Just two days before Christmas, John Fetterman, the Democratic junior senator from Pennsylvania, said in an interview with ABC News that “If you’re rooting against the president, you are rooting against the nation.” Frankly, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Fetterman isn’t my favorite senator. To begin with, I do not understand why he can not dress like an adult. He is a sitting US Senator and shows up to work in shorts and a hoodie. John, you have a grown up job, please dress like it! And it was a very odd statement coming from a Democrat.
There are also his comments criticizing Kamala Harris for describing Trump as a fascist. All anyone needs to do is open up a dictionary and see that “fascism” is a term that seems tailor made for Trump. Having not one but two masters degrees, one from Harvard, I would have expected a bit more from Fetterman.
But to say that rooting against Trump is rooting for the nation to fail is absurd, and he knows it. Bipartisanship, the process of two political parties cooperating or reaching an agreement, doesn’t preclude rooting against the other political party. Nor does it preclude working towards ideals which benefit all Americans.
I witnessed one of the starkest examples of this in 2008 when John McCain gave his concession speech after his failed presidential campaign. When he was congratulating his opponent and spoke the name “Barack Obama,” his crowd of supporters began to boo. At the time I was a Republican, and it was the first time I was ashamed to be one. But McCain raised his hands and silenced the crowd.
John McCain continued to work in the senate but actually opposed almost everything that Obama supported. Obama wanted healthcare reforms, lower taxes for working class people, green energy, banking reforms, and withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. McCain, a true-to-form Republican, wanted lower taxes on the wealthy, more fossil fuels, free market healthcare, and no timetable for withdrawal from foreign wars. He opposed abortion and gay rights.
But unlike Trump John McCain wasn’t a serial liar, a philanderer, a convicted felon, bankrupt businesses, and hadn’t been found liable for sexual assault. McCain didn’t attempt a coup, try to overturn an election, allow congress to be overrun by an angry mob that he stirred up and made angry with his lies. He didn’t steal hundreds of boxes of classified material, have a fake charity shut down, use the levers of government to enrich himself and his billionaire friends, nor threaten the free press because they reported the truth.
Making excuses for Trump, trying to claim that he’s not a fascist, that he didn’t mean what he said, or would never do what he said, is all “sane-washing.” This is the act of minimizing the perceived radical aspects of a person or idea in order to make them appear more acceptable to a wider audience. John Fetterman should know better.
In the 1930’s antisemitism was sane-washed in Germany. It was popularized in the media, games, even children’s books. Eventually it became ‘normal.’ Trump has been using this tactic to his advantage. Labeling Democrats as the “radical left wing lunatics.” Any media organization that paints Trump in an unfavorable light are branded as “fake news” and “enemies from within.” His base has been thoroughly indoctrinated. So much so that they stormed congress in 2021 to try to keep in him power.
America now faces a bitter four years ahead. Trump 2.0, more emboldened and more enabled than ever, will take the reigns of the federal government soon. His orbit will be filled with sycophants. Federal agencies will be handed over to those who either want to destroy them, or use them for their personal profit. The justice department will be weaponized to attack liberals, attack the media, and prosecute anyone that he deems to be a threat to his power.
Trump is planning, depending on his ability to find the funds to do so, to build 21st century versions of concentration camps. The state of Texas has already volunteered land upon which to build them. He wants to use them to deport illegal immigrants, and their US citizen family members.
He’s floated the idea of rounding up homeless people and putting them in his camps. It’s sounding like 1930’s Germany. Who will be next to be sent to his camps? The radical left lunatics? Fake news? LGBTQ+ and transgender people? Non-Christians?
He doesn’t even need to build camps, prosecute people, or deport them. He can repeat his tactics from January 6th. He can just rile up his base and ‘suggest’ that something needs to be done about these people.
Resisting Trump, rooting against Trump, is not rooting for the nation to fail. It is working to preserve Democracy while we still can.