Will We Continue?

 OK, I am now having serious difficulties knowing how to respond to the day-to-day goings on in America. Plus, many places around the world seem to be afflicted with similar crazy behavior. Putin alone practically denies all semblance of a civilized human being. Clearly, he is committing mass murder on a daily basis, with the full and complete approval of the Russian people. And please don’t argue that, “Oh all the Russian people don’t understand what he is doing”.  Maybe. But I think that, like here, they prefer to believe the lies coming from the Russian state media. It’s the same here. People who watch Fox News pretend they are getting real news, whereas we, the non-Foxies, understand that Fox is brainwashing them daily. Exactly the same way that Russian media is brainwashing Russians.  The difference, of course, is that in Russia, Putin has eliminated any alternatives to Russian state media. Here, Americans actually watch Fox News because they prefer the lies emanating therefrom.

So, in one sphere, we have mass murder being committed on a daily basis, and we are unable to prevent it, because we have a lunatic running Russia who might decide to obliterate the world via nuclear weapons should we challenge him openly.  And in our own personal sphere, America, we seem to be inundated daily with mass stupidity from a now defunct republican party that seems incapable of operating on anything like a normal human basis.  Remember after that election that delivered to us “The Squad”. Remember the Squad? Here from Wiki: “The Squad is a group of six Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives. It was initially composed of four women elected in the 2018 United States House of Representatives elections: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. They have since been joined by Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri following the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections. The Squad is well known for being among the most progressive and left-wing members of the United States Congress.”

All were elected under the age of 50, have been supported by the Justice Democrats political action committee, and are on the left wing of the Democratic Party. All except Omar and Tlaib were initially elected to Congress after unseating incumbents in primary challenges. All represent safe seats with Cook Partisan Voting Index scores of at least D+25.

The Squad has been said to represent the demographic diversity of a younger political generation and the advocacy of progressive policies such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, which have sometimes clashed with their party's leadership. Ocasio-Cortez coined the "Squad" name in an Instagram post a week after the 2018 election. The term and the group went viral thereafter.

And the Right Wing almost immediately began hating on The Squad, mostly I think because they were women, and partly because they are liberals, which means that they think everyone should have health care, and that workers should be paid a livable working age.  I know, horrors, right?  So republicans hated The Squad.

But what do they offer instead? Well, we have what we might call the ContraSquad.  And who are they? Well, let’s see, we have Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorne, Josh Hawley, Matt Gaetz. I could go on but you know who they are.  And what do they believe? Well, think Jewish Space Lasers causing the wildfires in California. See, if Stephen Colbert, or Trevor Noah had said that, we would just laugh, because it is an obvious comedic idea. When Greene espouses such a thought, we find ourselves wondering, “OK, is she an anti-Semitic Nazi, terminally stupid, or just an evil bitch?” And Boebert? Again from Wiki:

“Boebert supports Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, voted to overturn its results during the Electoral College vote count, and supported the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Boebert opposes measures intended to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and posted misinformation related to face masks and COVID-19 vaccines. She opposes transition to green energy, abortion, sex education, gender-affirming treatments for transgender minors, and non-heterosexual marriage. She supports an isolationist foreign policy and minimizing immigration to the United States.”

And so the list goes on. This Conservative “Squad” seems to be a weird group of folks who defy common sense and logic much of the time.

And then we have folks such as Mitch McConnell, who seems bent on acting so politically charged that he has vowed to deny any further Democratic SCOTUS appointees (none on the horizon at the moment) any kind of a Congressional hearing.

So, it is not simply that we have an opposing political party challenging Democrats. It’s that we seem to have an almost unrecognizable political party, masquerading as republicans. I keep asking myself, “whatever happened to the republican party”? I actually voted for a republican when I was very young—Dwight Eisenhower. And, although I did not vote for him, I actually worked under the Ronald Reagan Administration in the Department of Health and Human Services.  I well remember Richard Nixon, and The Watergate affair. Heavens, I even watched the McCarthy Hearings—remember those?

And so, I actually understand that republicans are, or at least used to be, a sort of semi-responsible opposition force, even if I disagreed with much of their thinking. If after the data came in, we understood that Reagan’s belief in the Laffer Curve (reduce taxes and revenue will rise to a point) made him seem intellectually diminished.  But I never thought Reagan would destroy America, or our system of Government. Now I am no longer sure.  There is some weird effect operating, perhaps enabled or even amplified by Fox News, that has created a disconnect between the utterances from the republican party operatives and any sense of logic or humanity. And I no longer can recognize any underlying logic, aside from this: Power to the Winner. Nothing else matters. 

Perhaps this disconnect from reality can be attributed to Donald Trump, who is the Compleat Narcissist, and, for him, Power really is everything. To him, nothing else matters. That he is enabled by Fox News is clear. But less clear, is why the American public is still on board. The republican party leadership attempted to overthrow our government—that is what January 6^th was all about.  And yet, republican voters still cling to the Trump mantra.  And I find that frightening to the point that I now see the possibility of a complete failure of our entire system of government, perhaps to a point that we could wind up looking like Russia—Trump’s presumed model. We may know fairly soon actually. Our first window into the future is the upcoming 2022 election, where control of the Senate is at stake. And then, of course, we have the next 2024 election, where we determine who will lead our entire government. Should that be Donald Trump and his coterie, then it is on our heads collectively. That awful event can only occur should the American people decide they want to move to an autocratic style government.

So, think hard folks. It is all in our minds and our hands. Vote, and Vote carefully. It is up to us.