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Gary Kohls

Duty to Warn

A Warning to Wannabe Pro-violence Fascist Tyrants (and Their Cult Followers): Don’t Disregard the “Living by the Sword – Dying by the Sword” Admonition

By Gary G. Kohls, MD – (8-21-2018)

"Put up your sword; for those who take up the sword will surely die by the sword”: Matthew 26:52

In Norm Foster’s Screwball Comedy the Canadian playwright emulates movies of the film genre of the same name that had their heyday during the Depression. These breezy pictures were known for their clever, rapid fire patter and word play, with droll dialogue and plots penned by witty wags such as Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman.

In We’re In the Money author Andrew Bergman described screen Screwballs as “comedy at once warm and healing, yet off-beat and airy… [Their] overwhelming attractiveness… had to do with the effort they made at reconciling the irreconcilable. They created an America of perfect unity: all classes as one” at a time when capitalism was in deep crisis. Prime examples of Screwballs include Frank Capra’s 1934 It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert and 1938’s You Can’t Take It With You starring Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur plus Leo McCarey’s 1937 The Awful Truth featuring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.

Movie star Eric Roberts has joined the cast of TOWARDS THE MOUNTAINTOP: COMMEMORATING DR. KING and the 55th ANNIVERSARY OF THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON to re-enact Senator Bobby Kennedy.

Mississippi-born actor Eric Roberts has been nominated for an Oscar and three Golden Globes. His big and little screen credits are far too long to list here, but during the 1980s alone, they included “Star 80”, “The Pope of Greenwich Village”, “The Coca-Cola Kid”, “Runaway Train” and “Blood Red” - the only movie Eric acted in with his kid sister, Julia Roberts. More recently, Eric Roberts appeared in “The Dark Knight”, “Entourage”, “The Young and the Restless”, “Glee”, “Hawaii Five-O”, “CSI”, “Suits” and “Grey’s Anatomy” - to name just a few.

Rashida Tlaib has nothing about war or peace on her website. And she’s going to be elected to the seat held by Congressman John Conyers, famous for giving speeches for things like impeaching George W. Bush while telling reporters and colleagues that impeaching Bush needed to be avoided. So, take statements for what they’re worth (very little until followed by action).

Fascism is a disease, a delusion, a toxic worldview. It’s encouraged and manipulated by propaganda. Its characteristics are numerous and to various degrees widespread and long-lasting. At what point their combination in sufficiently extreme degree rises to the level of fascism, as opposed to moderately fascistic tendencies I’m happy to leave to others to decide.

Fascism is not a tendency born into subhuman monsters who threaten the purity of our anti-fascist homeland, as one might suspect when reading posters like “The only good fascist is a dead fascist” at anti-fascist rallies.

Fascism is not easily eliminated and not best eliminated by simply any random opposition to it, even opposition that much resembles it. Eliminating fascism and how best to do it is a reasonable topic of discussion which necessarily involves opposing some tactics as less effective than others. This means that it is possible to oppose an anti-fascist act without being a fascist — although not without getting called a fascist.

A few days after an over-hyped white supremacist rally in Washington, D.C., was massively outnumbered by people opposed to racism, and one day after 187 organizations (more than that now) publicly committed to turning out people to counter Donald Trump’s planned weapons parade with a parade for peace in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, and less than a day after the U.S.

Fascism is a disease, a delusion, a toxic worldview. It’s encouraged and manipulated by propaganda. Its characteristics are numerous and to various degrees widespread and long-lasting. At what point their combination in sufficiently extreme degree rises to the level of fascism, as opposed to moderately fascistic tendencies I’m happy to leave to others to decide.

Fascism is not a tendency born into subhuman monsters who threaten the purity of our anti-fascist homeland, as one might suspect when reading posters like “The only good fascist is a dead fascist” at anti-fascist rallies.

Fascism is not easily eliminated and not best eliminated by simply any random opposition to it, even opposition that much resembles it. Eliminating fascism and how best to do it is a reasonable topic of discussion which necessarily involves opposing some tactics as less effective than others. This means that it is possible to oppose an anti-fascist act without being a fascist — although not without getting called a fascist.

Ilhan Omar is the second person this year to win a Democratic Party nomination for Congress in a Democratic Party district with a platform advocating peace in a way not seen inside the Beltway. The first was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City, whose advocacy for peace I wrote about. Ilhan Omar has just won the nomination from Minnesota’s Fifth District.

“He owned the gun legally and had a concealed carry permit.”

That matters?

In an otherwise neutral and informative article, this reads like a bit of legal fetishism. Another human being is dead, oh so needlessly and pointlessly, thanks to a moment of lethally armed anger in a convenience store parking lot in Clearwater, Florida last month. But the killer’s weapon was bureaucratically correct: clean as a whistle.

This is more than merely irrelevant. There’s something wrong here that our legal system is, apparently, incapable of addressing.

John James Audubon loved to paint birds...and shoot them.

Charles Darwin described the natural world…while blasting away at it. ("I do not believe that anyone could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands," he wrote.)

Theodore Roosevelt founded the National Wildlife Refuge program...while killing rhinos, hippos, elephants, lions and leopards.

Some say we are approaching a "me too" moment in which public figures' love of animal violence will be no different than their abusing a partner or committing rape. It will no longer be ignored or condoned as "boys will be boys."