Mourn, or Else

 

 

 "The past two weeks showed us what that future looks like. The administration and its deep-pocketed allies sent up a trial balloon: Mourn, or else.

 What we have seen in the wake of Kirk’s assassination is an old Red Scare playbook, when corporate antagonism to New Deal reforms dovetailed with political witch hunts. Once again, state forces are colluding with corporations to erase ideas they do not like by harassing people who represent ideas that they don’t want to exist. This time, the witch hunt for bad people with bad ideas is guided by an unhinged theory of unitary executive power, a rapaciously illegitimate Supreme Court and corporate interests that control both the medium and the message. If you have not experienced the kind of supercharged harassment this environment breeds, count yourself lucky. But don’t count yourself safe. Academics, professors, teachers, librarians and other civil servants have been living under the censorious threat of defamation, stalking and politically motivated violence since Red Scare techniques went digital. Trump is promising to do the same to anyone else he considers an enemy."

read essay by Tressie McMillan Cottom