Republicans vs. Democracy

Today is Memorial Day, a day for remembering the sacrifices of those who fell in our nation’s conflicts. But I have something else on my mind, namely, the possibility that future Memorial Days may commemorate American Democracy itself, which could tragically fall to the current right-wing onslaught against it. Leading the attack on our democracy are Donald Trump and his supporters both in government and at right-wing media sites like Fox News. I don’t think our democracy is doomed, but I could be wrong.

Evidence of the danger we face – those of us who believe in democracy – can be seen in a number of recent polls. Here are the results from a May 27 poll by PRRI (the Public Religion Research Institute).

 

What jumps out from this poll is that Republicans are living in a world of their own, one not shared by most Americans. They are furthest from the mainstream on the idea that “true American patriots” may need to resort to violence in order to “save our country.” But in general, the wacky conspiracy theory beliefs about elite, Satan-worshipping pedophiles, etc., find a much more welcome home among Republicans than they do anywhere else.

 This crazy irrational mindset could easily be swept away if only more people knew the difference between reliable and unreliable sources. But, alas, they don’t, and too many of them continue to trust Fox News, Newsmax, and other bullshit factories*.

 Just as dangerous as the irrational nuttiness of the Republican base are the underhanded tactics practiced by Republican elites. In Texas this weekend, legislation was introduced aimed at discouraging voting by minority voters and making it easier for the state legislature to decide who gets Texas’s electoral votes regardless of who the voters chose. This pro-Republican law was not immediately confirmed as official only because Democratic legislators walked out of the session thereby depriving the legislature of a quorum. But, of course, the law is not utterly dead. It will be re-introduced and the GOP will no doubt find a way around the recalcitrant Democrats and make it the law. In other words, Republicans 1, American Democracy 0.

 Our democracy is in danger because of the Republican party and the media sources that support it. But I believe this attack will fail and I’m optimistic for four reasons. First, because Donald Trump and the other prominent people who are behind it are themselves in serious legal trouble. It’s quite possible that Trump, some members of his family, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, his ally Matt Gaetz, and others in his circle will be convicted of serious crimes before the end of 2021. Some of them my well spend time behind bars, and may even be in the slammer during the 2022 election.

 Secondly, normal, respectable people in the GOP, like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger continue to loudly call out the dishonesty and stupidity of Trump’s “stop the steal” campaign. This campaign, which is the reason for so many Republicans believing that Trump “really” won the election, loses a bit of traction with every month that goes by. Eventually its followers will make up an even smaller minority of American voters than they do now.

 Also, the Democrats won the 2020 presidential election partly because so many Republican suburbanites couldn’t stand Trump’s sleazy and incompetent style of governing. The GOP, with its current dirty dealings, is not giving those voters any reason to return to the party.

 And finally, there is Stacey Abrams, whose heroic effort ensured that Democratic voters in Georgia turned out in sufficient numbers to win the senatorial runoffs there, and with them the Senate as a whole. We need an army of Stacey Abrams to counteract the dirty work the Republicans have been doing in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and so many other states where they are resorting to voter suppression. But with Stacey’s inspiration, along with the intense resentment of those voters whom the Republicans are trying to strip of their rights, we may see an unprecedented surge in Democratic voters in 2022 and 2024. I don’t know about you, but as for me, I’m counting on it.

 

 

*Bullshit Factory is the label offered by CNN reporter Jim Acosta to refer to Fox News. Good enough to steal, so I’m stealing it.

 

American Canvass

Here is one truth that I hold to be unalienable: there are a lot of nuts in this world and a significant number of them live in my neighborhood.  I kind of already knew this, but the last few weeks of election season have made this truth frighteningly undeniable.

I’ve spent many a Sunday afternoon this past September and October canvassing for the Obama campaign in Winter Park.  In fact, I did the same during the 2008 campaign along with my canvassing partner Ashley and our team of dedicated students.

Actually, the first time I canvassed for the Good Guys was in 1972 when I trekked through some of the poorer neighborhoods of Riverside, California, knocking on doors.  The most memorable encounter I had then was with a young African-American woman who responded to my knock by pulling the door halfway open and brandishing a knife in my face.  This wasn’t as scary as it sounds, because she was obviously zonked on something and appeared barely able to hold the knife in her hand.  In my mind’s eye, I see her with her eyes closed, though at this point, I can’t say for certain I’m remembering that detail correctly.  She was, for sure, so bleary and weak that she might as well have had her eyes closed.  At any rate, she wasn’t very interested in my spiel about her need to get out and vote for George McGovern.  Given the way that election turned out (Nixon 520: McGovern 17 in the electoral college), my failure to convince this citizen to vote was probably not the cause of the Democrats’ downfall that year.

