BETWEEN TWO TERRORS?

I hope not. More than almost anything in my life, I hope not.
Which two terrors do I mean? Let's start with the earliest: the terror that the Inquisition fastened onto Spain in the later 1500s right into the 1600s. That was terror from the top down which claimed to be in search of secret Muslims and Jews with a very occasional Protestant stumbled over.
When the Inquisition came for somebody, it was almost always at night. And once the black robes had their intended victim, they would stop their mouths with something called an 'iron pear' or something like it so they could not cry out. I don't know if any of the Inquisition's victims were ever seen alive again but I'm not putting any money on that possibility. The effect of that terror on all the people was such as to stop any sharing and discussion of religion and spirituality for generations. I can see a connection between the Inquisition and the odious Fascist motto from the Spanish Civil War of 'Abajo la intellgencia! Viva la muerte! (Down with intelligence! Long live death!). Not to mention a connection between both and the current cavernous emptiness of too many Spanish churches!
I can see a day coming when the counterfeit 'Christians' of the Right try to enforce such terror on the rest of us. They who talk of 'the sin of empathy'. Yes, you read that only too rightly! Texas seems to be pointing and maybe paving the way for just such a terror on most of us and the Taney Court 2.0 will surely look the other way!
I devoutly hope I am wrong in this, but as I write I can see a time coming when we may have to use a Terror similar not to what I just outlined but to the French Revolution's Reign of Terror in order to save, renew and multi-racialize democracy and give equity a fighting chance.
Thankfully, it is still true that legal remedies are not yet exhausted. I'm terrifyingly unsure to how close we might be to that point, but we're not there yet. I'll leave it to those better informed than I to tell the rest of us how close we might be to there.
But one thing history should teach us about any and all fascists, whatever moves and informs them: they do not stop until they either have what they want or the decent people have lain enough of them low in the dust! If anyone can tell me and my readers anything which gainsays this, or suggests that today's right-wingers, whether they're labelled 'Christianist', 'Islamist', or anything else, are somehow not anti-democratic and, thus, FASCIST, I for one am all too ready to listen!!
But if they are fascists and, thus, can only be stopped by hot lead and cold steel, it's time for us to take advantage of states like Texas who make it so much easier to buy firearms and ammunition. It's time for us to buy weapons and ammo, form shooting clubs and/or 'militia' groups in order to learn how to use them, then hunker down for when they go over an irrevocable line. Maybe we should start with the nonviolent resistance some of us know and we all admire. The point of no return may be when they choose to mow down our people, cackling hatefully as they do so unhindered by any pigs in blue uniforms!
Once we win, who needs to visit Madame? All the Trumpolaters at all levels, for starters! All QAnon cultists! All the anchors of the right-wing Machine of Lies! All those politicians who have sold whatever passes for their souls to these devils! We must have laws protecting the right to vote and ensuring equal access to the ballot! The Electoral College must GO!! And we must have a Truth-in-Reporting law which will prevent anything like Faux News and worse from ever re-emerging! And the breaking of that law must be a felony of the highest degree!! More than that, I'm not yet sure about.
Again, I hope and literally pray that legal remedies will give us and our country what we need. I'm a palefaced Anglo-Saxon in my sixties and I'd much rather just live peacefully with my wife and our pets. I have no desire to be fighting a civil war in my old age, but if that's what we'll need to preserve and expand democracy and equity, make our country a truly multi-racial democracy, then that is how it will have to be.
So, fellow Democrats, liberals and progressives, let's take advantage of laws which make it easier to get lethal weapons than to vote. We may well need to only too soon.