Trump and his allies, both the Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn types that move freely in the underworld of MAGA/Q-Anon conspiracies and the more mainstream muckrakers and chaos agents like Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk, or the simply stupid and mentally deficient types being placed on GOP ballots or put out in the town square to spread antisemitism like Kanye West are engaged in a full-court press to kill democracy around the world.
This is not hyperbole but their game plan. Bolsonaro has yet to concede Sundays loss in Brazil’s election and has his truckers burning tires on Brazil’s roadways and effectively shutting down traffic and commerce. He has been MIA for last several days while his MAGA overlords like Bannon claim the election was rigged and command him not to concede.
The GOP courts chaos and can only benefit from the distraction and disturbance on the international stage that ensues if he attempts a coup d’etat. He is expected to give his first public remarks Tuesday evening and his Chief of Staff has said he will allow the transfer of power, so fingers crossed, we shall soon see what the global trend towards authoritarianism has in store for us exactly a week before the midterms.
Here in the US, the voter intimidation and egregious incivility continues unabated. The awful attack and attempted assassination of Speaker Pelosi’s husband has been the subject of endless punchlines from the GOP pundits and not a single prominent Republican in the US House of Representatives has condemned the attacks.
They have lost their humanity in service to a godless leader and his violent minions and of course many of them are craven, venal men with their own repugnant histories and violent fantasies. More than one congressman have made attempts to wish violence on Speaker Pelosi including the feckless House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy who joked that he would hit her with the gavel when the GOP takes back the House and he becomes Speaker, (something he surely dreams about the way a halfwit dreams of becoming Batman).
Violent stupidity is their brand now and it fits perfectly with a party that has been rebuilt in the image of its leader, Donald Trump, a life long sexual predator in NYC and beyond. I know several women he has attacked personally and I also know the many failings of our institutions that have allowed such a man to not only continue to be an abhorrent human being but to thrive in his malfeasance and criminality all the way up to the highest office in the land.
Where he performed so poorly and corruptly he was impeached twice and his self-centered incompetence led to the deaths of over one million Americans because of his mishandling of the COVID19 pandemic.
When American voters sent him packing he refused to honor the results, set up fresh grifting opportunities such as ‘Save America PAC’ which now finds itself under grand jury investigation, one of many DJT now faces. Trump’s militaristic response to a free and fair election saw not only a rogues gallery of debauched lunatics from Bernie Kerik to Rudy Giuliani to Roger Stone. You could have walked into a prison yard and pointed at the first three inmates you saw and odds are they would have been of higher moral character-(though in all fairness, you would have found Kerik himself in the prison yard a few years back).
It enlisted an army of the ignorant, white supremacist base he courted throughout his presidency. They came to DC on January 6th and acted on his orders and attempted to stop the election count and attack both the Speaker of the House and Vice President Pence and they all understood exactly on whose behalf they were fighting. It was an insurrection and it was fomented, encouraged and funded by Donald Trump and the GOP.
Trump relied on the thuggery and mob-connected morons and miscreants he has always associated with since his money laundering days in New York City. This time he also had a fresh set of law enforcement to corrupt like his loyal agents in the Secret Service, one of which, Bob Engel, I went to HS with in the Hudson Valley over 30 years before he found Trump’s tiny doll hands attempting to choke him in a Secret Service SUV as he was told ‘no’ about visiting the US Capitol and aiding the MAGA insurrectionists on January 6th. Trump always reacts violently when told no, just ask the many women he has attacked.
That reactive violence and predatory instinct has now become the governing philosophy of an entire political party that seems hell bent on usurping democracy in favor of an autocracy. They are being cheered-on by an army of ignorant adherents too blinded by their own fear and xenophobia to grasp what is really happening in their own communities. They are being used as human shields of a sort to willingly vote against their own futures and that of their own children to protect a wealthy billionaire class that is willing to leverage the health and safety of millions of Americans so they can pay a smaller portion of taxes on their astronomical income.
The GOP has promised to continue the Trump Tax cuts which is not only a cause of inflation but a middle finger to the very same working and middle class folks MAGA now exploits. To pay for the Trump tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% of Americans the GOP will go after Medicare and Social Security. The same party that just voted against President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act claims the mantle of ‘fiscal conservatives’ while doing nothing to reduce the deficit but make false promises about trickle down economics, something most Americans already know to be a lie.
The reality is President Biden has reduced the deficit by half in his first two years in office most notably by making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.
These are not just philosophical party ideologies, these are cold hard realities for the tens of millions of Americans that would see their healthcare and Social Security reduced under the GOP’s plan. (Authored by none other than Rick Scott who himself stole over 300 million from Medicare when he ran a health insurance company). 63 million Americans receive Medicare, 89 million receive Medicaid and 65 million are Social Security beneficiaries.
The human toll and suffering would be staggering for the hard working Americans that deserve to get what they have earned in retirement and the security of having health insurance and affordable prescription drug costs. Another instance where the GOP will allow the pharmaceutical industry to set policy and raise prices for Americans instead of allowing Medicare to negotiate directly to lower prescription drug costs as the Biden Administration has done.
There are factors from industry greed to overseas agents of authoritarianism influencing the GOP and its Trump subordinates at this moment and we are at a critical juncture in the history of our democracy. We need people to turn out and vote next week in numbers we haven’t seen before for midterm elections, especially among younger voters.
If you know someone that needs some encouragement to get to the polls and participate in saving their Social Security and healthcare, help them see how crucial it is that they participate in their own futures, they may not get a second chance. Vote Blue. This time, it’s personal.
I live in the land where Kari Lake, Mark Finchem, Abe Hamadeh and Blake Masters put the AZ in crazy. I haven't given up hope, but I am wondering if I need to move.
Everything they plan to do if they take back control, they are saying the quiet parts out loud. You're absolutely spot on by saying this is not hyperbole; they will do it. All of these feckless cowards afraid to stand up to the Orange Mussolini do not realize just how bad this could get. That makes two assassination attempts on Speaker Pelosi and the GQP is normalizing the violence.
I used to wonder how the hell Hitler rose to power. It is unfolding before our eyes.