Their mindless audacity and spineless mendacity

 

“Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.” ― Robert G. Ingersoll

Though it’s easy for me to chortle at conservative critics now tripping all over themselves to blame Trump for the utter failure of the Republican Party to produce what they were sure was going to be a  red wave of victories for them in this mid-term election, I find it disturbing that these same people in the right-wing media and uber-conservative politics are still not willing to recognize that it was their mindless audacity and spineless mendacity that backed this egotistical blowhard that brought them to this reckoning. 

A reckoning long overdue that could have kept us from the brink of an autocratic rule, of which we have historically championed our opposition to around the world and led the way for others to aspire to our American-style of a constitutional democracy.

The lazy, often absent defiance of GOP leaders to call out Trump as the toxic element that would bring down the once respectable Grand Old Party, feared more the angry hatred of white supremacist and many faux evangelical Christians, thinking some how this degenerate element within our society would achieve for them what they apparently wanted more than respect and loyalty to the rule of law - political power.

And for many of us watching from the other side, it seemed like this MAGA movement was going to succeed in dragging our great experiment of a democratic republic to the ash pile of history where other despotic regimes ultimately lay, mired with the blood of innocent people caught up in the madness that such misguided insanity sweeps them into.

So, lest those who found themselves caught up in Trump’s assault on the guard rails of our constitutional democracy realize that they are as guilty, if not greater so, than the once popular media charlatan, this reckoning that’s confronted their own failure to prevent its creation and allowed it to metastasize to a point where chaos could have spun out of control, some other version of Trump-ism will rear its ugly head again. 

And when it does it will once again be the result of fear and ignorance by those preyed upon by one  person or a small handful of people seeking power and their enablers positioned to influence individuals who too quickly ignore their first instincts, or who are either unable or unwilling to challenge ideas that are devoid of human decency.

It’s a flawed condition as old as humanity itself and has been memorialized in the tale of naive young woman who picks up a snake pleading to be aided from freezing to death, ignoring her better judgment about the deadly threat a snake can pose, only to realize too late, that her initial instincts were true. 

History is replete with such snakes that societies fail to recognize in time to the detriment of millions.  To those cowards who now want to scapegoat Trump for the failures of their Party, I say, “you knew he was a snake when you nominated him and supported him for four long years.”

It's Halloween and the Fright Monsters are out in force

 

“Fear can have a voice, but it doesn’t get a vote” - Elizabeth Gilbert

Of the top nine issues concerning voters in 2022, found in a recent Pew Research poll, the issue of crime never made a showing.  The top issue is the economy and how inflation is impacting our purchasing power with higher prices for food, energy and housing expenses.  

But explaining the causes of inflation are complex and not easy to pin down on any single factor, though Republicans would have you believe that it’s totally connected to the Party currently in power.  A normal tactic during election cycles for both parties, but one that leaves Republicans egg-faced who use it this year against their Democratic rivals.  Inflation is less governmental action than it is market responses to national and global situations often outside the control of a single player.

While one Party tries to allay the fears of consumers and voters, the other is stoking them, because it is no secret that the use of fear has a strong influence on our political and social choices.  Which brings us back to the issue of crime and how it is being used by today’s MAGA Republicans.  Beware of “politicians and candidates [who make statements] for strategic reasons that extend beyond changing your vote to demobilizing the electorate,” says Leonie Huddy, PhD, professor of political science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

When searching on line for results of crime and how it plays into this year’s election, the sources are mainly right-wing media links that exploit one’s fear of this issue. These sources of cromulent editorializations know how conservatives react to notions of a liberal justice system and their claims of alleged lax enforcement standards they say allows many crimes to go unpunished and unresolved.  And though research data doesn’t support this fear-mongering misinformation, it still feeds into the MAGA conservative’s narrative that finds abundant support in campaign rallies in states where crime is the highest.  Like Texas.

I’m sure that last factual tidbit surprises many, especially those “law and order” candidates, who tout unfettered gun purchases and ownership. However, “a report released by the Violence Policy Center shows that states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun ownership have more deaths from gun violence than other states.”

