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. 

Open Letter of Apology

An Open Letter of Apology

To Our Friends Around the World

I am sitting at my desk, reading one awful tale after another describing the Decline and Fall of the American Empire. Tony Scalia, one of our lesser Supreme Court Justices, in open court, declares that our African-American population is largely too stupid to attend the more rigorous colleges and universities and should be content with attending schools of less demanding programs.  Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for the presidency, declares that we should ban anyone and everyone of the Muslim religious belief from entering our country. Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Tony Jindal--three lesser Republican lights— share a platform with a pastor who believes we should kill Gays. Carly Fiorina, who appears not to understand the difference between truth and lies, openly supports a viciously negative and entirely false video about Planned Parenthood, and then becomes upset when people think she should share the blame for the terrorist killer who shot up one of their clinics and killed three people. 

And it goes on and on, with each republican rant worse than the last.

Many believe that the official ISIS strategy includes the carrying out of outrageous acts of terrorism with the explicit aim of outraging their opposition such that their opponents will carry out equally stupid and outrageous acts. They wish to both provoke a war between Islam and the West and to use their outrageous program to attract more young people willing to commit suicide for the imbecilic cause of the pseudo-Caliphate of ISIS.  And, because they seem to be succeeding, our Republican Party seems to have adopted this strategy for their presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, everyone is yelling that the regular Muslim people, and even the normal Muslim preacher/mullahs should openly decry the outrages being committed routinely by ISIS/Daesh, Qaeda, and the Taliban.  And yes, it would be nice if the Mullahs et al would begin publically preaching against these crazed creatures who almost daily despoil the name of Islam—and many do preach against these idiots.

But, hold on here, folks.  We can observe daily killings by both “normal” and crazy Christian Americans in our own nation.  I believe the number of folks killed by guns within our fair country exceeds 30,000 per year.  Yet, while the stupid people think it’s just fine and dandy for the Trump to propose banning all Muslims from entering our country, it is apparently not ok to propose new forms of gun control. We have greater controls over folks driving cars, buying drugs, and gaining access to certain forms of medical care than we have on gun sales.

So, I am here to apologize to the people of the world, especially to our friends in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany and India for our failure as a formerly great nation to adopt civilized standards of international behavior.  We used to be better than this, although we have a chequered past (think Japanese internment camps, think slavery). We attacked Fascist states who were attempting to impose their savage will on the civilized world, and we succeeded in beating back their attack.

But we have grown complacent and sloppy in our approach to the world. Despite being the most heavily armed nation on the globe, we are acting like a bunch of terrified stupid children.  Apparently that old thing about:

“Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

has now vanished from our consciousness.  Now we only want white, Christian bankers and tekkies to join us.  The fact that the republican clown show, headed by the chief clown, The Trump, can openly espouse lies and outrageous demands, and we sit quietly while pastors preach violence is a sign that we are headed downhill and rapidly. We risk becoming a mighty pariah state.

So, I apologize for what we seem to be. But really, we are not all imbecilic fascists, even if the Faux News Network makes us seem that way (thank you Rupert Murdoch). I am hoping that any responsible, intelligent republicans still alive will begin to do what we have been advocating for responsible Muslims—speak out folks. I imagine Lincoln, Eisenhower, et al, spinning madly in their graves. It is up to you, the living republicans, to tell us once again that Trump, Cruz, Fiorina, et al, do not represent what your party stands for. Nor do they represent what America stands for. I thought we were better than this.

Perhaps I am wrong.