These are dark times and it’s time to wake the hell up, America. While under duress from the inexorable spread of a deadly virus, we are cursed with the worst “leadership” in the history of our nation. And this is not just about Trump, who bungles and corrupts every, single aspect of this disaster but about Senator Mitch McConnell who, despite the slow motion train wreck unfolding around him, has not let up on his relentless campaign to stack the Judiciary with unqualified, right wing nutbags. It’s about Matt Gaetz who openly mocked experts who were warning about the coronavirus in the early days by wearing a gas mask on the Floor of the House. It’s about Tom Cotton, who keeps spreading rumors that this is a Chinese bioweapon. It’s about John Cornyn who never loses an opportunity to blame Democrats for everything that goes wrong, no matter how ludicrous it sounds. It’s about Ron DeSantis who refused to close beaches for the Spring Break crowd for much too long, presumably because for many of his donors, making money is more desirable than saving lives. It’s about all of the Republican Governors who were too slow to call for a statewide stay at home policy and about those who still resist it, ensuring many unnecessary deaths. It’s about EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler who abused the disaster to gut environmental protections. It’s about grandstanding moron Thomas Massie who endangered hundreds of people just to make a point about how much he loves being cruel to the unfortunate. It’s about Lindsey Graham who just couldn’t stop himself demanding that the government not give newly unemployed workers, “too much” money, using some idiotic excuse about nurses “not wanting to work”. In short, this is about every elected Republican who holds office today, without exception.
For you guys who don’t often educate yourselves about issues and vote by rote more out of duty than ideology, this advice is for you:
Stop Electing Republicans!
None of them are any good for the country! They don’t care about you unless your net “worth” is in the millions, they don’t care about anything or anybody that doesn’t directly impact them and their lives. To a Republican, everyone else is viewed as unnecessary, even burdensome, an irritant to be ignored. To Republicans, thousands, even millions of deaths is an opportunity to make money by dumping travel and vacation stocks and snapping up stock in companies that facilitate work from home technology. Republican administration after Republican administration has left the economy in a shambles while Democratic administration after Democratic administration inherits a disaster and picks up the pieces and makes us stable again. Then people nonsensically elect more Republicans to do it all over again!
Republicans wrap themselves in flags and the trappings of patriotism while questioning the patriotism of Democrats and disparaging their service. They hate women and don’t believe that we can make decisions for ourselves. They demand pregnant women give birth, (unless an inconvenient child is theirs, of course), regardless of circumstances, while simultaneously denying indigent expectant mothers every manner of help and support in carrying and delivering the baby or raising and educating the child. Republican pass laws that exclude those who they find undesirable from fully participating in our society, whether it be to prevent them voting, marrying who they want or even using a public restroom. They gut the safety net and then whine about how it’s going to affect them, (not the people who need it), when inevitably their actions lead to widespread suffering and angry backlash. Republicans fire ship Captains who dare to care more about the lives of the men and women under their command than the ego of their Commander in Chief.
Over and over and over Republicans lie directly to the people and then feign all kinds of outrage when accused to not being entirely honest. Hell, Trump is lying people to death every day! We cannot afford to elect any more Republicans. We will not survive it. Can we all at least agree with that? People are dying right now and if we elect Republicans, it will only get worse. Right wing strong men do not make the world a safer or a better place. EVER! No matter how proud they make you feel to belong or how “great” they say that we’re all going to be. Do we really want to station troops on the longest non militarized border in the world? Are we going to crap on our Canadian friends in order to stroke the insecure ego of a paranoid narcissist? Is this who we want to be?
On behalf of all rational Yanks, I apologize for our “President”, Mr. Wilson. Please stay safe, bud. We need our Canadian allies and we need Squirrely Dan.
But I’m also looking at the intramural left when I say
Stop Electing Republicans!
This is neither the time or the place for egos, righteous indignation and hurt feelings. Stop Electing Republicans! also means stop ALLOWING Republicans to get elected. In every single contested Democratic primary there is a small but significant group who ELECTS REPUBLICANS by refusing to vote for the winning Democratic candidate. Every. Single. Time. Like it or not, ours is a two party system and that means that it’s R vs D. G or L is not going to win the Presidency ever so get over it. This is not the time to pull an “I’m taking my toys and going home” act. We need all hands on deck and we need to get mobilized now, so make no mistake, when I say Stop Electing Republicans! I’m not just aiming at unaffiliated, less knowledgeable voter.
At this point I couldn’t possibly care any less which one of these old, white guys wins the nomination because both of them are axiomatically so much better than the old white orange guy that we currently have occupying the White House. Yes, that’s an incredibly low bar but does that even matter? EVERYTHING is a higher bar than Trump and the Republicans. Everything. Being spat on by camels while staked to an anthill is better than electing Trump and Republicans. It’s pointless bickering about which one of our candidates would be better for the country because they both would be almost infinitely better. Neither were in my top five when the primary started and only one of them was in my top ten but reality is reality and I’m moving on.
