Key Quotes About Fascim For The Resistance Fighters Of America!

 

As we face the incredibly dangerous and uncertain future with the probability that TRAITOR Trump and the other TRAITORS who support him and his fascism, it is incumbent on all of us who understand that danger to do everything within our power to resist that fascism  and the immeasurably destructive potential outcomes which are sought by TRAITOR Trump and those other TRAITORS who support him. With all three branches of government in their hands, there is little that can be done to prevent that incredible potential damage to both America and American Democracy.  Political resistance is the only weapon we have which has been proven to be effective in such situations.   Patriotic and determined resistance groups have given us effective examples of how this resistance is accomplished.  Those groups in much of Western Europe during both World War II and World War I.  There are also excellent examples of effective resistance in countries  such as Turkey, Iran, Chile, and Syria.  Study those examples!  Emulate those examples!  Read recent books about political resistance!  Attend educational opportunities to learn about fascism and how to resist it!  Become an active resister!  It is the only effective option we have!

 

The quotations below are from several famous writers and politicians.  Study them and the brave souls who verbalized them and practiced political resistance on a daily basis in their lives.  The first five of those quotations were all used as part of my official e-mail signature from January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021.  I will be using and posting them wherever it is appropriate in the coming four years.  So should you!  Learn what you can do as a political resister at this most dangerous time in America since the day Fort Sumter was fired on.  GOD HELP US ALL!       

 

“I have lived my life and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and poor—but against power, injustice, and oppression.”  Clarence Darrow  

“Why, this far into the twenty-first century, are we once again talking about Fascism?  One reason, frankly, is Donald Trump.  If we think of Fascism as a wound from the past that had almost healed, putting Trump in the White House was like ripping off the bandage and picking at the scab.”  Madeleine Albright, “Fascism A Warning”, p. 5-6.  

 

 

“Bigger misfits haven’t been seen inside a White House since William Taft got stuck in his bathtub.”  John McCain, “The Restless Wave”, p. 267

 

 

“I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents; that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists; that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice; that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon; a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written: Yes We Can. Yes We Did.  Yes We Can.”  President Barack Obama

 “These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." Thomas Paine 

 

"Fascism is capitalism plus murder."  Upton Sinclair

 

"A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such and intensity of intolerance toward  those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions, or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends."  Henry Wallace 

 

"There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that  he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind bars, and the man is outside." Upton Sinclair 

 

"Fascism is a lie told by bullies."  Ernest Hemingway

"But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for him." Upton Sinclair   

"I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system." Noam Chomsky

"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, Reading A Great Book Many Years Too Late!

 

 

 

 

Despite how much literature, and a great deal of the "great literature" I have read in my life, I had never read "The Jungle" or any other book by Upton Sinclair until just now.  A couple of months ago, my sister-in-law in Wisconsin suddenly mailed me a copy of "The Jungle" with a note that said "Roger, I tried to read this book, but got frustrated right away.  I think you'll have more patience with it."  On some levels I was surprised by the book and note and, on some other levels, I was not.  She is a pretty voracious reader, rather brilliant with near perfect scores on her college admission tests when she came out of high school almost 30 years ago.  But I have noticed over the years that her reading material tends to be a bit toward the general adult fiction level.  I had asked her about why she didn't like the book or "got frustrated" with it and never seemed to get a succinct answer.  

 

 

Anyway, my wife Candice decided when it was time for us to choose another book for our joint reading effort in which I read aloud while Candice washes the dishes each day and we alternate in who chooses the books.  When she finishes washing the dishes, I dry them and eventually put them away each evening.  I have to say I was also somewhat surprised that Candice chose this book but thought that it might have been curiosity about what her sister gave up on.  But she also tends to like more "great literature" when I do the reading aloud than she would usually read on her own.  

The first thing I noticed about the book is that it is a markedly dark novel, about as dark as anything I have ever read.  I don't cull much in literature and don't usually say anything is too dark for me.  But this novel is incredibly dark, moving consistently from one disaster among the central characters to another without ever having a bright spot or a lucky day last any longer than the next sunrise, if the sun rises at all the next day.  But it is a fine novel with excellent character development, plot and counter plot, and a couple of definite goals from the beginning to the end.  I would say that the primary goal of the novel, which I suspect is true of everything Sinclair wrote, is to promote socialism as the best form of government for the United States.  In Sinclair's defense, I would also say that his secondary goal was to write a good to great novel which would be accepted widely by the reading public.  I have no crow to pick with his first goal since I have known several devout socialists in my lifetime, and I would even agree that socialism is a far better form of government in its pure form (which can never be fully achieved) than several other forms of government.  As for his second goal, I came out of the novel firmly convinced that Sinclair had definitely achieved his second goal with flying colors. This is a fine novel!  Yes, it is as dark as the deepest corner of an underground coal mine, but it is also a fine novel.

The protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus, and his family are the central characters, native Lithuanians who emigrate to the United States and find themselves living, if that is  not too strong a word, in the meat packing neighborhood of Chicago.  The novel was published in 1905 and covers about a ten year period before and after the turn of the century.  Sinclair chose to give the neighborhood around the meat packing companies, slums, and railroad yards as Packing Town.  It is filled with immigrants from several different countries and cultures who struggle to survive on a daily basis in which the meat packing companies operate as the Meat Trust in conjunction with the Railroad Trust, two entities which are each comprised of several companies who work in a cohort in order to control and suck the lives out of their employees just as they take the lives of trainloads of cattle and hogs.  The book served to educate the American public about the outrageous practices of the meat packing industry and the multitude of ways in which those companies live off the lives of everyone they come into contact with, whether they are employees or customers.   They own the local public officials, judges, police, and nearly every human who comes into contact with the meat packing industry.  They are a predatory entity both as individual companies and as a loosely constructed conglomerate.  

Jurgis and his family suffer one debilitating event after another from the packing industry, local real estate companies, the police and courts, and each other.  His wife dies in childbirth because the family has no money for a doctor.  His only child drowns in the mud and water surrounding their home. He is jailed multiple times and eventually blacklisted because he beat his wife's supervisor who had lured her into prostitution.  Another child in the family is frozen nearly to death walking to work in a Chicago winter and eventually killed and eaten by rats after being locked into his work site at the end of the day.  But eventually, Jurgis is converted to socialism, gets a job in a hotel owned by a socialist with a social conscience, and become a devout evangelist for socialism. The novel ends with about 20 pages of a lengthy sermon about the virtues of socialism and the predatory nature of capitalism.  Yes, it's dark as hell, but it's a fine novel.  If you haven't ever read it, give it a chance and commit before you begin it that you won't give up, as my sister-in-law did, before you have read at least fifty pages.