George McGovern, who died just a week ago, was one of the most decent, intelligent and worthy men ever to run for president.  I actually became a Democrat largely because of him.  It doesn’t speak well for the sanity or the judgment of the American voter to note that he was soundly trounced by the most nefarious and underhanded man ever to slither his way into the White House. 

What were my fellow citizens thinking in 1972?

George McGovern - Honest, Intelligent, Decorated World War II  Veteran Bomber Pilot, Dedicated to Promoting Peace
 Trounced

Richard Nixon - Devious, Paranoid War Monger and Bigot
 Re-elected in a Landslide

Well, in 2008 Ashley and I discovered what some of our fellow Americans were thinking when we canvassed right around the block from my house.  One gentleman, who came to the door with shaving cream on half of his face, but who nevertheless genially engaged us in conversation for several minutes, will serve as an example.  Mr. Shaveface (as we came to call him) was apparently a lifelong Democrat, but one of those who remember the good old days when Strom Thurmond and George Wallace were the face of the Southern Democrats.  He kept insisting that he had no prejudices, but would follow these claims up with statements about how he wouldn’t want to live in Atlanta these days, given who lives there now, and the Boy Scouts shouldn’t be mixing up black and white scouts together since the black scouts are so sloppy, etc.

You get the idea.  This man lives about two blocks from my house, a fact that Darla found deeply upsetting when we (perhaps foolishly) described him to her.

Living less than one block from our house was a lady who, upon responding to our knock, insisted that she would NEVER vote for Obama.  She was going to vote for “the other guy.”  She couldn’t remember his name.

Since this Anti-Obama voter was somewhat plastered when we spoke to her that Sunday afternoon, we toyed with the idea of leaving a pint of bourbon on her doorstep on Election Day, which I was sure would keep her from making it to the polls. 

This year, the most interesting prospect I encountered was a young man I ran into in a working class apartment complex where I was canvassing alone.  He was wearing a tank top and appeared to be solidly covered with tattoos from the neck down.  I saw him approach as I was coming down the stairs and I asked him if he was registered to vote.

“Do I look like I vote, man?” he asked in an incredulous and distinctly snarky tone.

“Well,” I said, “at least you don’t look like a Romney supporter.”

“That’s true,” he replied.  “Romney is worse than Obama.  But really, I don’t give a fuck.”

OK, so I just continued on my way.  My motto, you could say, was to leave no stoner unturned.

This is not the Tattooed Dude that I saw, but he kind of reminds me of him.

Let me conclude by showing some of the nutty signs that the anti-Obama types in Winter Park have on display in their front yards.  I feel sure that if George McGovern were running against Nixon today, these households would still vote for Nixon, even knowing what they now know about him.

Why do I call these signs nutty?  Well, my criteria for nuttiness include:

a.       Claiming “Obama failed,” even though he stopped the hemorrhaging of the economy in 2009, saved the auto industry, killed bin Laden, made it possible for millions of poor people to afford health insurance, and so on.

Winter Park Yard Sign 1

b.      Claiming that an Obama victory would be the end of America, or democracy, or all things that God loves.  Come on, people, America does not have to be “saved” from Obama.  Let’s face it, if Romney wins (Inshallah, he will not), it wouldn’t be the end of America.  It would mean that unscrupulous rich people would gain more leverage through which they could continue to screw the middle class and the poor, it would almost certainly mean more economic troubles of the type the Republicans gave us under Bush, and it would mean more questionable types a la Scalia would take their place on the Supreme Court – all bad things to be sure, but not the end of America.

Winter Park Yard Sign II

c.       Claiming that Obama is a Communist or a Socialist or a Muslim or a Kenyan or even an Extreme Liberal. 

        Down the Street from Our House - A Romney Household

                  Same House, from Earlier this Year

Welcome to America, everyone, the land that somehow manages to prevail despite the nut cases that flourish within its borders, and the losers and scoundrels that it sometimes sends to the White House.

                   Would you open your door to this canvasser?

