vigilante

For the Dreamers


    • “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”
    • – Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Democratic National Convention, August 12, 1980

The Republicans have taken  control of the House – barely – and the overall election outcome should trigger waves of consternation and gnashing of teeth over how so many screwed up for so long and in such creatively self-destructive ways in so many types of races.

Republicans fielded hateful, brain-free candidates and We The People didn’t like them. The geniuses at the RNC had to have been expert sleuths in order to find so many unqualified candidates. Herschel Walker? Seriously?

There were some impressive Democrat performances, too, for which there aren’t yet words to describe, like how Democrats managed to lose four House races in upstate New York.

How come the DNC couldn’t send the desperately needed funding to Tim Ryan in Ohio and Beto O’Rourke in Texas? Those guys are the ones who have the character and ability to be the fighters we’ll need over the next decades, the people with the moxie to defeat the authoritarians, but the DNC largely abandoned them.

There will be lots of time for licking wounds and I fervently hope there’s a lot of introspection and forehead slapping. And please, DNC, have the courage to admit what everyone knows: your communication and messaging sucks. Maybe there exists a self-help organization called Sucky-Talkers Anonymous.

Bob: “Hi. I’m Bob and I suck at messaging.”

Group: “Hi, Bob. Yes, you do.”

Of course, there were wins, some found even in losses, like Adam Frisch’s challenge to “bubble-headed woman who should never be allowed near any dangerous implement, like a microphone,” Lauren Boebert. They’re reporting that 99% of the votes are counted, with the candidates separated by just 554 votes. Kudos to Frisch in this deeply red district.

It’s odd human being stuff that people fall for a pretty face, like Boebert, Kari Lake, Sarah Palin and Scott Brown without investigating whether there’s any sign of intelligent life behind the face.

There are two obvious and significant things to expect over the next two years. In the Senate, President Biden will continue to be able to staff the 80-plus federal judiciary benches awaiting newbies. Invoking the words of Joe Biden when speaking to President Obama on the passage of the ACA – “Obamacare” – and while too close to an open microphone, “This is a big f***ing deal.”

Even better, if a vacancy or two should come about on the Supreme Court, Biden will provide nominees to the Senate and the Republicans will not be able to stymie the process with fabricated new rules of obstruction. It sure would be lovely if Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were to suddenly contract cases of Incipient Mortality Awareness Despair Over Probable Ending (“IMADOPE”) and they decided to spend more time with their families. One could hope.

Thanks go to Jim Nathan for this piece

The other thing to expect will occur in the House, where the Republican circus will have all three rings set up, with nothing but sense-defying acts taking place.

For example, we can expect Jim “The Flame Throwing Ignoramus” Jordan (R-OH) to chair the judiciary committee and hold a protracted, pointless hearing into Hunter Biden. After that there will be more pointless hearings focused on Biden and his laptop. Following that will be hearings into Biden’s involvement in the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and in the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and Kennedy.

In the end, we will have spent many millions of dollars investigating anything Hunter Biden has thought, done or could spell for the entire duration of his life. The hearings will be continuous until the 2024 election in order for the Republicans to make Democrats look dirty. The official report will be 800 pages long and will say nothing – just like the report from the Benghazi hearings Committee on Stupid, Darryl Issa (R-CA), Chairman.

And that kind of stupidity and cruelty by Republicans is what we can expect from this new Republican controlled House. Indeed, they’re already gathering firewood for the witch burning pits.

Republicans have declared that they intend to impeach President Biden, Vice President Harris, Anthony Fauci and Alejandro Mayorkas, Director of Homeland Security. They have no charges against any of them. There isn’t even a whiff of wrongdoing to investigate. Most Republicans in Congress don’t even know who Mayorkas is. No matter. These hearings leading to impeachment votes are solely to get back at Democrats for the two impeachments of the orange president. Yes, they’re as infantile as that.

And while those hearings and impeachments are going on there will be no people’s business conducted. There will be little to no problems solved, no solutions found. The only accomplishment will be the performance of a Republican temper tantrum.

