If You Choose Not To Decide

We are in one of those moments in the United States of America which will ultimately wind up in a history book, should there be anyone left willing to write the book. The last five years saw the bitter fruit of our neglect for the maintenance of our Federal government come to full fruition. We now stand in a place where there is no longer certainty that there will be a United States left in as little as a decade.

It sounds hyperbolic, but when the Founding Fathers fought a war, then wrote a Constitution, it was with the express intent that we preserve, protect, and expand their legacy. The flowery words and flowing script were a down payment on a future that would see The People take the nation to its logical extension. Now, over 240 years later, we have done what we always do: left the maintenance until the structure is on the verge of collapse, hoping to get one more year out of it before we have to do something.

It's not as if the political quandary we face is difficult to figure out. Over the intervening two hundred or so years, we have become a nation of parties, and most often only two, whose names and alignments change but are in essence flips sides of the coin. There is always a Conservative party, struggling to halt the inexorable march forward and the change inherent in, and spawned by, that march, and a Progressive party, coaxing, urging, cajoling, and pleading with people to ride the wave forward toward the future.

Currently, those parties are represented by Republicans and Democrats, respectively. The divide between the two parties, always there but usually bridgeable, is now an ideological chasm, the political version of Monty Python's "Argument Clinic" sketch. Any moderation between the two eroded away through six decades of Republican intransigence and catering to the more sycophantic in the Conservative sphere. What few rope bridges remained between the parties were savagely hacked away in 2016 by the election of a self-important, blustering con artist to the greatest position of power in the land, and his subsequent ravaging of Federal government, akin to Godzilla strolling through downtown Tokyo.

The election of Joe Biden, far from de-escalating the situation, has cemented it. Frankly, one wonders if that wasn't the plan all along: let the bumbling, incompetent President adored by his ignorant legions fall, only to spin it as a "conspiracy," to provide provender for the raging horde of Conservative sheep. It certainly led to a moment -- the January 6th Insurrection -- which for all intents and purposes was an attempt to prevent the President-elect from taking office and therefore worthy of the appellation. The seething rage of what is an increasing minority of Americans was brought to a full boil by their "Dear Leader," who acted as if it could be any other thing but an attempt to reinstall him to office. And his loyalists are, in the true fashion of King George III's two-and-a-half centuries ago, willing to make any excuse for it, short of calling it what it was.

All this said, it is becoming clear -- and you'll forgive glossing over the past few months of revelations and investigations -- that whatever "intent" may have been behind January 6th, whatever planning may have taken place, we are living with the end result being as clear as day. The Republican Party, one of only two viable parties, has thrown its weight behind a complete and total march toward establishing White Christian Fascist hegemony in the country. In States all over the country, Republican Governors and Republican-controlled Legislatures have done their level best to ignore, downplay, or sabotage the response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, have taken steps to retract the necessary and warranted alterations to voting rights to allow everyone equal access to the vote, have begin the systematic dismantling of settled law by attacking the legality of abortion, and have removed meaningful and necessary restraints to the purchase and wielding of firearms. This is a clear and present danger to the majority of Americans who do not not share to any great degree the arcane, backward, and ignorant views driving these changes.

Which leads me, unhappily, to my point.

Because this is all very obvious. To pretend, for an instant, that events as we see them hold any other meaning is denial on a scale not seen since the Romans thought they still had an empire, even as the Visigoths were knocking down the gates of Rome. I'll avoid the quotation of Santayana, but you get the idea.

And still... the mainstream media is filled with the reports of Democratic infighting. Much of it is an amplification of such minor fluff as to be ludicrous, but there are definitely fault lines in the party, which slide and creak ominously when elections are approaching. Now is no different. Next year, 2022, is the bellwether year for our nation, because to hand Republicans control of any branch of government at any level, no matter how tenuously, is a prescription for catastrophic failure.

To that end, it would seem clear enough: vote for Democrats. But therein lies the rub. Because the Progressive side of America is a rainbow of thoughts and ideas, and unlike the lockstep machinations of Conservatives, Progressives spend a lot of time arguing instead of doing. This, invariably, leads to the weakening of Democratic power and a further erosion of actual progress in the nation. Some factions within the Progressive movement simply take their toys and go home, rather than support Democrats, when it's Democrats that are the only ones who have a realistic chance of advancing Progressive causes. This maddening passion play that invariably unfolds every election cycle is frankly the final pin to be pulled in the grenade that will trash American democracy once and for all.

Now, I preface the following thoughts by saying: I'm no longer a fan of parties. I believe, in the age of global communication, that the organizing principle of the political party -- never a necessity -- is now an abject waste of resources. It is possible, as we've seen repeatedly in the last decade, for people to organize on large scales through the auspices of the Internet, and to create a force for action on many levels.