The state of Texas is far from being immune to high crime rates under the Republican leadership of Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton.  It is in the 33rd percentile for safety, meaning 67% of states are safer and 33% of states are more dangerous.

I’ve often found myself bumfuzzled by this ominous threat of criminal violence.  Not that it doesn’t exist in our city and state, but apparently does so far less than the purveyors of fear would have you believe.  In fact, I‘ve recently discovered that my own neighborhood in Denton off Old North Road gets an A+ rating in safety from violent and property crimes, as does much of Denton, in comparison to other regions around us.  You will also find that most districts in Texas that are represented by conservative legislators have equal or higher crime rates than their more liberal districts

As great as the threat of autocrats is to democratic-republics, even greater is the threat of uninformed voters whose choices are made on groundless fears they’ve been conditioned to since childhood.  The countervailing force that helps protect our constitutional guard rails is the informed citizens that is fearless when faced with the virulent voices of disinformation.

Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years of a life sentence in prison for his passionate activism against South African apartheid, taught us “that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.  The brave man” he said, “is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”  Words to bear in mind as early voting begins October 24th in Texas.  Be fearless against those who would weaponize fear to hold onto power.

Anti-republic Republicans?

“Herein lies the deadly peril of republics: The very institutions that they so painstakingly maintain to maximize the liberty of their citizens and the stability of their body politic are susceptible to perversion into the most efficient and sustainable instruments of tyranny.”  -  author Charles Scaliger

Many Republicans who have voted against sending aid to Ukraine to defend their democracy are the same ones who recently voted against a bill to create an Office of Food Security at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which “aims to establish a department to assist veterans facing food insecurity and lack of nutrition, such as providing them with information about food stamps and other programs.”

Similarly, these MAGA Republicans, many who adhere to ludicrous QAnon conspiracies, voted against sane gun control measures following the massacre of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde and supported the decision by their male-dominated state legislatures to end a woman’s right to an abortion of an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy, especially in cases of rape or incest.  Let’s not forget either how these GOP-controlled state legislatures have made it much more difficult to vote for those who tend not to vote for their Party, through gerrymandering and restrictive voting measures on mail-in ballots and fewer voting places.

They have called the January 6th insurrectionists patriots while remaining essentially silent on the death of several Capital police and the physical abuse of hundreds of others who defended the Capitol.  Many of these “patriots”, who Samuel Johnson referred to as scoundrels, were willing to hang Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence without due process of the law and actually came armed as a lawless crowd of vigilantes.

It’s bad enough that these extremists officials in Congress threaten our institutions and traditions that established the rule of law.  However, considering how they have opposed and curtailed many of our basic freedoms and creating restrictive measures to pass bills in Congress, their aim now, if they regain control off Congress, is to “sunset” all federal legislation in five years, claiming, as GOP Senator Rick Scott does “that if a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again."  This scheme threatens to eliminate our vital Social Security, Medicare and Veterans programs.   It’s simply just another typical sleight of hand tactic of the GOP that “would leave the fate of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to the whims of a Congress that rarely passes anything so expansive.”   They simply cannot be trusted to have anyone’s best interest at heart other than their wealthy, corporate donors and Christian nationalists groups.

Governor Greg Abbott and his counterpart in Florida, Ron DeSantis, profess to be Christians whose gospels teach us the humane virtues of treating others as we would treat ourselves, recently showed us how that only applies under their rigid guidelines for what qualifies as being human.  Their callous disregard for how vulnerable people are robbed of their dignity, be they an immigrant fleeing for their lives from harsh, repressive governments or those where gang violence prevents any chance of living a productive and secure life, to those whose gender identity doesn’t meet one’s strict religious codes, is all too common of the extremists within the GOP.

Numerous polls show that most Americans don’t side with these kinds of extreme views.    A May, 2021 Quinnipiac poll showed that most Americans think the GOP is working against Democracy.

