Thread by @BradLaw77

I saw George Takei speak last night about his life and career.

A life that has seen Japanese internment camps, the violence that accompanied the civil rights era, the struggle for LGBT recognition and basic dignities.

And a career that saw him offered roles as humiliating stereotypes and having to keep his most important relationships a secret to protect it.

And at the end of all this, being imprisoned as a child without due process and having his families property and freedoms stripped from them.

Watching people of color get fire hosed in the street and beaten with clubs for basic human freedoms.

Being on the most progressive show on TV at the time and still not being able to be fully himself because it would cost him everything.

Living almost his entire adult life before getting to make his husband his husband and have the basic securities we all take for granted.

After all of that! He still, when asked, totally and completely and without reservation loves the United States of America and believes firmly and completely in the promise of this country.

After all of that! The man is still a patriot.

Not in the flag waving, lazy, lip service sense of the word. In the do the work, ACTUALLY make America great, do it every day, love your neighbor and help them kind of way.

If a man who has had a front row seat for the worst versions of this country every time they cropped up in his lifetime can still see the hope in what it stands for.

The very least the rest of us could do is try to protect it from the self-serving, toady of a foreign war criminal that now threatens its vital institutions, its security, and the hopes and dreams it was supposed to offer everyone who came to its shores.

If we can’t do that much, if we can’t keep the awareness that America is better than and deserves better than Trump and if we can’t fight to see a better day when the march towards a better America starts heading back in the right direction.

Not a direction of lies, payoffs, corruption, pocket lining, and selling us out to the murderer Putin for personal gain.

If we can’t defend our nation from the Traitor Trump and the racism and self dealing and hate mongering that got him to power.

Then we risk coming to a day when @GeorgeTakei is the only person left who deserves the American dream.

#America #TrumpKnew #TraitorTrump #Hope #Life #Resist #GOPComplicit

A big thank you to @caveatnyc for hosting the event, as well.