That said, in the arena of politics, we are not there yet. We're still dependent on an archaic system that is driven by two parties, and we won't be able to change that at all until we change our outlook and accept current realities. Those current realities are pretty simple. Republicans have now made it clear that they will not advance Progressive policies. Period. They will not work toward the betterment of all, as the Constitution enjoins them to, but will seek to establish their vision of what America is, also know as White Christian Fascism. To make any other read, at this point, is ludicrous and unconscionable. The writing is on the wall.

The only group of sufficient size, power, and organization that can oppose the Republican drive toward an authoritarian regime is the Democratic Party. Love them or despise them, they are it. If we do not support them, if we do not vote for them, if we do not work toward ensuring that they have a fair shot in elections, then we lose more that just those elections; we lose what America is supposed to be. The Republicans will have no problem enacting policies that will basically strip power away from anyone who does not swear fealty to their views. If you think it can't happen here, then I have news for you: it already is. Republicans in several States have been ensuring that the power of Democratic election officials can be circumvented to allow them to install their own candidates instead of rightfully elected Democrats. They are aligning the electoral network to ensure that they can simply seize power, upon the pretense of "rigged" elections, which are rigged, but in their favor.

So, you have a simple choice in upcoming elections: vote for Democrats or don't. If you can't vote for Republicans but won't vote for Democrats, and decide to sit it out, you've voted in the most inimical fashion. You've also shown that you do not care even an iota as much as you claim to about people, because you are condemning the rest of us to tyranny to salve your wounded pride. "Principles" are a wonderful thing... until you're staring down the barrel of a gun and realize they don't stop bullets. This may be your last opportunity as an American citizen, to participate in the thing which is your most solemn dusty as a citizen. Do your duty.

King Of Pain

Andrew Breitbart is dead.

The scion of and propulsive force behind conservative media hypocrisy in the name of Liberal-bashing, has taken his last vituperative breath. Girded to do battle against the Democrats in the 2012 Presidential election, his sword has fallen from his hand, and, momentarily, a still and eerie hush falls over the battlefield.

Before progressives everywhere rise en masse, waving their social AK-47s over their heads, filling the airwaves with defamatory rounds, we should take a moment to mourn for the man's family, especially his wife and children. At 43, the man was far too young, by modern standards, to have come to his demise so readily. It must be a shock of monumental proportions to a wife who has lost her husband and to four children who will now grow up only knowing of their father vicariously.

His defamatory style and bombastic degradation of his "enemies" made him a man to be reviled by the Left and lauded by the Right. His avowed goal was the complete and utter destruction of any progressive organization, person, or cause, by whatever means could be cobbled together. Truth worked best, but fabrication and obfuscation were not off the table as tools of his media-driven attack. Where someone or some group would not gladly provide a perfect foil, he would manipulate circumstances to fit his needs. His undeserving attacks on ACORN, his unrepentant denigration of Shirley Sherrod, his unwarranted attacks on the late Edward Kennedy, his tabloid-style take-down of Representative Anthony Weiner... nothing was beyond the pale, where it advanced the conservative cause.

If any good can be said to have come from his brief life, it is that the level of duplicity and malfeasance he employed can be said to have lit a bonfire under decent Americans of every stripe, galvanizing many, such as myself, to rise up in defense of the people and programs he saw as an "attack" on the heart of America. Far from crippling or even denting progressive and Liberal causes, he may have inadvertently given them new life and new strength through the outrage of Americans who were not so easily cowed or conned.

While it would certainly be understandable if we took this opportunity to drag him through the muck he so fondly stirred up, it serves no purpose other than to enlarge him to a stature he does not deserve. Instead, let us remember him as the polarizing figure he was, let us be glad he vexes us no more, and let us move on to ensure that the movements he so detested live on far longer than his demoniacal rhetoric. The greatest revenge will be in reducing him to a little-mentioned footnote in the history of the American political wars of the 21st Century.

Making The Case For Liberalism

"Liberalism" is being turned into an epithet by some, and is being misrepresented as "Socialism" or "Communism" by others. Its proud tradition is being sullied in many quarters: by the media, by pundits, by talking-heads, by the ignorant and unsophisticated. It is being dragged through the mud by those who are afraid of it like children are afraid of the bogeyman.

All of this comes about because fear is being peddled instead of reason, bigotry instead of humanism, dogma instead of fact. Liberalism has been tarred-and-feathered by those who are afraid of its tenets, even as they misstate those tenets to their own advantage. Let us talk not at Liberalism, but about it, and let us set the record straight as to what it means.

Where The Right Gets It Wrong

I might be tarred as criminally insane by some for attacking the conservative movement in America so vigorously, but I take any damnation of my calling out their hypocrisy as solid praise, for I have struck a nerve to have bothered anyone by my admonitions. For surely, in a world where reason was ascendant, it would be obvious when the fool and the huckster were attempting to woo us with sweet lies and grand obfuscations.