Yet the real test to how we choose to display ourselves as the “shining city on a hill” for the rest of world, resides in our will to make our voices heard with our votes in the coming elections.  2022 and 2024 will be a turning point for this nation where we will either sustain our founding principals or, as many before us have, fall victim to the demagoguery of autocrats.

In her insightful book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, Anne Applebaum shared her view on how “authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity.  There is nothing intrinsically 'left wing' or 'right wing' about this instinct at all.  It is allergic to fierce debates.  Whether those who have it ultimately derive their politics from Marxism or nationalism is irrelevant.  It is a frame of mind.”   A frame of mind that is anathema to democratic-republics.

You might be a fascist if ....

“When you’re attacking FBI agents because your under criminal investigation, you’re losing”  - Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Hillary Clinton in 2016

If you consider yourself a Republican and find yourself irate from being unfairly labeled by President Biden’s recent statements that impugned your association to fascism - maybe you should chill out.

My sister-in-law recently expressed her anger about this in a recent Facebook posting.  Were we still talking to each other over this medium I would have inquired why the ire about something that isn’t true, unless of course the shoe fits, as they say.  To be a self-acknowledged fascist your behavior and speech have to reflect its outward signs and manifestations.

A combination of interpretations defines fascism as: a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

Of the Republicans who adhere to some or all of these distinctions, it is probably safe to say they are those who Joe Biden referred to as MAGA Republicans.  Those people who have unflinchingly bought into Trump’s Big Lie about voter fraud, think the January 6th assault on the Capitol was a “normal tourist visit” or largely a “peaceful protest”,  see violence as viable means to an end and who align themselves with QAnon Conspiracies.

It’s hard for me to fathom that my sister-in-law would be part of any Hitler/Mussolini/Franco appreciation society but it can be said that her loyalty to a former president who has violated all the norms of civil behavior to hold onto power by inciting violence, is susceptible to fascism’s lure.

Her husband, my brother, once opined with me as high school students, how an entire nation like Germany could be won over by the hate and fear-mongering of a delusional autocrat, trading their representative, republican form of government for a totalitarian model.  It was hard to imagine then that the war our father fought in to preserve liberal democracies would ever gain a foothold on American shores.  And yet, here we stand today faced with that very real possibility.  One so unequivocal that academic historians confronted the President recently and warned him about totalitarianism's rise and parallels between now and pre-World War II fascism in Europe.

In his Atlantic article, Fear of Fascism, Tom Nichols conveys his reluctance to
use “the word fascism to describe Donald Trump and his Republican followers, but”, he continues, “we have to overcome our reluctance to use strong language and admit that America is now beset by a dangerous antidemocratic movement masquerading as a party.”

In the vernacular of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if ...”,  I would pose the suggestion to lifelong Republicans unsure about the direction which Trump and his acolytes have taken that Party - You might be a fascist if you are willing to defend Trump’s break from reality that attacks our institutions we depend on to ensure that no one is above the law and that we the people are in control of America’s destiny, not a cult of personality or a Party that has no policy platform and whose leader has high praise for authoritarian strongmen.

Cruz-ing for a bruising

“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends”. - Henry A. Wallace

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is somewhat a classic oxymoron.  He’s a Harvard-educated twit, an astute buffoon, a circus clown ringmaster.  That makes him an embarrassment to many Texans and a national security threat as a political leader in this country, though the term “leader” is a stretch for Mr. Cruz.  The megaphone his political position allows him to spew conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric can and probably will contribute to deadly consequences for some.  

 

A passage from James Parker's article in The Atlantic, titled Heavenly Hackwork draws a close resemblance between gentlemen in Elizabethan London and GOP pretentious-types like Cruz:

 

 “a gentleman in Elizabethan London, a gentleman of more or less regular means and habits, ...had a passion for virtue and a genius for cruelty. ”They had wonderful manners and barbaric inclinations, lovely clothes and terrible diseases. ”They oscillated madly between the abstract and the corporeal. "

 

Cruz has been a fawning loyalist to the Big Liar who instigated the insurrection on our Capitol last year.  And in the recent CPAC Convention held in Dallas, he was encouraging violence again against Democrats, calling them “barbarians” and “nitwits”.  It was this type of irresponsible rhetoric that stoked right-wing extremists to attack the Capitol and is a harbinger of fascism.