____

I'm Still "All In" on This Idiot Savant Country

So that’s what an ass-whuppin’ feels like; 1994 was so long ago that I had pretty much forgotten.

Honestly, I have to confess that I manage to enjoy every election, even those like this year’s when our frenemies, the Republicans, sweep the table. I remember in 1992 when I took Little Four-year-old Grace Marie to the polling place with me, Mom Darla, in an effort to keep our daughter’s feet on the ground, made it a point to explain to her that “not every grown-up gets as excited about election day as your Dad does.”

“OK, Mom,” she replied.

Tuesday morning, after I cast my (pathetically ineffective) vote, I started my walk to school and by coincidence the first tune to pour out of my iPod was Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”

I ask you, how cool is that?

Anyway, here’s what I think: America is fantastic – Abraham Lincoln! Rally to Restore Sanity!! Election Day!!!

On the other hand, America is a mess – Sean Hannity? Governor Rick Scott?? Flowbee???

My Island Buddy, Steve, recently sent me some comments highlighting the more frightening features of the “America is a mess” side of the story, some of which I will present here as my own ideas. Since he is my buddy, I'm figuring he won't sue me for stealing some of them.

The basic political story of 2010 is this: In the infamous Citizens United decision, conservative Supreme Court justices voted to allow corporate moneyed interests to continue screwing us with increasing vigor and this has doomed Americans to serfdom. The day is just around the corner when we will have to beg BP to please allow us to spend our free time cleaning their oil off our beaches at which point the BP executives, if they are in a generous frame of mind, will nod to their Senators and other Congressional minions who will write a law allowing us to do so.

OK, maybe we aren’t there yet. But I do think that at the very least Schoolhouse Rock needs to update its cute little “How a Bill Becomes a Law” video. I was introduced to this wonderful educational cartoon by My Favorite Student, who, when she was a little girl, got together with her pal Meryl and did performances of some Schoolhouse Rock scenarios for Darla and me.

In the original version, an adorable little rolled up and ribbon-bound bill sits on the steps of Congress waiting while House and Senate committees debate it. Then Presto! it becomes a law after the wise ones of Congress vote for it and the president signs it.

The little bill was sent to Congress in the first place because concerned citizens wanted a law which would prevent school buses from being crushed by trains at railroad crossings. What could be simpler or more benign?

1. Citizens see a need and consult their Congressional representative who
2. writes a bill on behalf of America’s school children, and finally,
3. after a lot of jingle singing, it becomes a law.

But I would like to propose a new, more realistic version of “How a Bill Becomes a Law.” This updated version would open on a scene in which a group of thuggish characters sit around a bottle-littered table in a smoke-filled room barely illuminated by a single dangling light bulb. On the wall hangs a poster of Satan who looks surprisingly similar to Dick Cheney and who smiles with self satisfaction as his tobacco-stained fingers gently stroke a little model of an oil derrick which reclines in his lap. Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” plays in the background.

So the thugs put together a bill that makes it unconstitutional to ask any member of Congress where their campaign funding comes from and which contains a supplementary clause prohibiting any citizen from complaining about oil on beaches, residents, clothing, children and all accouterments thereunto appertaining.

The bill produced in this foul little room is then made public (to the tune of the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”). As the bill shoves its way through throngs of protesting citizens, it swaggers up the capitol steps where members of Congress genuflect before it and quickly rubber stamp it. Then President Palin signs into law.

Of course it isn’t set in stone that things will turn out this way. After all, America has survived crises in the past and I still have faith that we will survive this one too.

You may well ask, “But, Comrade CultureWorld, what can we do to keep Satan from taking over America?”

Naturally, I’m happy to advise. First, as a general rule, you should favor Democrats over Republicans in your voting because Democrats never use dishonest or unfair ads in their campaigns.

Oh all right, so Florida Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson used a grossly dishonest and unfair ad against his Republican opponent this year, but that’s only one.

OK, OK, so Democrat Jack Conway used a ridiculously stupid and unfair ad that tried to make Rand Paul look like a slave of Aqua Buddha. Very well, I admit it. Democrats can be creepy too. But the main advantage of the Democrats is that they are somewhat less in thrall than Republicans are to the corporate money that has been steadily smothering our democracy since 1980. In other words, in order to fund their campaigns, the Democrats frequently go whoring with Satan; the Republicans, however, are happily married to the Prince of Darkness.