You can also expect push-back from the Republican House against our support for Ukraine. The fascist extreme wouldn’t want to do anything to upset their role model, Vladimir Putin. And Ukraine as a sovereign nation, it’s people wanting democracy and freedom? “Who cares?” say the Republicans.

Because that’s what Republicans do. They are all about demonizing, hating and legalized cruelty. To see this clearly, all you need to examine are all the racist and antisemitic spewings by Republicans. Unlike Democrats, they never police their own.

Together, Republicans comprise a national version of White Citizens Councils. That “Make America Great Again” mantra refers to when America’s domestic power was bed sheet white and sub-humans of color were controlled by their White betters.

But such unconscionable domination is already beginning to come to a close, as our White majority is becoming the White minority. Indeed, that’s the driver of so much of the repression. People don’t give up power willingly.

MAGA rallies cannot push back the tide, which triggers fear in those who want to return to the early 1950s. You know: before Brown v Board of Education; the 1964 Civil Rights Act; the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the rest of what allows non-Whites to be full citizens.

What White supremacists are left with is fear, hatred, violence and pitiful attempts at appearing to be something they are not. Recall Trump saying at a 2016 rally, “There’s my African-American.” Singular. Pick that apart any way you like, including empathy for that guy for his being so dreadfully duped.

To be clear, there are victories from our multi-week election day, most notably for what did not happen: a red wave. Plus, there were both new and re-elected blue governors, secretaries of state and more. These are people who trust in the Constitution and the will of We The People, so they don’t threaten to reverse our elections in order to suit themselves and their extremist overlords.

Insane factoid: Isn’t it crazy that times are so upside down that we celebrate that no election workers or voters were harmed by vigilante idiots? Here’s to the judges who prohibited the vigilantes from vigilante-ing!

So, this election was a mixed bag. Read Thomas Friedman’s post, America Dodged An Arrow for more on that.

Hope still lives and the dream is still alive – and it will be so as long as we keep it alive. That opens the door to what we’ll do to make 2024 what we need it to be. The starter’s pistol for that race has already fired.

PS

Merrick, there is a difference between: 1. Doing things right while doing the right things, as well as sweating the details; and, 2. Refusing to make a decision.

We’re 22 months down the road. It’s time to make a decision based on the painfully obvious evidence. Tell Jack Smith I said so.

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Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:

Fire the bastards!

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Do You Smell What I Smell?


In another effort to quash the will of the majority of its citizens, the state of Texas passed a draconian anti-abortion law that effectively outsources law enforcement to vigilantes. The Supreme Court refused to issue an injunction to stop the law from taking effect before a full review of its breathtakingly unconstitutional provisions could be examined.* Effectively, abortion has been criminalized in Texas and enforcement of the law has been handed to bounty hunters, who have been offered cash prizes for spying on neighbors.

Historian and Professor Heather Cox Richardson puts it this way:

“The Republican Party is empowering vigilantes to enforce their beliefs against their neighbors.”

Ordinary citizens with nothing more than greed, strong opinions and with no training are now allowed to file lawsuits against anyone even remotely associated with an abortion, even those just having a conversation with a woman who may be thinking about it. They don’t even have to show harm to themselves to have standing to sue others for $10,000 or more, others who are doing Constitutionally protected things, even just having a conversation. That effectively makes these vigilantes the Thought Police** and trashes the First Amendment.

Regardless of how you feel about abortion, the worst part of this law is not that, even as harmful to women as this Texas hypocrisy is. It is about empowering vigilantes to perform the duties of the state in order for the state to avoid judicial review. Now, think about what that could mean.

Texas could enact another law that outsources collecting tax penalties to vigilantes, that encourages armed, ignorant citizens to pursue those they imagine have broken the law, that can allow extremists to sue journalists and news organizations to penalize their adverse reporting of politicians. The state can just turn everything over to crazed vigilantes and effectively do an end run around the courts.

You know, like in Germany in the 1930s and 40s. Like in the communist Soviet Union. Like in all repressive states. Neighbors turning on neighbors.

We already know what mobs of impassioned, self-important people can and will do. We saw that on January 6 at our Capitol Building. Now imagine such people up close and personal. They’re delusional about their patriotism and notions of godliness. They’re untrained and uninformed greedy bounty hunters rampaging through your neighborhood pretending they’re trained police officers and looking for you to sue you into bankruptcy.

