WednesdayJuly 1, 2020
123 Days until the election on November 3rd
203 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
Maya Angelou said (and I probably am misquoting a bit) “When someone tells you who they are believe them the first time.”
Yeah, that’s our problem. We don’t believe. Not the first time, nor the second, It’s not until “WE” get smacked in the face over and over again that some of us say either, “Well maybe, I dunno.” Or “I don’t believe it.”
Like Trump and the snake, you knew who he was and what he was before you picked him up. Now that he’s doing exactly what he has done all his life don’t act surprised.
Steve Benen in his book “The IMPOSTORS” lays out the case that we’ve seen play out for years and that is that the Republican Party is no longer interested in governing, only in holding onto power. Yet, some want to believe otherwise.
Look, I get it. Co-equal branches of government and all that. Makes one think that there are two political parties in this country and yeah they have different ideas on how the country should be run, but that is no longer true. There hasn’t been a cohesive vision, strategy, or plan on anything by the Republican Party for years – decades, and it shows no abatting.
Why is that? Why has the Republican Party abandoned the idea of governing? Simply, because it is easier not to, and it is easier to stay in power if you don’t agree with your opponents and you don’t do anything so you can’t be blamed for having done something.
That’s hypocritical, I know. It’s cynical, yeah. But it’s true.
Many people in Richmond, where I live, got good jobs at the local Dupont plant. They got nice pensions too. They talk about the good old days, if we could only go back to them. They seem to forget that Mr. Dupont was forced to cough up the pensions. He didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart and it damn sure wasn’t a Republican administration that made him do it.
Then there’s Walmart. Sam Walton was forced by the courts to pay overtime. It was the law and he ignored it. He was pissed. He handed out the checks with the warning that anyone who cashed them would be fired. The good old days. Rock on.
Now we have the Confederate monuments. Remember our heritage! Yeah. Remember that in the 1920s when the Jim Crow laws weren’t working anymore people pissed off about that started putting up those statues. This had nothing to do with the Civil War, which some try to imply. It’s like putting up statues to other opponents. Ben Franklin never spoke to his son after the Revolutionary War because his son was a Tory. Seems we forgot that history is written by the winners. Why are the southerners whining? They lost. They are losers. Oh sorry, let’s reach across the aisle. Oh wait, you didn’t. Yet you want someone else to do it because you whine? Forget Hell! Is the bumper sticker that is sold in those backwoods convenience stores in the south with a Rebel soldier on it waving a sword. No, I don’t forget. Hey, it’s in the name of the soldier – Rebel. In other words Traitor. America – Love it of Leave it. Isn’t it time you left?
Oh sorry, there’s no where to go because no one wants you. Europe says they don’t want us. We weren’t invited to the dance. Why? Seems the Republican governors who have demonstrated over and over again that they can’t contain this virus have made it’s spread their number one priority. Yeah. That’s right. I mean how else can you account for the fact that our country can’t stop the spread of this thing? Governors have actively worked to keep the virus alive and moving through our population. It has gotten so bad throughout the south that their hospitals systems are on the verge of being overrun.
What to do? Oh, maybe wear a mask you say? Good move. Too bad you are a little late to the dance.
Then we have the President and the whole business about Russia paying to assassinate our troops. Every time the White House comes out with a lame excuse, the press comes out with more evidence to countermand it. The president didn’t know. (Yes he did. It was in his daily briefing on February 27th.) It may have been in his daily brief, but he doesn’t read. He has to be told – orally. (He was. John Bolton told him. Oh and it was in intelligence briefings a year earlier too.) Well, you know if it isn’t directly about him he doesn’t listen. (Yeah, we know.)
Sarah Cooper the comedian who lip-syncs to his words has a new video out. She is funny, but it’s not only the lip-sync, but if you listen to what she is lip-syncing to, you realize that it is utter gibberish and or incoherent stupidity. It’s not stuff we haven’t heard before. It’s not like she had to go out of her way to find some weird little tidbit. This is the kind of thing he says all the time in public. This is who he is. This is what he does. He spouts nonsense as a matter of course.
The Republicans in charge, in Congress, in positions of power around the country have carefully and deliberately set a course of no governance. They have no intention of governing. They have either lost the ability to govern or is the case most of the time have decided to not govern because it is both hard and it doesn’t necessarily get them re-elected. Run on their record? What? And have someone say they don’t like what they did? Hell no. It’s easier to say, “Can’t blame me. I didn’t do it.” What they leave out is “I did nothing.”
That’s not true. They’ve stood in the way of any progress. Not progressive ideas, progress in general. Look at health care, John Boehner said in the over twenty five years he was in Congress he never saw a Republican health care plan. What did they do when they took power in the House? They voted to repeal Obamacare over forty times. What did they offer instead? Nothing.
What has the Trump administration done on health care? Here we are in the middle of a pandemic and his lawyers are in court trying to get what Congress hasn’t gutted to get rid of Obamacare altogether. What do they propose instead? Nothing.
Does it defy logic? Yes and no.
If you are operating under the illusion that there are two parties in this country and that when one or the other is in power they have different philosophies of government then you are operating under a misconception. The Republican Party of today has no interest in governance. Sound bites is as far as it goes.
Sorry. But they keep showing you and me, who they are. Let’s believe them.
123 Days until the election on November 3rd
203 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
PS Seven Headed Naga – Angkor
I never get over being astounded at their
appalling cynicism and the fact that much of the electorate hasn’t a clue!