We thought the nation had gone round the bend for voting for W.Bush into the Presidency with his bumbling; yet his intelligence, charisma, and ability to unite people was enough to get him reelected. Of course most people who did reelect him regretted it. We were so certain that our nation was fracturing from the pressure of the issues caused by the military conflicts and domestic political differences that he and VP Cheney were at the heart of.
We fought hard to sort that out; we were still working on sorting it out with President Obama, fighting to overcome global community’s view that we aren’t concerned with:
-
- our leaders being educated or
- inherited Eurocentric imperialistic attitude
- an inability to self-police human rights violations and war crimes
- the rights of all of our citizens
- the fact that our politics, attitudes, actions affect not only our nation but globallyPost President Obama, and that list is longer than my left arm. We can thank certain politicians who encouraged the fanatical extremist evangelistic religious right and tea partiers to take up a torch, run for office, and lobby hard. We ended up with men who were willing to allow a criminal onto the GOP ticket, without vetting him, even as he made disqualifying comments about his intentions for the presidency frequently including his intent ignore the U.S. Constitution.
The GOP thought they could puppet this man because their Vice President pick, a thoroughbred tea partier fanatical extremist evangelist on the religious right, a man as corrupt and neck deep in campaign corruption, election corruption, and corruption all throughout the new administration. They were wrong. Instead there was already a hostile foreign puppeteer’s hand up the devil’s arsehol… err… the man they chose had already been corrupted years ago by a hostile foreign nation and been approached in his campaign. There wasn’t room for a second set of hands up there. And then scandal after scandal has ensued.
Scandal is the wrong word. We have to find a different word, because “scandal” minimizes” what this uneducated, un-presidential, divisive, racist, bigoted, misogynistic, sadistic, ableist, chaotic, anti-government, anti-veteran, anti-education, incompetent, weak, unintelligent, boorish, gauche, pro quid-pro quo, unpatriotic, anti-American faux president has been doing to our country.The entire presidency has been an extended exercise in abuse on a massive scale by a man who is being allowed to use more power than he legally is allowed to use for personal gain, for petty revenge, and to aid countries who are not our allies.
I almost…. al.most long for the days of W.B. Then I remember we were lucky enough to have President Obama.
We’re still a young country, but one might still think that by 2020 we’d be much more enlightened than we are now. I mean, we elected a Black American for our President. Twice. With a House and Senate both packed against him he still managed to get a lot of good things done, but was blocked on far more. He was mistreated beyond belief. Effigies of him were burned in the streets and hung. We’re still fighting over the rights of marginalized groups of people in this country, and whether their rights infringe upon religious groups and supremacy groups rights to behave in hate speech and hate acts. Obviously, nah.
We’re still fighting over whether people deserve the right to live and expect affordable health care and health care coverage.
It’s become, somehow, a “far left wing liberal agenda” to believe that Human Rights, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Children’s Rights, Disability Rights, etc. et al, are important ideals to not only uphold but to fight for and encourage. That it’s an extreme idea. That these “extreme” ideas, these “extreme left liberal” ideas are something hateful and not a true entitlement. The words Democrat, Liberal, and Left are spat out like they’re epithets or slurs. I mean, sure, there actually is a far left but in the current Democratic Party, the most liberal of them aren’t nearly as liberal as “far left” gets. That’s a whole different post, differentiating aspects of different parties.
It’s a left wing liberal agenda to believe that every United States citizen deserves equal rights to be given a free and equal education. It’s a left wing liberal agenda to believe that people of color in the United States do not deserve to be receive police brutality, and that police reform needs to occur. That’s not a liberal agenda. That’s Human Rights. That’s Civil Rights.
If you poke around the internet, say, Twitter to start, you’ll notice that people dedicated to Trump politics until their dying breath, will hatefully vomit up that “liberalism is a mental illness.” Aside from the obvious issues I would have with that as a disability advocate, this is just one extreme example of the Us vs Them mentality I’ve mentioned in the past. It’s an example of encouraged hatred and division. Every word coming from Trump’s mouth, every single staged photo, every publicly scripted act since the death of George Floyd a little over a week ago has been intentionally divisive, corrosive, and encourages more violence. He’s taken the approach of Him + MAGA & Military Might vs Not Racist Americans.
