Abandoning Fantasies
POST 1080
Still Reeling
. . . from the debate debacle. Yet we must continue our march forward.
Trump was Trump, grifting, fabricating idiotic, outrageous lies and doing his fantabulous projections of his lunacy and criminality onto Biden. But that isn’t the oddest thing. What is far more odd is that millions of Americans want this psychopath to be our next president.
And Biden was Biden – the one we rarely get a glimpse of; the actual guy. He’s been great for decades. He continues to be an excellent chief executive of our country. But he has degenerated into a sometimes terrible candidate and an unreliable campaigner.
This election will, like most, be decided by the 10 – 20% in the middle. These folks are independent, most are relative centrists and many are not very well informed voters. They are the ones who have to be convinced to vote for Biden. Many will vote against Trump, many will refuse to vote because they don’t like either candidate and some will vote for a third party candidate. The refusers and the third party voters may convince themselves that they are in their integrity, making a statement. What they actually will be doing is electing Trump.
Angry people are motivated. Trump’s devoted followers are like that. They show up and vote. Democrats aren’t as motivated and many eligible voters don’t vote at all. That passion inequality has delivered minority rule and is exactly why voting refusers and third party voters are tacitly voting for Trump.
And knowingly or not, they are voting to end our 248 year commitment to democracy.
My call for Biden to withdraw from the race has been echoed by many pundits and editorial boards, even as it isn’t as easy as that. There are the fundraising challenges for a replacement candidate, the building of a war cabinet and the wooing of millions in a different direction, all in a very limited amount of time. In other words, Biden may yet stay on the ticket, leaving us a quite challenging task: motivating people to vote for Biden, even in the face of his poor performance at the debate.
Let’s start with this from Adam Kinzinger the night before the debate:
Today, we face an election about a singular, monumental issue: the very essence of our democracy. The question before us is clear—which of the two candidates will stand unyielding in their commitment to preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution and strengthen our Democracy?
For me, the answer is simple: And that is why, today, I am officially Endorsing Joe Biden’s Re-Election for the Presidency of the United States of America. [emphasis original]
There is a reason why I and so many others come back to urging voting and activist support. Kinzinger lays out in plain language the imperative to act for our nation. Unfortunately, we live in a nation of apathy for serious things. We’re full of passion for our sports teams and the backyard barbecue. Some are energized at a rally where their fears and anger are stoked by a charlatan.
For about 40% of us our eyes glaze over when the subject is how we decide to be governed, but here’s the thing: our government is legitimized only through the consent of the governed – you and me. When we sit out the big game, we tacitly forfeit our voice, our hopes and dreams, and even our beliefs, surrendering them to those who will not “preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution and strengthen our Democracy.”
There it is – the reason you are and I will vote and the reason we must encourage others to stand up for our country.
Best Quote
From the Declaration of Independence:
We have appealed to [King George III and English] native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.
That has been our experience in dealing with our extremist fellow citizens today, both those in elected office and the ordinary citizens steeped in grievance. They have steadfastly lobbied for their usurparations of our Constitution and made connections and correspondence impossible by their fictions, their horrible conspiracy nightmares and their calls to violence against fellow citizens. Worst, “they have been deaf to the voice of justice.” That is what has brought us to this moment.
They want to establish a patriarchy, different only in trivial ways from the extremists in Iran. They want American women to be second class at best, subject to the whim of their fathers and husbands.* You’ve seen the theft of rights and the promises of more usurpations to come from state legislatures, Congress and the Supreme Court. You know their calls to theocracy.
It’s all right before our eyes. So, much as many of us wish there would be a vigorous, energized and energizing new presidential candidate to relegate Trump to the lonely infamy he deserves, we are left with actual reality. We know full well that we cannot – we must not – be influenced by any Kellyanne Conway alternative facts or even our own secret wishes. We must grab our patriotic responsibility and do what we know must be done.
So, even in the face of the debate debacle, are you in?
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* Here’s anti-women’s liberation, self-appointed full citizenship antagonist, Phyllis Schlafly from years ago:
“The ‘women’s lib[eration]’ movement is not an honest effort to secure better jobs for women who want or need to work outside the home,” she said. It “is a total assault on the role of the American woman as wife and mother, and on the family as the basic unit of society. Women’s libbers are trying to make wives and mothers unhappy with their career, make them feel that they are ‘second-class citizens’ and ‘abject slaves.’ Women’s libbers are promoting free sex instead of the “slavery” of marriage. They are promoting Federal ‘day-care centers’ for babies instead of homes. They are promoting abortions instead of families.”
You can find essentially the same extremist sentiments today coming from Evangelicals, MAGA spouters and the spineless ones who know better but lack the integrity to say so. There is something that wants women to be powerless, second class citizens and which won’t go away.
Be clear: we are the ones standing up to stop the citizenship thieves.
“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”
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– Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016
- 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!
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