[CAUTION: If you hate truth as much as some of you show, do not read this article. Likely to produce strokes or, God forbid, reality.]
The Monroe News
Pam Taylor
Sat, December 18, 2021, 2:00 AM
In the political satire comic strip world where we’ve been living since 1970, New Agers are still trance-channeling, but now they’re taking their woo to state legislatures, public health agencies and school boards.
Characters fighting to dominate are still wrapping everything in flags and helmets and conservative culture wars, but they’ve added semi-automatic weapons, sunglasses and flashy Charlottesville haircuts.
Ryan Busse, former gun industry marketer, described the NRA’s and the gun manufacturers’ strategy evolution in the 1990s as veterans returned from Mideast wars and many hunters and sportsmen — the traditional NRA base — became concerned about gun deaths in America.
The industry pivoted to appeal to these returning combat veterans, playing to their tactical training and heightened threat awareness. This strategy “embraced military-style tactical weapons and gear, branding them as symbols of manhood and patriotism.” (“Fresh Air,” NPR, Nov. 11, 2021) It didn’t take much for fear and hate to provide new customers and old scapegoats. Old mindset, searching for targets.
We even updated cartoon versions of shady political operatives. They’re misleading people about COVID-19, mischaracterizing common public health measures and selling snake oil instead of laetrile while they destabilize governments and people die.
One often-repeated Dickensian story is the “horse-and-sparrow” economic theory. If you feed a horse enough oats and a few of those oats pass through the horse and end up on the ground, sparrows can find them. Getting almost all of the oats definitely helps the one horse, but even the many sparrows will gain by sharing a few of the well-coated oats, promoters say. That’s a very efficient way to deliver oats to horses; not so efficient for sparrows.
“Horse-and-sparrow” tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses, with its poltergeists named Reaganomics, supply-side, and trickle-down economics, don’t help our economy in the long term. The Trump administration’s version dug the U.S. $7.8 trillion deeper into debt (The Washington Post, Jan. 14, 2021). So Washington Republicans keep voting against bills that pay for enforcement of laws and regulations that keep us safe, infrastructure, and programs that Americans need. In the midst of our current COVID-19 surge, Michigan Republicans were “sitting on $800 million allocated to fight COVID-19” as of Dec. 13. The gap between the wealthiest 1% of Americans and the rest of us widens.
MUY IMPORTANTE:
The coup attempt by the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and earlier state-level shenanigans by the Sedition Caucus aren’t new. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes became president in 1876, but Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden won both the popular and Electoral College votes. A group of Civil War Lost-Causers resented post-war reforms. Sketchy objections were raised about election results in four states. The matter was thrown to a special elections commission (sound familiar?), where the vote of the people was nullified and Hayes was installed as president. Thus, Reconstruction ended and the Jim Crow era began, protecting what remained of the plantation economy. That was great for plantation owners and white nationalists, not so great for everybody else.
Former President Donald Trump and his Republican supporters orchestrated the same thing. This includes our legislators who signed petitions, letters and lawsuits as part of the planned, disingenuous campaign to manufacture doubt; those who harassed precinct workers and officials; those who spread the Big Lie; canvassers who refused to certify results; and those Congress members who voted not to accept states’ results. Mr. Trump pressured appointed and elected officials and lawmakers in Michigan and other states to de-certify their states’ presidential election results.
Calls for election audits, stealth “constitutional” candidates and appointees who support hijacking Michigan government, and the Secure MI Vote petition drive are part of this same state-level effort to suppress votes and for Republicans to be able to overturn unfavorable election results.
These recycled storylines are as destructive now as they’ve always been. These extremists are contributing to the illness and death of millions, whitewashing history, and replacing American democracy with fascism.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/extremists-replacing-american-democracy-fascism-090016800.html