An Open Letter to the World Regarding Donald Trump (p.s. Don’t Put off Tomorrow…)

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Dear Planet Earth Beyond the Borders of the Fruited Plain:

 

You are probably struggling to identify where Uncle Sam’s penchant for reality TV and WrestleMania begins and its Republican Presidential Candidate policies end. Sorry, most of the time, no obvious line separates the twain:

 

Mike “Gaza Gunpoint” Huckabee jumps off the top rope and clotheslines The Iron Sheik!

 

Where to begin? On behalf of all 322 million U.S. citizens, I apologize. Of course, a certain Republican presidential hopeful and his pitchfork minions would like to reduce that number to a comfortable 222 million White Americans. But who’s counting? 

 

The only good news is that we don’t know whether said candidate will export or exterminate those 100 million non-White Americans if given the chance. Yes, I actually took a step down the genocidal warning path. Why? Because a political personality worthy of crossing the Godwin Line is finally in our midst.

 

Two years ago, I wrote: “To compare any U.S. politician to Adolf Hitler is simply idiotic and downgrading to the cause.” Well, I was wrong.

 

I didn’t realize Donald Trump was capable of transforming his charismatic, Gordon Gekko, I-suck-the-teats-of-Mammon personality into a viable White House frontrunner. None of us did. We were convinced that the United States, while embarrassingly capable of electing a W., was yet impervious to outright Nazism, Stalinism, and all the trappings of a good old-fashioned Rape of Nanking and Cold War puppet dictatorship.

 

Trump began his campaign six months ago with attention-getting overtures of fear-mongering and racism, which the civilized among us categorized as David Dukean, yet merely rejected with eye rolls and murmurs. What was once a pro wrestling stunt has now morphed into millions of front yard “VOTE FOR TRUMP” signs. The joker is now the juggernaut. And we all are to blame: we watched the frog boil in the kettle.

 

This past Monday, on a retired aircraft carrier in South Carolina, Candidate Trump delivered a goose-stepping speech that even his Republican presidential playmates finally had to admit went too far:

 

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. We have no choice. We have no choice. We have no choice.

 

There, finally, was the line between right-wing debate entertainment and prospective dictatorship. And Candidate Trump, referencing himself e’er so humbly in the third person, drew it with a big stick in the sand.

 

Not one other Republican candidate has dared cross the Trump Line. Jeb Bush said, “Donald Trump is unhinged.” Marco Rubio called it “offensive and outlandish.” Senator Lindsey Graham called Candidate Trump “downright dangerous.” Meanwhile, Ted Cruz spoke in tongues and searched for demons under Capitol Hill bushes.

 

While Republican candidates rejected Trump’s hate-dripping statement wholesale, the problem is that voters aboard the retired U.S.S. Yorktown stood and raucously cheered. In fact, millions are standing and cheering Donald Trump, who continues to lead most national and primary Republican candidacy polls by wide margins. 

 

As I stated above, two years ago, I took a pass on comparing the Brown Shirts of the 1920s with the Tea Party. But it would seem that we’ve finally reached the point where we are just a runway away from a Donald J. Trump Collection Jugendbund Short Shorts Fashion Show. Candidate Trump has handed out the pitchforks and lit the populist torches. To millions, he is doing the good work of God and the Global Military Industrial Complex. But to civilized folks like Hussam Ayloush from the Council on American-Islamic Relations: “[Trump] is doing the work of ISIS.”

 

This, then, is where you come in, Citizens and Reporters and Leaders of Faraway Lands.

 

While it is generally impolitic for one nation to interfere in the political affairs of another nation—despite the fact that the U.S. may have engaged in a bit of regime meddling in your neck of the global woods—the case of Candidate Trump presents a clear and present exception.

 

In short, speak up. Often and loudly. Don’t tell us who to vote for—but insist we not vote for Donald Trump. Wave travel and trade sanctions in front of our noses. Threaten to take back Christoph Waltz and the Statue of Liberty. Do whatever it takes. Heck, promise to strive endlessly to make soccer our number one sport.

 

More seriously, force our eyes open with toothpicks and provide clear reminders of how the bloodthirsty and iron-fisted dictators of your nations rose to power. Replay us their campaign speeches. Show us how crowds rallied around cries to “root out the enemy.” Overload every newspaper and radio signal and television and electronic device and social media newsfeed.

 

O, World, what is the point of reminding ourselves, time and again as we have for the past century, that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it—if we don’t actually act when that history unfolds right before our very eyes?

 

Candidate Donald Trump is evil. (Hell, the whole damned Republican Party deserves to be locked up in The Hague.) Trump represents the basest form of barbarism. He and his followers are a clear and present danger to global Civilization. And we need your help to make this clear—crystal clear—to millions of deceived U.S. citizens.

 

2016 matters. Civilization hangs in the balance. Please do not wait for the frog to boil.

 

Sincerely,

 

Civilized Minds from Sea to Shining Sea

 

 

{Originally published on the website Forward Progressives on December 9, 2015. The website recently closed down without maintaining an archive. The original article received more than 100,000 views.}

 

 

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