By Jeff Gorke
SUWANEE, Ga. | It’s easy to demagogue and name call without providing cites, facts, or being accurate. That way you can’t be refuted and the echo chamber dutifully nods. If you disagree with the direction of our country, you’re a Fascist, neo-Nazi, fill-in-the-bad-name here. That said, I find Ashley Herndon’s February 16 contribution to the Gwinnett Forum (“Plantation capitalism being pushed on us again”) a vexing top-heavy litany of bloviation, supposition, and charged language.
I discount, out of the gate, anyone who labels others with a broad and ill-conceived brush that drips with sarcasm and disdain; for instance, as we all know, Fascists and Nazis were essentially an offshoot of communism. They had nothing to do with the “right wing” aside from, perhaps, pursuing some sort of ill-conceived nationalist agenda. But, of anything, Fascism and Nazism are ideologies borne on the “left” side of the continuum. Yet those terms are used so loosely as to be valueless.
Herndon rightly points out: “Jim Crow went live after Reconstruction.” But the second part of that thought strains credulity. To wit, “Like it or not, some of our States are passing similar legislation as we breathe.”
I’m sorry, are they?
Please cite the laws that seek to codify slavery or oppress people? And, it’s a convenient yet sluggish turn of phrase where the author lumps all people of color into a homogenous group being pushed into “financial slavery.” Surely Herndon knows that Asian Americans (generally) thrive financially representing the highest per capita income group of any demographic in the United States?
Deeper in the mire, Herndon “substantiates” his premise suggesting that “…talking heads, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the [NRA], and purveyors of the so-called Biblical theology, are trying to take over secular institutions.”
Among other salient questions, that begs who, pray tell, are the talking heads? MSNBC? CNN? Al Jazeera? Fox? And while we contemplate the dynamism between secular vs non-secular, who’s trying to take over what institutions? Again, I’d suggest more facts than emotive supposition. Maybe begin with a book on post-modernism and view our current state of affairs through that prism.
Who are the “Fascists?” Why don’t we contemplate how our government conspired with major media and tech outlets to suppress speech it didn’t like (“disinformation” or “mal information”) and who defines “hate speech,” precisely? Why don’t we ask how, after the Supreme Court told the Biden Administration that it could not “forgive” student loan debt? (Sidebar: someone owes that debt; I’d suggest it’ll be the taxpayer.) But then Biden went ahead and did so anyway?
Isn’t that like what a dictator does? And why aren’t we curious that, while the sitting president committed a crime taking classified documents that he had no right to remove (as a senator and vice president), he was effectively found not competent to stand trial? Does that foregoing the federal government’s opportunity to prosecute, how can he run the country? And if he can run the country, why cannot he be held accountable in a court of law?
Minimally these are the elements of a Banana Republic; worst case, these are elements of creeping dictatorship. Remember, you don’t drop the frog in boiling water; you put him in the water and slowly turn up the heat.
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