Let me just start out by saying that we’re in deep trouble come January 20 if this madman takes office. And I say “take” because at the very least some very shady dealings went on by operatives from another country, one led by another madman, to influence the outcome of this election.
To hope that the institutions in place will stop this is likewise simply madness. Electors have never been called upon to make such a profound decision even if it has been part of their role to do so all along. The people in power are not willing to use the mechanisms that were put in place to prevent something like this. The GOP is not interested in giving up an ounce of power in the name of saving the Republic from foreign interference. The Democrats don’t want to look like whiners or sore losers, so none are willing to take a strong stand for simply verifying that the votes were counted properly or making more than mild statements that “something is rotten here”.
Somehow we’ve come to a point in history where fighting for what’s right is considered impolite. And this is by design: we’ve been conditioned to be ashamed of believing conspiracy theories, so the big lies and the openly conspiratorial behavior just float by as if they’re too much for us to comprehend, like noticing a piece of the sky, while we’re distracted by mundane stuff like email servers. We can relate to email servers, but we can’t relate even to the concept of wholesale lifting of an election right under our eyes.
The media ranges from clueless to dangerous, but cannot seem to find its way out of the “balance” trap, so the GOP sends Bolton out to call the whole thing a “false flag” operation and the media keeps jawing away at it, he said/he said, we’re too incompetent to actually find out the truth for you, repeat in the next news cycle. They’re acting like this is just another presidential transition.
It isn’t.
Every day this person serves up some fresh hell, some new and worse fox for the next hen house, and he’s basically telling us he doesn’t give a shit about workers or the environment or the very foundations of government. It’s all fair game, and he’s willing to burn it all down and remake it in some oil magnate’s dream image. Public Education? Gone. The Environment? Done. Economic fairness? As if! Health Care? Social Security? Jobs? So sorry.
There is room and need for us to discuss what went wrong, and how to prepare and plan for the next election. But we can’t just treat this like another transition.
We’ve been had, and our fear of looking like believers in CT and our faith in the Constitutional quirks and mechanisms and whatever naive belief that remains that the GOP loves our country but just disagrees in how things should be run has made it possible for us to BE had. And we need to set all that aside and be willing to entertain that something has gone seriously wrong here, wronger than we ever imagined it could, and our country is being taken over by — at the very least — a bunch of oil-hungry oligarchs with complete disdain for us, for the environment, for the Constitution, and for the Rule of Law.
At the worst, it’s all that with a bag of Russian interference on the side.
We simply cannot stand for this. This goes beyond being able to woo working class voters who can’t find their ass with two hands and a flashlight enough to figure out they’re being lied to by some entitled idiot with designs on power who couldn’t give a shit less about them. It’s more than just convincing the media to do “journalism” again (or explaining the concept to them).
The very foundation of our nation is under attack, and has been for quite some time. First erode the concept of votes being properly counted for “expedience”. Force black box electronic voting down our throats and somehow (I have no idea how, now come on do you trust your ATM without a receipt?) convince us that these simple machines are not vulnerable to hacking (uh, when you code the actual ballot into the machine, you can introduce whatever other code you’d like). Install voting rights killers as secretaries of state, beat that law down at every turn, and ridicule the tinfoil hat of everyone who questions it while claiming “voter fraud” is rampant.
Turn “news” into a “Dancing With the Stars” facsimile of journalism. Erode the line between information and entertainment (there’s even a word for that! Check!). Denigrate thoughtful people as intellectual snobs and distract us with noise. And then take advantage of the “shiny object” button to turn the media into zombies and lemmings (“ratings, hrrrmmmmmm, RATINGS!”).
We ate up all of the lies and our appetites kept the media serving it up, no matter where it came from. We were so busy fighting with one another we didn’t notice what they were doing. Let’s not kid ourselves — partisanship kept a lot of people from acknowledging we were being played with because it was easier and more satisfying to dismiss and ridicule instead of acknowledging something could be going wrong.
The monsters have landed on main street.
“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill – and suspicion can destroy – and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own – for the children – and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is – that these things cannot be confined.”
Twilight Zone
The Monsters are Due on Main Street
I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with this old Twilight Zone episode where aliens land and set humans upon one another to keep them from noticing the real danger.
The monsters are here. They came while we were looking the other way, fighting amongst ourselves, and it’s not just another day, another transition. The danger isn’t that this or that law or regulation or institution will be destroyed, but that our government will be remade, the essence of our nation will be changed, and our future rewritten in horrible ways.
So what do we do? Beyond fighting to keep the most sacred and important programs in place, what do we do to rid ourselves of this interference? I honestly don’t have the answer, only the desire to fight with everything that it takes. I’m not talking about pragmatic, relying on the institution, “no president can do that”, “we’ll sue”, “let’s vote the bums out in 2 years” sort of solutions. Like, how do we keep this guy out of office? How do we get our voting rights back — NOW? Are we willing to stand up and look like raving CTers if that’s what it takes to chop away the monster’s tentacles?
Well, if anyone has any ideas I’m all ears. Any and all ideas are welcome, except discussing the merits/foibles of specific candidates (except for identifying possible allies in the incoming congress, etc.). That’s not relevant to this discussion. What can WE do, right now? What can someone else do that we can encourage, support, finance? What is realistic, even stuff that has never been done, stuff that will seem “impolite” or even revolutionary?
Because this ain’t no ordinary transition, and we shouldn’t let it happen without a fight. This isn’t about the orderly transition of power. This is about keeping our nation from being remade into something heartless resembling what we used to be.