Hi Dad:
I hope you’re doing well in the heavenly realms. It’s been a long time since I’ve written to you. Life gets heavy, as you know, and sometimes I even blame you for my mistakes and foibles. You know how it is. I’ll try to do better.
Today is Memorial Day here in the United States. It’s a day we celebrate people like you and the fight you took to the fascists who were responsible for the deaths of 80 million people, including six million Jews in Europe.
On one of the rare occasions you talked about that awful war, you described how you drove a PT boat in the Pacific against the shores of jungle islands torn apart by battle as you and your crew escorted marines to take one island after another, step by bloody step, with the eventual goal to land in Japan itself.
You watched in horror as Japanese soldiers jumped from cliffs to their deaths to avoid surrender. On another island, you said, it was all hands on deck as everyone was ordered onto shore to clear out foxholes.
These days, it’s hard to imagine being at war with Japan and its lovely people. But many other things are imaginable that weren’t when you were alive. The current regime has abandoned a European nation attacked by Russia. Yesterday, Ukraine’s president asked us where we are while Russia’s psychopathic president, Vlad Putin, launched his largest air assault yet, dropping bombs on hospitals and children, like he’s trying to imitate the war criminal currently devastating Gaza, which some in the cult want to turn into a tourist center for idiots.
Putin launched the attack in open mockery of the man some say is his vassal. He launched the attack in open mockery of the American Memorial Day holiday.
The new American regime is actively trying to destroy our friendship with Europe and even Canada. Canada hates us now, Dad, can you imagine that? Canada doesn’t hate anybody. You might think from your vantage point that declaring Canada as our 51st state seems funny, but they’re not laughing up north.
The funniest thing is that the idiot in the Oval Office thinks Canadians wouldn’t fight back. He’s too dumb to bother reminding him that their national sport is hockey.
You left the war as an Eisenhower Republican.
You wouldn’t recognize what has become of them. Today, Eisenhower Republicans and their distant cousins at places like The Bulwark here on Substack are fighting a new foe, one that threatens every institution you fought for.
I don’t think I need to fill you in. Certainly, you see what is happening in America these days. I also know something else you’d say: “Well, Americans elected that fool. They’re getting precisely what they asked for.” And you’d ask this: “Doesn’t anybody read books anymore?”
I don’t have answers for any of that. Many of us who are befuddled by a cult dedicated to a spluttering, fist-raising, hateful buffoon who probably can’t read the wrapper of his cheeseburgers feel like we are at war with our fellow citizens.
It may take the complete decimation of the country before those who aren’t in the cult, but who eagerly drifted into its path with a bizarre form of curiosity the rest of us don’t understand, wake up.
Our best-case scenario is surviving until the midterms and countering voter repression with enough force to throw the instigators of this emerging fascism out of office.
Recent history is not on our side. The Democratic Party is a shambles. A few consistent voices in its establishment who are active against the regime make a few headlines, but overall, the party is worthless, feeble, and uninterested in the fight.
Essentially, we’re on our own. The vast majority of us will stumble into the voting booth during the midterms and reluctantly vote for someone who helped get us to this place, because the alternative will be someone who openly supports the cult of hate that has taken over and shattered the Eisenhower Republican Party you so admired.
If not enough of us do that, it’s game, set, match.
I know you would argue this: “That’s not much of a solution. It’s not much of a change. It will just happen again, only next time, the authoritarian leadership will not be a cadre of dedicated Christo-nationalists who spend their days propping up an infirm puppet. No, next time, and I know this from history, the authoritarian will be wily (like Susie Wiles, who you dummies are letting off the hook) and charismatic in a way that will make this guy look about as lively as the dead generals we are honoring today.”
You would tell us to mobilize with urgency. You’d tell us to run for every small office we can to counter the local dominance of the right wing in our local affairs, especially in rural areas. Be a Trojan Horse if you have to, you’d say. If you have to lie and say you’re a Republican to get into office, just do it.
So far, Dad, not much blood has been shed, but fuses are short on both sides.
After everything you saw, you will tell us that it is imperative to avoid the kinds of violence that have wrecked other nations with the divisions that we now face.
Most of us who are in opposition to this regime believe that is possible. Mobilization against the regime has grown as the regime continues to overreach. The regime offends its own constituency with such regularity that its most devoted cultists are refilling their prescriptions, meth pipes, and liquor cabinets at an even more furious pace than before.
The regime’s base of cultish extremists loves to steal words and destroy their meaning. Words like “patriot,” a word which now has wicked connotations. Phrases like “Black Lives Matter” have been sullied by the open racism of the current regime. When someone wears a flag on their shoulder, we immediately check to see if they’re carrying an AR-15.
The cult complains the loudest about words like “antifa,” which is, quite simply, anyone who opposes fascism. Of course they hate the word. It is a reflection of the fight against them. They claim the antifa movement was violent in its heyday, but can’t name any noteworthy incidents. They sullied the name because they knew it would bring them to their end if left unchecked.
If we defeat this new enemy, one that is trying to impose a false Christianity consisting of a narrative in direct opposition to the teachings of its origin, I hope we create a new holiday to celebrate, not in place of Memorial Day, but because of it, and in honor of ending our current nightmare.
So, for me, today is Antifa Day. A day we honor those who fought against fascism. A day where we honor people like you.
Wish us luck, Dad. We’re going to need it.
Notes
I don’t know what my dad’s PT boat looked like. The one depicted in the image was refurbished by a group in Oregon to honor those who fought in WW2.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks Charles, I sure wish I could have a conversation with my dad about the state of our nation. I think my dad was probably an "Ike Republican" too, in the 50's after coming home home from the "police action" in South Korea.