And now he and the GOP leadership are taking Donald Trump’s lead again with hyperbolic and malicious lies about a civil search and seizure by the FBI on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida residence.  An act that was only made public by the former President himself, serving purely to roil his devoted followers in the hopes they will once again enact violence to defend his criminal behavior.  Their feigned outrage sounds similar to the language they criticized the BLM movement of following George Floyd’s death by Minneapolis cops.

In his pathetic attempt to portray Maximus, the lead role in the movie, The Gladiator, Cruz, speciously claiming to represent 30 million Texans, crowed to the crowd, “It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians.  As they say in the military world, it is a target-rich environment.”

It’s remarkable that this man (again, “man” is a stretch) who self-emasculated when he kissed the ring of Trump at the 2016 GOP convention, months after Trump made derogatory remarks about Cruz’s wife and father, and constantly referred to him as “Lyin Ted”, now tries to convince his audience he is Trump’s BFF.

The pretense that Cruz represents the best interest of his constituents was exposed as a fraud when he fled Winter Storm Uri to the warm and cozy climate of Cancun while thousands of Texans suffered from the Texas grid power outages.  And what supporter of our military troops, who’ve suffered serious health conditions and even death from the burn pits in Iran and Afghanistan, would fist-bump a fellow Republican congressman after they blocked a bill to fund the health care these vets require.  

The stunt, a slap in the face of military victims of those burn pits, was merely a temporary power play by our two Texas senators, angered because the Democrats who had successfully moved a package of tax, climate and health care provisions through the budget reconciliation process that allowed them to bypass Republicans.  Not an uncommon practice by the GOP Party under Mitch McConnell’s leadership.

Cruz was also part of the GOP effort to block part of a bill that allows Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and put a $35 cap on the life-saving Insulin prescriptions.   And let’s not forget Cruz’s backing of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority who flipped a 50 year old court precedent that gave women control of their bodies in deciding whether or not to end unwanted pregnancies.     Geez, with representation like this, why worry about what Democrats do?

Ted Cruz may not be up for re-election this fall, nor will his BFF.  But Texas voters who have supported them in the past can rethink their decision, by either voting Democratic November 8th or staying home this election cycle and send a message to the GOP that would take away the power you’ve given them and which they have in turn abused.

Act now while your choices still count, unlike what exists in fascist, autocratic states

FOX’s dereliction of duty.

 “The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.” - Thomas Jefferson

On the night of the January 6th House Committee's last prime time hearing on July 21st, which nailed the former President’s dereliction of his constitutional duty to send troops in to quash the insurrection, one of his most avid supporters was also derelict in their responsibilities as a member of the 4th estate.

While the committee was hearing testimony from two life-long Republicans who voted for Donald Trump and who had worked devotedly in his administration, and were explaining why the former President had shattered their faith in him, forcing them to resign their White House posts, FOX’S prime time talking heads of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were not only avoiding this critical public service, but, in Sean Hannity’s case at least, portraying it as a sham investigation.

MAGAites may feel comfortable falling back on their oft baseless views that all Democrats lie and that any negative thing “the media” reports about Spanky Bonespurs is merely fake news.  The people who were exposing Trump in these hearings, however, as a lying fraud who put our constitutional democracy at great peril on January 6th, 2021 were his own White House staff, congressional Republicans and even three family members.  The very people who had helped sustain his presidency through thick and thin during his four years were now being accused of “so many lies and misrepresentations” on Trump’s own flatulent social-media network, Truth Social.

But as bad as the attempt by the Carlson/Hannity/Ingraham trio was to dismiss these congressional hearings, it was the Rupert Murdoch News empire which had abandoned any genuine connection with objective journalism years ago, that is perhaps guilty of collaborating with a wanna be dictator and should be viewed not only as a traitor to journalistic core principles, but a traitor, not unlike Trump himself, to this nation.

