Still Awaiting That God Thing

 It’s odd how, with Trump off the stage, my need to yell back instantly is eroding. Instead, I find myself sitting at home, reading the news, or just admiring the day, while biting my nails and feeling a bit more depressed each day, while awaiting the final destruction of that place we call America.

Exactly how our destruction will come about remains unclear to me. Carol and I have discussed often where we would be planning to migrate, were we 30 again.  New Zealand is our most frequent location of choice. And why would we be migrating?

Well, I see continued growth in that segment of our population that seems to favor either a Fascist government, some form of religious monarchy, or maybe the simpler separation of our Nation into two or more separate nation states.  See, I am still having difficulty with the fact that some 74 million people actually voted for Donald Trump, even after having watched and listened to him for four years as our pseudo-president.  And apparently, if you speak with most of them today, they still use terms like “Trump was the best president in our history”.  When I hear that, I begin to choke. No, surely you are joking. You mean to say, “ . . . the worst president in our history” right??  But no, they mean “best president”.

We used to think of Ronald Reagan as the President who made it ok again to be a racist.  Well, wasn’t that an exaggeration. Between 2016 and 2020, we learned that Donald Trump seriously made it ok again to be:

a.       Racist

b.      Nazi

c.       Misogynist

d.      Mostly ignorant of world affairs

e.      Corrupt

f.        Mostly ignorant of domestic affairs

g.       Liar

h.      Mostly ignorant.

And he also told some folks that of course he supported their zealous anti-abortion principles, thereby acquiring the Evangels as his most fervent supporters. I thought his position there was at best amusing, since he probably caused more abortions than anyone on the eastern Seaboard.  He does love to screw.

And his Evangel supporters have apparently taken over some states (Texas comes to mind) completely, with their legislature and gubernator supporting laws making all forms of abortion illegal after six weeks, i.e., before most pregnant women know they are pregnant.

And then there is the anti-voting stance of today’s republicans.  Apparently, it has become clear to the republican party that when Americans are allowed to vote freely, they tend towards more progressive candidates, that is to say, Democrats.  So, if republicans are ever to be able to dominate within states or, heaven forfend America, they are going to have to restrict voting by people who are likely to vote for democrats. And so, republican parties everywhere are working hard to devise ways to make it difficult for people of color, Hispanic folks, and even the elders of our Land to vote.  Oh, and then there is that gerrymandering thing.  And what is gerrymandering you ask? Well, from Wiki, “Gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish an unfair political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating the boundaries of electoral districts, which is most commonly used in first-past-the-post electoral systems.

Two principal tactics are used in gerrymandering: "cracking" (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) and "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts).

In addition to its use achieving desired electoral results for a particular party, gerrymandering may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, or class group, such as in Northern Ireland where boundaries were constructed to guarantee Protestant Unionist majorities. Gerrymandering can also be used to protect incumbents, as in politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians. One republican stated "Redistricting is like an election in reverse. It's a great event. Usually the voters get to pick the politicians. In redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters.

The term gerrymandering is named after American politician Elbridge Gerry, Vice President of the United States at the time of his death, who, as Governor of Massachusetts in 1812, signed a bill that created a partisan district in the Boston area that was compared to the shape of a mythological salamander. The term has negative connotations and gerrymandering is almost always considered a corruption of the democratic process. See that’s the key. It is a corruption or perversion of democracy. I guess as long as we elect humans, we run the risk of electing corrupt humans (think Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, that Greene creature, Louie Gohmert . . . oh my so many corrupt, so little time.

And it isn’t as though any of this stuff is new. It’s been going on as long as we have had politicians and elections.  But, now, in America, all of these corruptions seem to be expanding at the same time.  I don’t know whether we can blame Donald Trump solely. Surely Rupert Murdoch plays a role here with his Fox Fake News folks.  It is almost as though America is devolving into a series of corrupt cults—the Racists, the Nazi’s, the Christian Taliban, etc. And then our politicians, at least our republican politicians, are turning into the equivalent of organized crime mobsters.  So, cults led by organized crime mobs.

And then there’s the rest of us, standing by watching this amazing transformation occur in front of our noses.  Now, so far, “the rest of us” seems to be still vaguely in the majority. I mean Biden did receive 81,283,09 votes, the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. But still, Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast.  And then we have that “electoral college” thing, where the candidate who wins the most votes does not necessarily win the race. See, in America we don’t actually trust the American people.  So we invented this thing called the Electoral College. The United States Electoral College is the group of presidential electors required by the Constitution to form every four years for the sole purpose of electing the president and vice president. Each state appoints electors according to its legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation (senators and representatives). Federal office holders cannot be electors. Of the current 538 electors, an absolute majority of 270 or more electoral votes is required to elect the president and vice president. If no candidate achieves an absolute majority there, a contingent election is held by the United States House of Representatives to elect the president, and by the United States Senate to elect the vice president.

Isn’t that a fun system? It allows us to make believe the people elect the president, whereas a small group of folks is delegated to actually select the president.  That is, by the way, how Donald Trump lost the popular vote, but succeeded to the presidency anyway.  It’s called “How to Elect an Idiot-Malenfant to the Highest Office in the Land”, a book obviously written by an evil comic genius.

And so, how close are we to destroying our system of government altogether? Well, clearly, it is hard to determine. We may know in 2022, but surely in 2024. Remember all those 74 million folks who voted for the idiot-malenfant Donald Trump?  Well, they are definitely going to vote again. And their legislators are busily working as we speak to erect gerrymandered districts and to corrupt that Electoral College thing.  So, depending on how successful they are, we may obtain a new form of government in the next few years.  And so, “Be Careful What You Wish For” folks. 2022, and then 2024 are just around the corner. We’ll see.  But that’s why my wife and I keep talking about where we would be moving were we only 30-somethings. Remain hopeful, but get off your asses and go to the polls and vote.