Perhaps the worst part of this is that the extremist Republican Supreme Court justices could have stopped this plainly unconstitutional lunacy with an injunction, but they refused to do so. They allowed this law to go into effect without even having heard the case against it, which is coming before the court soon. They have abandoned the rule of law. Clearly, something needs to be done about this extremist court, because they aren’t done “legislating their ideology from the bench.”

Another Texas law makes it legal for gun toting vigilantes to roam around polling places – inside – and intimidate voters. The Texas hits just keep on coming.

These laws are sure to be copied by other minority rule, extremist Republican controlled states and we’ll have Wild West, blatantly unconstitutional actions all across our nation.

Let’s see: The Republicans have given us legally sanctioned vigilantism; minority rule; measures to encourage the infection of citizens with a deadly disease; horrific voter suppression; abandonment of the rule of law; refusal to hold cops accountable; refusal to extend healthcare to poor people; encouragement of insurrection; concealed carry and stand your ground laws that make murder legal; lies and cruel fictions replacing facts and truth; a rejection of science and a celebration of ignorance; bloated enrichment of the already wealthy and the impoverishing of our poor and middle class citizens; the destruction of trust in our electoral system; the teaching of religion in our public schools; the promotion of White supremacy and the glorification of racism; the denial of global warming in favor of enriching their wealthy donors. What else?

In the 2020 general election campaign the Republican Party had no platform. They offered a single page of rah-rah. That’s it. They offered no declaration of what they were about or of their vision for America. Sadly, now we know what they’re about. Now we know their dystopian vision for the destruction of our democracy.

I smell tyranny. I smell authoritarianism and dictatorship. I smell fascism and it stinks.

Do you smell what I smell?

Wanna Fight This Insanity? Here’s How

Sheila Markin is a friend, the publisher of The Markin Report and she smells what’s burning, just as you do. If you haven’t yet subscribed to her posts, you truly need to. She just emailed me with news about a couple of Zooms I’m certain you’ll want to attend.

As you can see from the destructive laws being enacted in Texas and elsewhere to assault our rights and our democracy, there’s much we have to learn and much we have to do. To that end, Sheila has put together two educational 1-hour Zooms for us. These are being offered at no cost and there will be no requirement to donate. This is about making a critical difference. Here is the schedule.

September 17 at 2:00PM CDT – Media Matters will help us understand how they fight disinformation. Did you ever imagine that there would be a need to fight a constant tsunami of disinformation? Well, there is and you’ve known it for a while. We need to get smart about dealing with that.

September 24 at 2:00PM CDT – The 314 Project will explain how they are working to get doctors and scientists elected to Congress, as well as to state and local positions of leadership. Take just a moment to consider what it would be like if doctors had legislative input on medical issues and if scientists had input on issues of science, instead of such things being handled by self-serving, ignorance-loving, know-nothing  politicians. Breathtaking!

Note that in order to attend you need to email Sheila at [email protected] and let her know you’ll be there. That way you’ll be on the approved good-guy list for the presenters and the Zooms.

Please invite your friends, your network of contacts who are concerned about our country, who insist that our democracy survives these assaults from the radical right wing.
.

I’ll be there and will be looking for you.

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* You must read Justice Sotomayor’s blistering dissent. Download a copy of all the justices’ opinions. Sotomayor’s comments begin on page 7.

In reading her comments I was reminded of a college football cheer, paraphrased thusly:

“Rip ’em up, tear ’em up, give ’em hell, Sotomayor!”

** From Wikipedia:

“In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell, the Thought Police (Thinkpol) are the secret police of the superstate Oceania, who discover and punish thoughtcrime, personal and political thoughts unapproved by Ingsoc‘s regime. The Thinkpol use criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance via informers, telescreens, cameras, and microphones, to monitor the citizens of Oceania and arrest all those who have committed thoughtcrime in challenge to the status quo authority of the Party and the regime of Big Brother.”

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Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!)

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  3. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  4. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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