Words have consequences and those willing to share them, despite their absence of reality-based evidence, are complicit in any claims that evoke violence.  Equally damaging is when a large platform like the FOX Network chooses to avoid reporting on sworn testimony given under penalty of perjury if they lie, denying their viewing public an opportunity to draw their own conclusions on the veracity of what the January 6th  Committee is presenting to all Americans.

FOX’s deliberate choice to not air the full slate of the Commission’s hearings sends a misinformed signal to their very large viewer share that what transpired on January 6th, 2021, is the “sham” Hannity called it and propped up Trump’s own duplicitous view of it as a witch hunt.

Their actions are so transparently dishonest and disingenuous because had the same behavior been played out by any Democratic President and their coterie of devoted loyalists, there would’ve been uninterrupted reporting 24/7 and hair-on-fire vilifying by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, along with all the other FOX doe-eyed pretenders who saddled up to Trump over these last 4-5 years.

American activist and educator, Bill Dixon once stated that “while everyone has a right to his or her opinion, the people who are informed have more of a right.”  FOX chose to deny their viewers that right because it suited their perception of who mattered most to them - the megalomaniac who they wanted to help keep in power because it no doubt aligned with their financial and political interests.

SOME PERSPECTIVE ON TRANSPARENT STUPIDITY

 

 

“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, District of Columbia v. Heller

It appears that most advocates for more guns, not less, to deal with mass shootings, are oblivious of the concept, “cause and effect”.  The reality that more guns, in any fashion, does little to reduce gun violence has been established by numerous careful studies.    Add to this the easy access Americans have to obtain them, and it becomes crystal clear why the U.S. gun death rate is “at the top of the list for countries with high Socio-demographic Index.”

Lewis Toland would have us believe that it’s simply a loss of traditional mores and feminist antagonists who run off their husbands that contributes to the increase in mass murderers.  However, he cites earlier mass murderers from past eras without connecting their deranged atrocities to low morals and absent fathers. 

Immoral, fatherless young men have been with us throughout history and some likely engaged in taking innocent lives in part because of their deprived fate.  But unlike today’s homicidal bunch, none had the easy access to abundant, more deadly firearms to make this an existential threat to American society as it has become today.  As of June 3rd, there had been 20 more mass shootings since Uvalde.

Could this violent epidemic of gun killings really be just the result of those who haven’t found Jesus in their life and grew up without a dad?  Perhaps the Tolands of this world should take a hard look at their own tribe

Tom Nichols, a self-proclaimed Never Trump conservative observed that “Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes”.

Nichols’ view of today’s Republican fits those who insist that more guns are needed to combat mass shootings.  It is another knee jerk reaction in the style of Tucker Carlson to automatically blast any idea that emanates from liberal Democrats or others who don’t align with their nutty, perverse ideas

 

Nutty ideas like Senator Ted Cruz’s “one door” solution that has “one door into and out of the school, and have … armed police officers at that door.”  Even 2nd amendment zealots who want too find plausible counter arguments to gun reform legislation have to be somewhat mortified by this dangerous approach that puts teachers and students in harms way when a fire or bomb threat evacuation is needed in rapid order.  Fox News contributor Judith Miller argued that Republicans have become "the party of egregious mass shooting and uncontrolled guns" following the Uvalde, Texas school massacre.

It is lunacy that portends that reasonable and sane gun reform measures threatens to take away guns from those conscientious gun owners who practice reasonable gun safety.  It is an idea fostered by the NRA who advocate for more gun sells on behalf of the gun industry.  To believe that ideas like banning AK-47’s, expanding background checks and enacting Red Flag laws will not reduce gun violence is to ignore how effective these measures have worked in other developed countries

Innocent men women and children will continue to die at the hands of desperate and disturbed people who’ve easily obtained guns because the gun industry and their lobbyist, the NRA, have advanced a paranoid idea that serves their financial interests. 

The laws that enable this insanity are the results of voters who continue to re-elect the handmaidens of the gun industry and fail to call them out after each mass shooting. It’s a classic example of Einstein’s definition of insanity