We are I truly believe facing a date that will go down in history. A date that will be as important in the history books as June 6, 1944. The choice on the ballot is literally Freedom or Fascism. We know the candidates and which one stands for which. But there are people who are afraid. Voters and election workers are being intimidated. Business leaders and politicians and even major news outlets too. THAT is what fascists like Trump count on and it’s worked a lot more than it should. Early voting is underway and there’s not much time left so millions of Americans need to grow a goddam spine and right freaking now!
I wrote a long, “classic Denis” article and realized things are much more simple than what I’d described in detail. Yes, Nov. 5 will be a modern version of what’s known as “The Longest Day” – June 6, 1944 and the D-Day invasion. It will boil down to people who believe in freedom wading to the polls, and election workers to the counting rooms do fight a battle against a prepared, fascist enemy. To defeat that hateful ideology eighty years ago took far more will and courage than is being asked of Americans now. It’s outrageous to have to talk about this. Still, Republicans have long engaged in voter suppression and violence has at times been part of it. Of course in my youth it was more directed – as in against minorities. The threats being made now (and some action) are real and to be taken seriously. Still, I ask and in fact BEG my fellow Americans to look back at what transpired before most of us were born.
Threats? Yes, they are credible and not to be taken lightly. But no friends, they pale in comparison to the outright dangers those who took part in D-Day (and their loved ones back home) knew they’d face. Those airborne troops who jumped from the sky during the night and the wave after wave of soldiers (and some sailors too) that stormed those invasion beaches knew they’d face a hail of bullets from well-fortified and prepared positions. They knew there would be thousands of land mines buried on the beaches. They knew artillery and mortar rounds would rain down on them – every square inch of those beaches had been pre-sighted. The airborne troops dropping behind the lines knew many of the drop zones had been flooded, and that there would be more German defenders than allied troops, again with the advantage of prepared positions.
THAT was all known. Even for those who managed to convince themselves they’d somehow survive D-Day they knew an awful lot of those they’d trained with would not. As expected casualties on both sides were appalling. But Americans and our allies took the fight right to Hitler’s forces. So when I hear about the threats being made against election workers, and voters too, when I see things like something Ursula wrote about here on PZ today about COWARDS of great influence, politicians and business leaders including the heads of major news outlet being afraid to stand up to Trump, to do what they know is right and endorse Harris it makes me angry.
Yes, some violence has already taken place and there will surely be more. It’s not nothing to those who face the threats or who will be actual victims of actual violence. Still, Nov. 5 is every bit as important in defeating the forces of authoritarianism, outright fascism as D-Day was eighty years ago. Of this I’m sure – those who dropped from the sky or emerged from landing craft on the beaches faced far greater danger. Their loved ones back home feared that awful knock on the door with the telegram. But our country as a whole worked together to prepare us for that invasion. I’m not kidding. There were those who would do the fighting (and dying) and those back home supporting them and the war effort.
How in the HELL can any American who wants this country to remain free stand back and just allow Trump/conservative voter intimidation and other vote suppression f**kery to put Trump back in the WH? He’s literally telling us he’ll be the fascist we have long believed him to be. THIS time he’s got an actual playbook in the form of Project 2025 and a team of ruthless and (unlike Jared and his pals) knowledgeable/capable people already at work to implement it!
Yes, many poll/election workers will face threats. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure we have their backs. We can mount our own demonstrations in the streets proclaiming support for them. We can if we know any of them volunteer to keep watch on their home and loved ones. If we vote in person, whether early voting or on election day and see MAGA goobers trying to physically intimidate people (including carrying weapons in states that allow them) we can pointedly ignore them. Hell, put on a Harris hat after voting, take our your camera and start snapping pictures of THEM! And cars with Trump/MAGA type crap on them. And send it to LE (Local, State and Federal) on flash drives but especially to local LE to let them know that if they happen to be MAGAs, well WE are watching THEM!
Nov. 5 will be a long, long day. Since as this article from Reuters indicates there’s a good chance we won’t know on election night who won. Or even when the sun comes up the next morning. It could be days. But we should at least have a decent idea of where things stand, just as we did in 2020. However as I said it will be a long, agonizing day (and evening). Prior to the Normandy invasion Germany’s Rommel (who was tasked with building up the defenses of the ‘Atlantic Wall’ famously said that when the invasion day came for both the Allies and the Germans the first 24 hours would be critical – that for both it would be “The longest day.” He was right.
However the job wasn’t done. There was still brutal fighting in the days and weeks that followed to finally knock the Germans back and make it clear their days were numbered. Then it was a series of battles for towns/objectives needed to cut off the German’s ability to counter-attack or to defeat the ones that happened. This time, as in 2020 it will be a series of battles in the courts. The rule of law held back in 2020. It’s my belief the way to make sure it does so again is to overwhelm the GOP at the ballot box.
Given what my parent’s generation (my dad was Army Air Corps and served in bombers) went through, especially on D-Day. Given the worry and in so many cases fears of loss of loved ones to battle being realized here at home I ask this: How anyone call themselves an American who believes in freedom allow themselves to be intimidated into not voting, or to work the polls (and the counting of votes) to ensure a fair and accurate election is something I simply can’t abide. Americans by the hundreds of thousands stood in far greater danger to take on fascism. We owe it to them and all who came before, who sacrificed so much so that bit by bit we could move closer to the ideals in our founding documents DESERVE to have THIS generation of Americans stand up and be counted. To vote. To make sure anyone who wants to gets to vote. And to count those votes fairly and accurately.
