparecidos of Argentina, and so it goes.
The backlash will come, but not, I believe, in ways things usually happen. Yes, there will be some demonstrations and marching in the streets, but most of the opposition will come in the form of various states banding together in compacts to fight against the federal government. It may be that the Northeast, the far West and upper Midwest will create their own health and social security systems, and underground resistors will engage in guerilla tactics to resist the paramilitary. Or we may find clever ways to withhold money from the federal government.
But what can we know in the middle of the whirlpool, in the chaos of political and social and cultural warfare? The resistance is here. What form will it take over the next year? who knows! The battle has been joined. Which side are you on?
John Sinton
Florence