The message is that those fucking Democratics and god damn fucking nutters who who side with them don’t deserve to be viewed as humans, individuals, sane, to be treated humanely, deserving of living, or hey even health coverage. Simply disagreeing with actions, speech, and particular ideas has become “left wing liberal conspiracy to bring down ‘real American patriots'” and you can guess who the real America patriots are. Not Democratics. Only those people who tow the Trumpian GOP line. If you’re a Republican that doesn’t stand with Trump, he’ll threaten to rip your life to shreds. If you’re serving in Office, he’ll threaten to destroy you. Publicly. With him? There isn’t any room for discussion or real argument.
You may notice I’m differentiating Trumpian GOP from something else. The “something else” would be the Republican Party as it was intended to be, before the Tea Party warped it into something unrecognizable. The other “something else” would of course be the Tea Party who I think also would qualify as “the religious right.”
The Trumpian GOP isn’t truly Republican in any form we’ve ever seen. The Administration as it is now? The GOP Tea Party with Trump sitting in that tea? It isn’t anything I think that GOP TP wanted. Again, this belongs in another post differentiating aspects within each party.
So going the long way round, I come back to this.
It’s worrying when I see and hear people saying that this isn’t the America they know; this isn’t America. I may feel as if I’m waking up in a parallel nightmare universe every single day, but I have no delusions that this isn’t how America really is. The evidence is in front of us in the daily news cycle; we can look back at every daily news cycle for the past 5 years. Racism has always existed in this country. We inherited that as colonists and slave owners. We fought a Civil War over it. We started a Civil Rights Movement over it. It’s always been there. The flames were fanned when we had a Black President because racists, White Supremacists, simply couldn’t handle it. The White Supremacist in the highest office of our land has made it appear more acceptable, since he encourages racism and wants to increase the brutality of our police.
I’d always heard from certain people that race relations were fine, racism wasn’t such a big deal any longer, that POC were just using the Race Card just like disabled people use the Disabled Card, to get a leg up on other people when it’s not deserved. Which is guess means is every time someone notices someone is not white or someone is disabled or they’re part of another protected class that they can’t discriminate against.
He allows his Secretary of Education to break down our education system, just as when she ruined her own state’s education system. I mean, yes he’s breaking down each aspect of the government and social services, entitlements, benefits, etc. He told us that’s what he wanted during the campaign. No one believed him, or it was ignored, but he told us. It’s what he’s been doing. It should has disqualified him.
But hey, for a second, let’s look at history. I’s the dictatorships and medieval kingdoms that preferred keeping their citizenry uneducated. If they’re uneducated, then an automatic inequality between the gentry and the masses. The People don’t realize there’s a problem because they have no choice but to believe the spoken words and decrees of their leadership. Again,there’s no possibility of equality. Any chance of learning about history, philosophy, maths, sciences, arts, and how to teach others the same with new ideas, how to research, is stifled and again… there’s no chance of equality. What is learned is controlled. How it’s learned is controlled.
The more we, the masses, are educated and encouraged to think things through logically, independently the more we understand when we’re being duped. We recognize propaganda and misinformation more easily.
We know better when our rights are being trampled upon.
We are more likely to use our voices collectively to fight for and demand our rights be recognized because trust me, they won’t be freely given.
Whether we’re women, disabled, a POC especially now when there are peaceful protests; or if we’re part of another marginalized group, we’re more likely to use our voices collectively to fight for those whose voices might not be loud enough, and encourage others to do the same, by showing them they’re not alone.
We’re more likely to demand to be treated equally.
We’re more likely to work in better jobs; we’re less likely to have very large families that would be guaranteed to keep us in poverty.
The more educated, the less poverty. The less poverty, the less control a government has over abusing the people. The governing force is no longer forcing the people to work for it, but now the governing force must drop the farce and work for the people.
The fight is against a reduced, concentrated government; a government-enforced poverty in order to maintain its own dominance and wealth. Some administrations are more guilty of this than others.
So I purged. A lot. I feel better. I may come back and read some of this later and be like, hmmm, let’s edit that. But feelings are feelings. So this might be a good place for me to ta-ta on out. Talk to ya later, loves.
Ever So Gently 