A New Kind of Voodoo

I have no doubt that Joe Biden has been so effective as a POTUS because of his deep well of empathy and his faith in the inherent goodness of this country and of its people.

His own personal history of tragic loss and his deep love for his family clearly informs how he relates not only to the people around him but to the world at large.

This is a blessing and a strength in any leader - anyone who mocks such attributes as a sign of weakness or exchanges genuine compassion for performative masculinity is making a fool’s bargain.

Life is complex and painful but at the core of any struggle are lessons in hope, resiliency and the best in the human spirit.

When our desire to make the world a better place outshines our ability to hold onto our own trauma, grievance or tragedy, we become truly effective change agents.

Another way to say this is when our desire to help others is more powerful than our own fears or limitations, we become not just more effective but find our own burdens have become lighter.

That’s a powerful insight to discover in any life and not one that generally comes without a deep personal loss or the hard-won wisdom of what this world can do to each and every one of us.

It’s in the rising above of personal circumstance and reaching out to others where we find true strength.

The opposite of that is mendacity, fear and avarice which seem to be the coins of the realm for modern conservatism.

It’s all become a cartoon parody as the cast of characters in the GOP this holiday season have all made abundantly clear.

Starting with Governor Abbott’s cruel stunt on Christmas Eve - sending innocent migrant families on a treacherous journey from Texas to be essentially dumped on the doorstep of our Vice President’s Naval Observatory D.C. residence in sub-freezing temps when the nation was in the grip of a massive storm; needlessly endangering the lives of innocent children who were already well into a harrowing and dangerous journey before reaching Texas.

To be treated as they were by a sitting governor is a national disgrace and all Texans and Americans should be deeply ashamed.

It says a lot about this particular moment in American history that there are not one but two Republican governors capable of performing such acts of depravity - with not a tinge of conscience about the human suffering caused or even the political insight to realize how bad these stunts look to anyone outside of the masochistic bubble of modern conservatism.

It’s abhorrent that such a broken man as Greg Abbott should have been re-elected when voters had the choice of a clearly better human being in Beto O’Rourke.

Beto had empathy, compassion and a deep understanding of the immorality of much of the cartoon characters in the GOP, and their ability to blindly look away and pretend to be cosplay cowboys when little children are being slaughtered in their state’s classrooms.

If ever there was an indictment of the performative B.S. put out by the NRA and the GOP clowns they put in office, and by extension they support in law enforcement, it was the police response to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas this past year.

The cover-up started almost immediately with performative, toxic tough guy Texas Ranger shtick and state police, all posing with the governor himself and all terrified that anyone would see through their toxically masculine act.

Beto walked right up to the microphone, confronted them, and they shouted him down out of their own self-centered fear, desire to hold onto power - and cover-up their shame and dereliction of duty.

The men on that stage didn’t want answers as to the insanity gripping our country that has caused so many young lives to be lost because of a mentally disturbed teenager’s ability to buy an AR15, other firearms and seemingly unlimited amounts of ammunition.

They wanted to protect the status quo and the people who pay them and they are doing it by holding onto and promulgating the same toxic fear and cruel political stunts that have caught on like wildfire in red state America.

Somebody like Beto O’Rourke is such an outlier in that terrain precisely because he is not afraid to publicly share his empathy, grief and frustration over the tragic state of our nation in the face of Republican policies towards guns.

And more importantly, the culture that extends from it, the cultish adherence to iconography that is sold as deeply patriotic to the kind of folks who think screaming eagle tattoos and giant pickup trucks are cultural touchstones signifying some sort of ethnocentric virtue.

The MAGA/GOP movement and basically all of the sub-variants that have since gone mainstream, are every bit as fascistic in their desire to be led by some cruel despot who will punish their perceived enemies as any people ever led into the fires of hell by history’s villains.

Men like Hitler or Mussolini would be envious of the supple compliancy of the average MAGA/GOP follower.

Factor in how the modern conservative movement is much less educated than their European counterparts, who despite their educations, fell in lock-step with tyrants - and you will see how the picture can get dark very fast if we are not careful in this moment.

These are people who were told masks and vaccines were bad and BELIEVED it to the point of pseudo-militancy, disrupting civic life to rail against the tyranny of……wait for it…….public health.

Mind you this was all carried out in the face of these same folks witnessing their fellow countrymen dying to the tune of over million with those numbers sadly still climbing.

That’s a new kind of voodoo - one we might wanna exorcise and not fall prey to - complacency, as it has in so many ways become the new normal in the GOP and the wide swaths of America it represents.

They way we counter it and continue to move forward is to keep our eyes on the steady progress and accomplishments of the Biden administration and their protections for civil rights, immigrants, healthcare rights and LGBTQ communities, while providing an equitable recovery to middle and working-class families and making the wealthy pay their fare share.

There is a lot of work ahead - the chaos and distraction is meant as a placeholder for the powers that be who do not care about protecting our environment or the most vulnerable among us or enshrining equal protections and voting rights for all Americans.

They want to keep making record profits and getting away with literal murder as is the case with the NRA and the epidemic of gun violence unleashed and abetted by a fully corrupted GOP filled with men and women who just two years ago enabled treason and will do all they can to make 2023 a season of loss - but instead it will be a year of empathy and hope.

Progress will continue to win over chaos and the continued grifting of the GOP and its figureheads, shady characters and chaos agents.

Ignorance can only flourish in darkness - it has no power when exposed to the light.

It is our job to continue to illuminate and light the path.

May the year ahead bring you many blessings.