This Blog Kills Fascists

Today, I went out the Capitol Theatre to see the movie Silence and afterwards, I headed to one of my favorite coffee shops where I bought a copy of the Plain Dealer. After a few minutes of flipping through the paper on this historically tragic day, I decided to turn my attention to the copy of Stephen King's Firestarter that I had also brought along. It was the less horrifying option. To quote Network's Howard Beale: "I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everyone knows things are bad."

Many of you probably saw the horror movie footage that was the inauguration of Donald Trump as America's 45th President. I couldn't bring myself to do so. I cannot bear to even fathom the notion of that man as the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth. I refuse to accept or acknowledge the Presidency of a bigoted, thin-skinned, hot-tempered, fascistic, misogynistic bully who has the maturity and temperament of a spoiled child (which is essentially what he is). Trump isn't the leader of the free world. He's a loudmouthed frat boy who's had too much to drink and tries to pick a fight with the toughest guy at the bar. In most cases, however, the toughest guy at the bar doesn't have access to nuclear weapons that will blow the rest of us to smithereens. Nor will I respect the Vice Presidency of the rabidly homophobic Mike Pence, whose assaults on the LGBT community (including his support for cruel and ineffective "conversion therapy" and the passing of Indiana's discriminatory Religious Freedoms Restorations Act) should have every citizen concerned. Nor do I respect the appointment of a white supremacist like Steve Bannon as his presidental advisor or the viciously racist Jeff Sessions as his pick for Attorney General. Or any of the other embarrassing criminals, reprobates, and all-around sleazeballs that Trump has invited to slither their way into positions of powers that they don't deserve and will abuse in order to fit their twisted, hateful agendas. There really was no reason to release a sequel to Independence Day last year. Those aliens couldn't destroy the White House any worse than Trump and his cabinet are already doing.

Today, I read that the Trump Administration is already planning to cut funding for the National Endowment of the Arts, which scares me, but doesn't surprise me in the least. After all, the first step to fascism is to take away the voices of dissent. The weapons that Trump fears the most aren't the semi-automatics being stockpiled by angry white men preparing for their imaginary showdown with the government that they irrationally hate and fear. It's the words of those who would dare speak out against him and expose him as the fraud that he is. It's the voices of the oppressed, the angry, the bullied, the ones who have had enough of his bullshit and aren't going to go down without a fight. The most dangerous weapons in the world aren't the ones covered by the Second Amendment. They're the ones covered by the First Amendment.

On behalf of artists everywhere, I urge everyone to fight back the best way they know how: with their art. Write a poem. Sing a song. Write a story or a play. Paint a picture. Sculpt a bust. Draw a cartoon. Write a blog post like this one. Make a film. Every piece of art you make is a raised middle finger to Trump and his odious administration. Every creative gesture is a "fuck you" to a dumb and uncultured society that would allow someone so hateful to occupy the most powerful political office in the country. They can cut our funding, but they won't cut off our words. They won't tell us to shut up. They can mock us by calling us "crybabies" and "special snowflakes", but you know what you get when a have a million snowflakes?

An avalanche. And we're coming to pull a landslide on those motherfuckers.