Post 1,033

There is no reason for the so-called populist uprising, no rationale to explain Trump and MAGA, except one: the freedom to dominate.

Jamelle Bouie detailed this right of domination in a post that was centered on George Wallace, the politically brilliant, hatred-infused politician who garnered 13.5% of the popular vote in the 1968 presidential election. He ran on lofty sounding rhetoric that was founded on – you guessed it – freedom to dominate.

His was a strongman bid for power and domination and millions of Americans embraced it, just as many Americans sieg heiled for it in the 1930s German American Bund. Clearly, there is a strain of us in love with the lust for power – the freedom to dominate.

Some have always had that longing for simple autocratic leadership for our challenges, especially the challenges of sharing power with “others.” It is exactly that strain that Trump feeds, coddles and exploits. Forget about those better angels. Instead of them, millions flock to the dark angel of domination. Enter The minority.

It’s fascinating what the far right people – let’s call them Republicans – seem to believe. And it’s scary to hear the dark fog of what they want to impose on all of us.

For example, they tried to force a 10-year-old victim of incest and rape to carry the rapist’s fetus to term, even though they knew that this 4th grader would likely die in childbirth. According to what these Republicans say and do, that’s better than allowing her to obtain an abortion.

They made their bible thumping demand that Katy Cox* not get an abortion and instead she would have to carry to term a severely compromised infant that could not survive outside the womb. Forcing that pregnancy to term would likely cause Cox to be unable to have another child and she might well die from complications. That is what the minority crazies wanted.

Meanwhile, almost 69% of Americans want women to be the ones deciding what happens to their own bodies, not these power crazed minority dominators.

The minority is steadfastly against anything that might monitor, regulate or limit the use of firearms. Those kids and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, too bad for them. The Parkland kids and teachers, the little kids mowed down in Sandy Hook Elementary School, the partiers at the Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas who were gunned down, the people in the bible study group at Mother Emanuel AME Church – too bad for all of them. Like Trump said about the people mourning the killed and wounded in Perry, IA on January 4th, “they just have to get over it.” The minority gun slingers refuse to do anything to protect We The People, even our little kids.**

Meanwhile, Americans consistently want stricter gun laws. It varies from a low of 56% to a high in excess of 80% following the Sandy Hook massacre. We want universal gun registration requirements, red flag laws to take guns from likely spouse killers, the outlaw of military weaponry and large capacity magazines, a higher age requirement for the purchase of any firearm, required safe storage of weapons and more.

The minority has spent huge amounts of money to stymie the reduction of the greenhouse gasses we expel into the atmosphere. They’ve said and done amazingly ignorant things in opposition.

They have elected officials like Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, who brought with him into the Senate a snowball made from snow on the Capitol steps. It was a prop for his speech. He claimed that snow in DC proves that there is no global warming.

Meanwhile, most of us don’t buy his nonsense. Over 2/3 of us want fighting global warming to be a priority for our country – because we love our kids.

The very energized minority few are on a tirade to ban books. These are the dominators who want to control what the rest of us read. They love parents rights, as long as they are the parents who dominate. This minority of tyrants doesn’t want you to be the one to decide what your child can or cannot read.

Meanwhile, over 2/3 of us are against this dystopian book banning idiocy. We don’t need Big Brother controlling our thoughts or those of our kids.

The minority has eliminated child labor laws. Hey, what’s wrong with sending Johnny and Debbie to work in a sweat shop at age 14 or allowing them to serve alcohol?

The Republicans in Florida have prohibited discussion of “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political and economic inequities.” That’s thought police domination.

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This Minority Report is just that: it’s a report on the minority that has misused our democracy against us, that has twisted our voting districts and systems and our laws in order to amass power for themselves and to control the majority of us.

They have done their dirty work with lies and by doing what Steve Bannon directed – constantly throwing s**t at the wall until enough sticks and people can no longer tell truth and reality from the lies. He called it “flooding the zone.” That’s how they make their mob believe anything.

The result, of course, is that We The People don’t get what we want, we get a lot of things we deeply don’t want and our power has been incrementally stolen from us.

Perhaps you don’t like to be told what you can and cannot do by some petty overlord, some extremist functionary dominator. If so, I have some very bad news for you.

The Big Brother geniuses have crafted an elegant plan to control you and our country. It’s called Project 2025 and it’s designed to eliminate our democracy, which means eliminating any power you have. Its purpose is to send all power and money to the rich guys at your expense and to create a permanent minority control of this country. And of you. Domination.

Read the report. It’s attractively packaged in patriotic sounding terms and is a clarion call to support the minority usurpers, who promise such filth as saving you from the vermin that they say infest our country and who they want you to hate. If you allow it, you won’t have to do the work of thinking for yourself – or even be allowed to think for yourself. All you have to do is to surrender everything to the dominators.

Or you can stand up and say NO! while you still have the power to do that.

Quotes of the Week

From Steve Schmidt:

“There is no greater act of apathy and malaise than having the energy to judge the past, ignore the present, and disdain responsibility for the future.”

From Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post:

“What can save the GOP from itself? Defeat. Crushing, unambiguous defeat.”

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It’s possible that even Donald Trump can understand the message. But not likely.

Given his decades-long history of discrimination and abuse of women, it’s especially satisfying that he lost this case to a female plaintiff represented by a female attorney.

I’ve said it before and I say it now:

I love it when a bully gets punched in the nose!

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* Katy Cox will be a guest of First Lady Jill Biden at President Biden’s State of the Union address on February 7, 2024.

** There have already been over 3,000 gun violence deaths in the U.S. in 2024.

• Today is a good day to be the light
• _____________________________

• 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.

• 

  
  

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