I for one am confident that there are more of us (a lot more) who believe in freedom than there are Trump MAGA goobers and greedy rich people who will trade freedom for fascism. But that only matters if Americans get over their fears of Trump/MAGA and do their patriotic DUTY.
Freedom or Fascism. That’s the choice America will make for both itself and the free world by the time the polls close on Nov. 5. That’s why I want everyone to start thinking of it as V-DAY. It will be every bit as significant a day as was June 6, 1944. We need to summon the will and courage of America’s ‘Greatest Generation’ and storm the Trump beaches. Americans need to master their fears and step up so that one day the history books will talk about another defeat of Fascism as “V-Day.”
There may be more of those of us who believe in freedom than those who want fascism. The only thing that COUNTS however is which camp gets the most voters.
I think of my dad and all the scars on his torso from the wounds and subsequent surgeries when he was wounded in the skies over Europe. He talked little about the war which was common among the men in my small hometown. Dad was also haunted by what I eventually came to realize he might have had to do had Japan not surrendered. There were six cities targeted and the only reason we didn’t drop a third bomb right after Nagasaki is we still hadn’t produced enough material to make it or the others we assumed might well be needed. He died in 1980 when I was only 23, and still too young to truly understand him but I know how appalled he’d be about Trump.
I think of dad, and others including a guy from our church who never once spoke a word while there. Benji was in the Pacific and survived the Bataan Death March and years of brutal captivity. But most of our veterans of WWII fought in Europe. I wrote a lengthy piece on Kos years back about the sacrifices almost every citizen made to win WWII including rationing that out OUTRAGE people today. We were all in it together. Relatives and friends of those who they knew would be part of the eventual invasion of Europe had reason to be apprehensive. Many found their worst fears realized. And countless more would deal with those who survived that battle and subsequent ones only to not have the same person they knew who signed up to serve be the same person when they came home. Yet almost everyone knew we, and more importantly those who went into harm’s way did what had to be done.
I’m agnostic but if there is an afterlife I can’t imagine how disappointed the Greatest Generation feels about the fear that’s now causing people not to vote, or man the polls or to speak up about the FACT that one of our major Parties has (again) nominated an outright Fascist to be President. And that he’s got a chance of winning!
The OMFG reaction to 9/11 was a warning sign we’d become a nation of wimps. Trump is yet another, and far more dangerous symptom of a larger problem. Millions of us have guts. But are there enough of us? It’s sad to have to even ask such a question but that’s where we are these days.
I was just talking to my husband a few days ago about D Day and how those brave men KNEW that there was an extremely large likelihood that they would die just trying to get to the beach, let alone getting to actually fight the Germans. The fear they had to overcome, to WILLINGLY do their DUTY to fight for our FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY and against FASCISM is something that truly made them the greatest generation. Most of them, like my Dad (a WWII submarine vet) are long gone. But families still hopefully share the stories of the bravery and self sacrifice of these brave men (and the women behind the scenes) to keep this alive so that we never have to do this again. But it is happening with dimwit donnie and, yes, voters, poll workers, and everyone else have to buck up and be just as brave as those TRUE PATRIOTS were back then. They did it, so can we! And we cannot let their memories die out like they are. We must fight for our freedom, democracy and against the gqp fascism that they want for our country. Thank you.
So much of the apprehension felt by the Allied commanders, including and especially FDR, Churchill and Eisenhower was knowledge of the struggles in the Pacific Theater in the years before D-Day. Having served in the Marines I’m a student of all that. If so many of those operations teetered on the edge of disaster (and they did) it was because most of the resources were going to the eventual invasion of Europe. But Nimitz and McCarthur weren’t willing to wait and marshalled whatever resources they had and could convince the Washington brass to give them to take the fight through the Pacific and to Japan’s doorstep. If I were to win the lottery one remote place I’d make sure to visit is the tiny island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll. Betio was where the priceless airstrip we needed was located and Japan knew it. Such was its importance that’s where they placed the huge British guns captured when the British commander surrendered over four times as many troops defending Singapore than attackers to the Japanese. Japan’s finest Marine division headed up the defenses. The whole thing was a cluster-fuck as the planners ignored warnings about the low tides and the landing craft mostly got stranded on the reef that formed the Tarawa atoll. The timetable got screwed up and the bombings from carriers and shelling from battleships was a pittance vs. what had been planned.
When the landing craft grounded on the reef the Marines had to step out almost a thousand yards from the beach and into chest high water. But they did, making their way ever so slowly through the surf to get to shore and in the face of withering fire, both small arms and shelling from the Japanese. Some units lost seventy, eighty percent or more but they kept on pressing forward. THAT is what THAT generation was willing to do for democracy. Over and over. Most Americans don’t know the history of the Pacific but at least because of D-Day they have at least some understanding of what a major seaborne assault on prepared enemy positions takes. And the costs.
The thing is, damned near everyone who took part in D-Day is dead. Worse, those of us who heard from our parents and their generation about that and WWII have passed a certain age and lots of US have been dying off. Basically even a large chunk of those who could give second hand accounts are gone. It doesn’t resonate with Americans the way it once did. I find myself wondering lately whether those descendants of those Americans who failed to turn us into a Fascist country during the 1930s plotted for a time when even those of us who were children of the Greatest Generation started to die off in signficant numbers to make their move.