CAVEAT 1: If you are reading this blog for the first time and do not know me, you should know, before proceeding, that I am a bleeding-heart liberal who has been scared witless by the last four years.
I have a good friend who has retired to the Sunshine State whom I haven’t seen since God’s dog died (HS, 1961) and with whom I have been corresponding for several years. He is a great guy but bonafide conservative, and maybe, I don’t know for certain, a Donald Trump (DT) die-hard. I do know this much: he sends me fact-based news regarding the crookedness of the Biden clan and the extreme wealth of our new climate change czar, John Kerry (JK; see photo above). I have corroborated his facts with www.foxfacts.com and they are sound. What follows is basically my last email to him after receiving his one-liner regarding the fraudulent election, “One for you, twelve for me.” Again, fact-based and confirmed by www.foxfacts.com.
Dear Herman,
I have been wondering and wondering and wondering whether you have crossed into La La Land, just like your hero, Donald Trump (DT), and DT reminds me of Victor Frankenstein. I have been unsuccessfully, and not so quietly admonishing you for your idolatry of a demented and tormented man, and I am giving up. I’ve tried to educate you in the ways of different forms of government and the power of 3 groups:
1) One Percenters (OP);
2) Congressional Republican Army of the OP (CRAP); and
3) Red & Right Pawns (RRP).
These 3 groups are dangerous, dangerous, dangerous to the maintenance of democracy, but you won’t listen. Florida sunshine must have that effect on the brain because we are seeing a lot of evidence of Cerebral Solarization (CS) in the Sunshine State. You say the Biden family is as corrupt as the Koch family and John Kerry (JK) owns Houston, an armada of yachts, a year’s production of GM cars, and 100s of warehouses of ketchup. You say JK’s carbon footprint is the size of the state of Texas. You ask if JK is the right choice for Joe’s climate change czar? Hmmmm………We do know this much: Texas is the 2020 air pollution world leader, passing Bangladesh and Pakistan, leaders in 2019. Again, true sez www.foxfacts.com. I would still rather live in Bangladesh than Texas, and I was born in Texas.
On a slightly more serious note, I made the fantastic discovery of an article that explains so much to me. As they say, an “a Ha!” moment. I now understand why DT has had such a strong appeal to the OP, his CRAP, and the RRP. Robert Reich, a genius, opened my ignorant mind when he wrote a 2019 article in The Guardian: “There is no ‘right’ v ‘left’: it is Trump and the oligarchs against the rest” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/07/donald-trump-oligarchs-democrats-right-left)
Yes, yes, I know, Reich is the leftest man in the universe (www.foxfacts.com), but the article is short, informative, and does an excellent job of explaining why DT and his OP, CRAP, and RRP scare the Snickers out of Democrats and Liberals. We all (Ha! Ha!) know that the fate of democracy is at stake, and that we are at a very tenuous tipping point. We all (Ha! Ha!) know that four more years of DT and we would have likely sacrificed the greatest democratic experiment in history to be replaced by an oligarchy.
Have a wonderful quarantine and citrus-packed Christmas, Herman. Dave
(End of letter to Herman and now on to a few pearls of my wisdom, but mostly Reich’s wisdom, confused as much as possible with my faux wisdom)
MAJOR MESSAGE: Republicans do not want democracy to work because an oligarchy serves their purpose of concentrating power and wealth in the OP and the CRAP.
DEMOCRACY REQUIRES FIGHTING:
- Tribalism. Fracturing society into warring tribes (e.g. OP vs. RRP; gun slingers vs. anti-slingers) This is basically “Divide and Conquer.” Polarization. “Right vs. Left.”
- Enhancement of the OP & CRAP. The enhancement of these two groups includes: unlimited campaign donations, no increase of their taxes, voter suppression, maintaining monopolies, maintaining ignorant masses by confusion via anti-facts, anti-science, anti-intellectualism, anti-truth, thus fueling www.foxfacts.com, etc.
- Election of another puppet-master (DT) or DT again. DT may have preferred to be a dictator rather than just a president. Hopefully, God will forbid it and we’ll never know.
- References to Socialism and Communism. These concerns generally come from the RRP, who commonly know diddly squat about socialism and communism. The OP & CRAP have fed the RRP’s fears that once you give in to wearing masks during an epidemic, the next thing the government will want all your guns. ALL of them. You will even have to turn in your slingshots and pea shooters. The slippery slope argument. Democracy slips to Socialism slips to Communism. The RRP do not connect the dots; they love their VA health benefits and good roads but hate public land; privatization always does it better.
- Fallacy that the common good is not good. This is the Individualism vs. Common Good Argument. Buying into the common good crap means you can’t do anything you want, whenever you want simply because it will not be appreciated by the rest of the world. Three examples that I’m personally familiar with: you can’t put a runway for your Lear and a pad for your Sikorsky in your front yard; you can’t run your hydroplane engine at 2 a.m. in your apartment; and you can’t double dip salsa.
CAVEAT 2: You can’t believe everything you read, especially if it has been written by me. And, as my wife will tell you, I LOVE to generalize. I like to take a truism about a very small sample of people and expand it to apply to 7.8 billion people. For example, my friend likes me, ergo the world likes me. Truthfully, I didn’t give a ratz ass about politics and world governments until DT was elected. And then, in 2016, at the very ripe age of 73, Sleeping Beauty Dave woke up. I have been a biologist all my life and I’ve studied everything from armadillos to satellite data. That’s totally true. Most scientists don’t know who the current president is. That’s totally false.