Like all the rest of sane America, I’m seriously impressed by the phenomenal rise of the Parkland students and the #NeverAgain movement. In just ten days, they have accomplished what took ACT UP years to achieve, and they are still just getting started. The speed at which this movement is moving and evolving is staggering, and many of us feel hope where for years there has been nothing but resignation and despair.
We are also seeing the rise of opposition to NeverAgain and outright attacks on the students, including conspiracy theories and now even death threats. It looks like we’ve got a real fight on our hands now.
What does this mean for the biggest story in America, our Russian-installed so-called president? I see this as the opening of a second front in our war against the forces of Trump and the complicit, enabling Republican party. How can that be, when they aren’t related by anything concrete? Here’s how that goes:
The Russia scandal (or, as John Oliver calls it, Stupid Watergate) is one thing, and school shootings are another thing entirely. Right? Wrong. They are two aspects of the same thing — the corruption that controls the Republican party. And the NRA is the thing that ties it all together.
It’s not even very complicated:
- US intelligence had evidence in 2016 that Russia was interfering in our presidential election.
- Congressional Republicans (led by Mitch McConnell) opposed revealing that info to the American public when that could have made a difference, and threatened the Obama administration with accusations of partisanship, blocking that reveal.
- Republicans live or die by NRA support. The NRA supplies money and voters, and no one in the GOP will stand up to them. Makes one wonder why.
- There is reporting that the NRA is possibly taking money from Russia and laundering it through their SuperPACs into donations to Republican campaigns.
It’s not two unrelated issues. It’s all part of the same, monstrously huge issue: Republican corruption leaves our nation vulnerable to Russian manipulation. The NRA is a piece of that puzzle, and a fairly central one, I believe.
This past week, we saw an effort to boycott the NRA’s business partners take off and have a nearly instantaneous effect. Here’s a snapshot from yesterday of some companies that have cut ties with the NRA. These losses mean an NRA membership loses significant value, as members won’t get discounts on travel, insurance policies, or credit cards. The next phase of the effort will be to de-platform the NRA by getting YouTube, Amazon, Apple/iTunes, et al. to kick them off their video platforms. Anyone want to take my bet that it will be done by the end of next week?
The Trumpublican criminal enterprise is vast and broad-ranging, but there are a lot more of us than there are of them. Sun Tzu says that when you outnumber your enemy’s forces, it is good strategy to divide your army and attack the enemy on two fronts. NeverAgain just added a few million young converts to our army, and they are all gung ho to engage on this new front.
And the enemy has shown their vulnerability on this front by re-deploying its forces to meet the new threat. On the same day, both the White House and the NRA elevated NeverAgain to the status of peers by meeting with them on the record, in public. I have no idea why the NRA thought it would be smart to send Dana Loesh to the CNN town hall, but it was a huge mistake on their part. Now we know how seriously they take this threat. Thanks for the credibility boost, morons!
What’s the point of all this? It’s that supporting NeverAgain is not a distraction from the fight against the Trump takeover. Au contraire, it is now an important piece of it. This is another way for us to hurt the enemy and win over more folks to our side. And when the news about Russian money and NRA SuperPAC donations finally breaks through to national attention, we will have the Trumpublicans in a vise.
RESIST! INSIST! PERSIST!
UPDATE: Wow, folks, thanks for a really positive, constructive response to the diary and the movement! It’s great to see how many of us are already making plans and taking action to support this movement in its early days. If this topic can offer us an opportunity to come together here at dKos, maybe there’s hope for the country, too :-)