In our world, though, reason has taken a back seat to ignorance. The masses are more concerned with the petulant bombast of drug-hazed actors and the latest tiny glowing box to be foisted unnecessarily upon them to eat up their remaining credit limit, than they are the real and important state of their government and their nation. The victory for independence won over two hundred years ago, they feel no need to be engaged, considering all the important work done as long as they can continue to buy their over-priced, faux-Italian coffee.

Nobody Looks Like Joe McCarthy

They come from the shadows, from the corners, from out-of-the-way places. They seem, on the surface, to be normal, average Americans, concerned citizens who only want to change things, to get America back the way it ought to be.

None of them look like Joe McCarthy. Even Joe McCarthy didn't look like Joe McCarthy. There was little chance of knowing to what depths he would go to ferret out the "Red menace," and in the beginning, he was able to fill a power vacuum, and turn himself into the most feared man in Washington, D.C. He might have thought his motivations were pure and that he was saving America from Communism, but in the end, he was merely a bully and a thug, so busy raking innocent people over the coals and ruining careers, that the spies and sympathizers he claimed to be exposing were still firmly ensconced in the halls of power, only to be revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Well-meaning, well-intentioned, but ultimately hypocritical people attempt to steal into the spotlight in an effort to push their agenda, always couched in terms of "saving America" or "reclaiming America" or "restoring America," as if America were a venerable old house that had fallen into disrepair and required rehabilitation to bring it back to shining glory. If America can be said to be in some form of disrepair, then these champions of restoration might wish to peer into the looking-glass to behold the faces of its absentee landlords.

Where was The Tea Party during the Reagan years, when taxes for the rich were cut in half but the Federal budget deficits skyrocketed? Or during the reign of George Bush, Sr. when reading his lips led to higher taxes, which failed to do anything to halt a near doubling of the national debt? And it's still shocking that they were not roused form their slumber during the reign of George Bush, Jr., when the reduced budget deficits of the Clinton era were exploded by rampant spending on wars, unsupported tax cuts, and an increase in pork barrel spending. And why is The Tea Party now not vehemently standing up against the reinstatement of the Bush era tax cuts, which would add an unsupported three trillion dollars in debt to the budget deficit?

It isn't about looking at the whole picture, picking facts from amidst hyperbole and obfuscation. It isn't about coming up with reasonable and actionable plans that would create a stabilization of the economy and lower tax rates while increasing revenue through the creation of more jobs. It is about peddling an agenda, taking advantage of a seismic shift in American society with the election of a black President, to hurl forth long-hidden desires to wrest control of the nation from the "Socialists" and reestablish America "as it should be." It is about trading on fear, xenophobia, and ignorance, to whip sycophantic followers into suspending rational judgment to feed the egos of small people who insist that their way is the right way, and the rest of America is just going to have to accept it.

Far from being defenders of liberty, these half-baked "patriots" are its greatest threat, secure in their belief that their view of America is the "right" one, and that anyone who disagrees with them is unpatriotic or traitorous. Far from honoring the contributions, sacrifices, and work of the Founding Fathers, they denigrate their struggle to bring about a new birth of freedom and liberty by ensuring that it is denied to as many others as possible. They would strip away the rights of women, homosexuals, immigrants, and anyone else they felt was "undeserving" of the same liberties they have. They would force gays out of the military, denying them the right to defend their own country. They would make a woman or young girl bear the wicked spawn of incest and/or rape, simply to salve their conscience and perpetuate their dogma. They would hand the wealthy more money, and wait for it to "trickle down" out of their bank accounts. They would pull the rug out from under Americans struggling to survive, by doing away with health care and unemployment benefits and aid to the poor, all in the name of "fiscal responsibility." They would force us all to pray to their god, and would deny anyone who would worship otherwise the right to do so. They make a mockery of the Constitution and all it stands for.

Change in Washington, D.C. is necessary, but the change must be for the better and not the worse. These candidates are not interested in furthering the bond of humanity, or doing their human duty to help all their fellow citizens. They are in it for self-aggrandizement, for their own enrichment, coveting power which has been heretofore in the hands of others. They wish to enslave us with their wretched "morality," taking away liberty in the name of returning America to some colonial time, whereby races and classes were kept in their place, and obedience to god was paramount. It is the 21st Century, and they wish to live in the 17th Century. The world has passed them by, but they refuse to go away quietly.

Americans of good conscience must stand up to these bullies, and send them back to where they came from. We need serious people, willing to use reason, provide accountability, and agree to compromise, to put our house in order. America does not need to be restored, it needs to grow, to struggle up from the muck, and to once more become a nation of principles. To do so, will require us to step up, to realize that we are greater as a whole, than as a nation of classes and social barriers. We must reject the strident voices that would divide us, and embrace the song of fellowship that will unite us.