The second thing I recommend is that you not watch FOX News…unless you simply want to keep tabs on what the Forces of the Dark Side are up to. If you actually believe that Fox is “fair and balanced,” it may be too late for you.

I would like to recommend as an alternative to Fox, the Morning Joe program on MSNBC, hosted by Joe Scarborough. I know, Joe Scarborough is a conservative Republican, but he’s still cool. (Yes, I said cool – now bear with me here.)

You know those types who go around saying nutty things like “Obama is a Muslim,” as if they were idiots? (And I use the phrase “as if” liberally here.) Well, Joe treats them they way they deserve to be treated, i.e., as though they inhabited their own little Sims World where anything they want to make up can be true.

Being a conservative Republican, Joe is a bit askew on some issues, but what distinguishes him from those right-wingers who seem to have Ph.D.s in ignorance (e.g., Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck), is that he respects people whose views he disagrees with as long as their views aren’t just plain wacko. And his program has people like Eugene Robinson and Katrina vanden Heuvel on it -- smart people who actually know stuff and who are not slaves to the corporatacracy.

So, I say, turn off Fox and turn on Morning Joe.

Anyway, back to my original point: Even given the new influence secret money now has on our elections, and the newfound power of crazies like Michelle Bachmann, I still have faith in our country. We may be in for nasty weather, but after all, we more or less survived the Bush presidency, so I believe we will survive the current rise of the right. In the name of Aqua Buddha, I do hope so.





Aqua Patriots











From Vintage American & ARose Books

Lie to me or I won't vote for you

A recent Rasmussen report told us that only 16% of those polled believed Congress's performance to be good or excellent. The report helpfully adds that this is the highest approval rating Congress has had over the past 12 months.

What this shows us is that America is cursed with a particular group of incompetent knuckleheads who know as much about governing as do Larry, Moe and Curly. I'm talking, of course, about the American voters.







Let's vote for the cute one!









When you consider that we, the voters, hire these people in Congress, and that we also review their performance every two years, it's astonishing that over the past five or six years we've generally given them approval ratings below 50% and usually closer to 15%. What kind of idiots are we that we don't know how to hire good people to serve us?

Well I'll tell you what kind of idiots we are: the kind of idiots who require our representatives to pay for their campaigns with money from the likes of BP and ExxonMobil, and then imagine that these corporate-bought lawmakers are going to ignore their benefactors and do what we, the voters, ask of them. Duh.

Of course in their campaigns our office-seekers always promise us that they will work for "the American people," and will stick it to "the special interests," but only a bunch of dimwits would believe they will actually keep their word and "stick it to" the very interests that paid for their campaigns. In effect, we require that our politicians lie to us. If they don't, we will refuse to vote for them.

To illustrate the "Lie to me or I won't vote for you," principle, consider my favorite cartoon show, The Simpsons. (Yes, more fun than South Park or Family Guy, though those shows are cool in their own way.)

Let's say Smithers is running for Mayor of Springfield and the conniving plutocrat and nuclear power broker, Montgomery Burns, is funding his campaign. Burns pays for Smithers' campaign because he wants Smithers, once in office, to eliminate all the government regulations that keep nuclear waste out of the local reservoir -- the source of the public's drinking water. This will boost the profits of Mr. Burns' nuclear power plant, but it is not necessarily good for the people who drink the reservoir water. (Burns presumably has his own water flown in from Evian, France.)









Just Go Ahead and Trust Me











Now Smithers is not going to say, "Vote for me and I will let the guy who is paying for this ad poison your water!" That would be honest, but probably not a winning strategy. So, he takes Burns' money and uses it to run ads saying, "Vote for me and I will clean out the special interests who control the Springfield city hall!" People will vote for him because he is telling them just the exact lie they want to hear.

This is why I can guarantee that once the new Congress is in place next year, though it will surely have dozens of newly minted office holders, it will not enjoy an enduring surge in its approval ratings. People will continue to complain about its incompetence and corruption as they have for years.

But don't blame the people we hire to represent us. We are, after all, their bosses. It's just that we haven't designed a campaign system that allows politicians to tell us the truth, one in which they can fund their own elections with adequate public money instead of needing to rely on money acquired from the very interests that are inclined to seek special favors.

So, next time you hear someone whining about how bad Congress is, maybe you should ask them what kind of nincompoops hired that pack of double-talking four-flushers in the first place.