Even though I ended up voting for him twice, I didn’t like Mr. Obama much when he first ran because he was, is and always will be a dyed in the wool, card carrying, party line Democrat and the same was true for Edwards and Clinton as well. Not that there is anything wrong with that but the reason that I didn’t officially join the Democratic Party until 2016, (though I haven’t voted for any Republicans in decades) is because the Democratic Party is to the right of me philosophically. But you wanna know what? He grew on me. Right now I miss the calm, rational, informed leadership of President Barack Obama sooooo MUCH! He labored for us faithfully and against often insurmountable odds when Republicans reflexively opposed everything than might have helped people who made less than 6 figures and when they made it their strategy to make him a one term President, instead of putting any effort into working with the man for the good of the nation they supposedly serve. And I really miss Presidential press conferences that weren’t the uninformed, narcissistic raving tirades that we endure today.
And lastly I’m looking at you you, Never Trump® Republicans. When I say
Stop Electing Republicans!
I’m looking at you the hardest. You people still don’t get it because you’re too blinded by your beliefs to see the reality it is occluding. Trump is not the problem. Democrats are not the problem. Republicans are the problem. Trump was not responsible for Nixon’s disgraceful behavior, nor did he influence Reagan to sell arms to an enemy while trying to fund a civil war in Central America. The people who nominated Trump are the same people who keep electing other Republicans; YOU! While obviously I didn’t like any of them, you had several perfectly legitimate Republican candidates to choose from in 2016 but you chose an orange buffoon who probably hasn’t read anything more complicated than “Richie Rich" since college. Democrats didn’t do that either. You and your angry voters did.
Don’t blame Trump for serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, whose ultra conservative manifesto “Contract with America” made subsidizing the wealthy and punishing the poor while creating an undemocratic “permanent Republican majority” a Republican party plank. It wasn’t Trump who lied us into the Iraq war, Trump had nothing to do with the 186% increase in the national debt under Reagan or the 101% increase under George W Bush, while both men slashed help for the workers and indigent as much as they slashed taxes for the wealthy. All while blaming the same deficits that were created by them. Republicans like you gave Trump and others like him the power and the influence necessary to win the Republican nomination for President. The only reason that many of you don’t like Trump is because you couldn’t control him. And don’t “Both Sides”© me! The Democratic Party has just unequivocally demonstrated that all of the money in the world isn’t enough to get any unqualified Billionaire Populist anywhere near the Democratic nomination for President. It’s only the Republican Party that finds itself sick enough to do such a thing.
For the remaining few, just because you were smart enough to see through his act doesn’t make you any less responsible for creating the conditions under which it was possible to elect him. Trump is a symptom of what ails the Republican Party. The tumor lies much deeper. And you, yourselves are responsible for the illness. In order to maintain power you created this little campfire of hatred, then you stoked it until it was a bonfire and then you deliberately and with malice and forethought dumped gasoline on it and it became a conflagration that threatens us all. Then you had the gall to point your accusatory fucking fingers at Democrats and demand that we contain the out of control monster that you unleashed while simultaneously vowing to prevent us from being able to do that. Rather than changing your message to keep up with the changing demographics in this country, you played on divisions and hatred and now you wonder why we’re in the position that we’re in.
You own it, now atone for it. Atone for it by helping us to elect Democrats up and down the ballot. Drop the childish and self serving belief that there are any Republican office holders with any integrity left. We need a strong Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress because being allowed to act for the good of the nation and the world without Republicans being able to obstruct and interfere is absolutely paramount to our survival. Stop being part of the problem. And then, in the aftermath, those of you who took the lead on this can form a new conservative party. One that isn’t “my way or the highway” or a wholly owned subsidiary of BigMoney Inc.
This post then, applies to every voter in the United States. The message is to
Stop Electing Republicans!
Because only when we Stop Electing Republicans! can we move on and get back on track of being the beacon of hope in the world. The nation that everyone looks to, not with fear and loathing but with admiration and respect. We, the people of the United States are at our worst when we are fighting each other and at our best during times of national crisis when we can pull together, marshal our resources and make the world a better and more just place. Lay aside you petty squabbles, whether it be your desire to “own the libs” or your imperative need to always be right on the internet. This is not the time for it. It’s time for you, the apathetic, for you, the intramural warriors of the left and for you, the few remaining Republican voters who oppose Trump to put on your grown up pants and make a few personal sacrifices and pull together to turn the Steering Wheel of State. Because, boys and girls, that cliff we’re heading toward is looking awfully close in the windshield and this is our last chance to avoid it.
Now, I am ending my rant. I hope that I have provided enough material to illustrate and support my point of view that electing Republicans is the very worst thing that we can do, bar none and that it is paramount that we all do whatever it takes to prevent that. I am saying that we have an unprecedented opportunity to save our sinking country from an unprecedented danger so let’s not squander it. For that reason and for many, many others, I implore you, all of you, to please not let the point of this post fly over your stubborn heads and to just wake the fuck up and
Stop Electing Republicans!
Our lives depend on it!