Day 99 – What can we do Mr. Natural?

Tuesday April 27, 2021

Someone asked me, “What can we do?” That is to stop the attempts to end the democracy as we have known it. The first step in stopping the destruction of our democracy is awareness. Be aware of what is happening. The second step is to make others aware. The next step is to act, act to stop it. The best way to stop it is to vote and to educate. It’s a long and a medium and yes a short term strategy: educate, vote, and awareness.

Let us not be fooled by patriotic sounding words or attempts at trying to convince you of logical thinking both those ships sailed loaded with hypocrites and fools. We are in an all out power struggle. Let’s review the game film – just in case anyone has any illusions as to what is going on. By the way, much, if not all, of this is outlined plainly in Democracy in Chains. That book shows their game plan, and it hasn’t changed – ever. 

Who wants to end our democracy? Russia and every authoritarian state, the rich, most companies, the Christian right, the right, the white supremacists, the neo-nazis, the militias, the conservatives, and I’ve probably missed a few. I know, someone’s also going to say, “Oh no, I’m one of those you named and I’m not for ending our democracy…” Okay little Susie lemme put it to you this way Are you for everyone getting to vote? Are you for counting everyone in this country in the Census the way the Constitution says? That means everyone: legal, illegal, black, brown, white, red, tan, green… Are you for freedom? I mean would you let an arab dressed in full regalia live next door to you? What about a person whom you can’t figure out if they are man, woman or something in between? Yeah. Thought so.

So let’s go back to the game film. Let’s go back to 2000. Florida. W. Bush did not win Florida. It was awarded to him. There was enough evidence to suggest that something was deeply wrong in that election. There were the butterfly ballots that confused a lot of people. There were the pre-punched ballots that once run through the counting machines produced hanging chads. There were just enough of these things that W won by 357 votes. Now that was strange that he won heavily Democratic areas. Areas that every pollster said, “No Way.” Then what did he do. He started two wars. One of which was under false pretenses. Wrecked the economy, which he could have saved and saved Social Security, but he didn’t. He also appoint Supreme Court Justices, which continued the line of Scalia conservatism, which is not where the country is at. Remember his VP was Dick Cheney who kept everything in big safes. What was in those safes? Are we ever going to see the contents? Nevermind.

Then came Obama and he was stymied by McConnell and this notion that the Republicans wanted to negotiate and do something good for the country. After what they did on health care and on holding up his Supreme Court nominee there can be little doubt that any of that is true. In the 2010 mid-term the Republicans found a way to flip a lot of state legislatures to their column. This allowed them to then gerrymander the hell out of those states to keep them in their control.

Then came Trump, incompetence, greed, and stupidity is the best way to characterize that time. However, he managed to bungle and undercount the 2020 Census so that we really don’t know what our population is, and based on that screwed up Census, it looks like they have managed to throw more control their way.

But now, oh boy, a new tactic. Lying. I know, you’re thinking, “What’s new about that?” Well, they used to gaslight. By that I mean they used to pretend to do one thing while really doing another or to say one thing and do another, but now? Why bother? Now they just make stuff up. There is no attempt to cover it up. Once again, why bother? Reagan got rid of the fairness doctrine in media and he also allowed media companies to get bigger and bigger, taking over whole media markets. Now most of the country’s media is controlled by a few conservative media giants. They have integrated news, opinion, and entertainment so that it is hard to tell one from the other. They have slipped corporate opinion into newscasters mouths so that you think you are hearing news when really you aren’t. This has been going on for some time but now? We’ve got a new angle. Lying. Outright, no attempt at anything else but outright lying. 

The Republicans and their media buddies are pushing a narrative that Biden doesn’t like meat. 

That would be interesting to figure out where that came from. I mean, like, “how did they misconstrue what Biden said?” However, in this case Biden never said anything. The Republicans made it up, and they are pushing it. There is nothing to the story. No evidence, no “honest mistake.” Nothing. 

In other bizarreness the Republicans in Arizona are doing a recount of the votes in Maricopa County. Who is doing it? A Quanon group. Yep. And what will the results be? Some say it won’t make any difference. I disagree. I think they might announce a significant number of more votes for Trump. Why? Because that’s what they want. Also, they are hiding what they are doing, and they have people in there with blue ballpoint pens. That is absolutely forbidden in an election recount. Black and blue pens are what people mark their ballots with. If you are going to do a recount, and you want the results to be legit, then you don’t want people in their supposedly counting ballots with an instrument that could be used to change a ballot. But that’s what they’ve got. Regardless of what they claim it can’t be legitimate because they have tarnished the process. Not only that but not the ballots have been spoiled. What does the head of the recount say? Oh gosh, he didn’t know. He thought only black pens could be used on ballots, not blue. Or is it the other way around? Who knows? Who cares? The ballots have been ruined. So, at a minimum a Q’anon group has been given a bunch of money by the Arizona Republicans. Is there a difference? I mean are the Arizona Republicans and the folks in Arizona that are Q’anon believers are they the same? In the great two circle Venn diagram of this I guess there are some that aren’t.