Freedom is fragile – we have to use it or lose it

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

I rarely become involved on Twitter, but when a fellow Galwegian ridiculed Galway’s protesting women and what he called their “silly little march” I dived in.

Maybe I acted out of character because I’d been wrong about Trump, erroneously believing he’d become more realistic once ensconced in the White House. Instead, his first outburst in office chilled me to the bone.

Even more than his pussy grabbing and vile bigotry, I was deeply disturbed by the nonsensical claims of crowd size at his inauguration. Seeing him and his team adjust reality on Day One in the job, l felt truly fearful for the first time. Insisting the media were liars, he brazenly denied the plain facts paraded in front of our eyes.

History shows these behaviours are an hors d’oeuvres to dictatorship.

Do I think that America will become a fascist state?

No, I don’t, not for a second.

America fought a war of rebellion to exist, a civil war to become one nation. From Martin Luther King to Black Lives Matter, protest pulses around America’s veins, and they, the people will not allow for totalitarianism.

With personal freedoms and human rights now seriously under threat in America, protest and resistance will prove more vital than ever. While we must respect the democratic process, we first have to respect each other.

Electoral systems are inherently flawed, and sometimes they spit out a dangerous answer.

That’s when you have to stand up and be counted; to get up off your arse and stand by people of colour; women; the disabled; anybody who justifiably feels threatened, because if you wait, there’ll be none left to stand up for you.

More, you do it because you’re a compassionate human being, driven by what you know is right and good.

What you don’t do is sit back, comfy and safe in your West of Ireland home and mock those fighting for their own freedom, or others displaying solidarity with them.

Yes, there’s something gratingly irritating about Generation Snowflake, the young people whose worst nightmare has been an ill-fitting pair of jeans, out on the streets going boohoo, my candidate lost, but now this is about much more than them.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.