Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "mitch-mcconnell"
White Women, Please: Victims and Villains V
The Weinstein whiners (white women are as good at whining as black women are at rolling our eyes and giving facial attitude) remind me of an incident that I described in my memoir. My second officemate at Cal Poly, a southern white woman fourteen years my senior, a woman who had evolved from a devoted Catholic mother of four to a crusading Marxist-feminist before we met, was whining about her bad job evaluation. Like too many converts, this former Catholic was a missionary, trying to convert everyone else, including her students, to her way of thinking, so the men in the department couldn't stand her. They punished her with an inappropriately negative (considering her teaching ability and hard work on department committees) evaluation. When she first started complaining to me, I was sympathetic because I hate unfair treatment, but then she went on too long in her whiny voice, declaring that she had never been treated so badly in her life. At that point, I shut her down. Glaring at her as if she were wearing a sheet and carrying a burning cross, I barked (my husky voice is incapable of whining), "I have! I've been treated a lot worse than anything that's happened to me in this department." This smart southern woman knew exactly what I meant and immediately calmed down. She understood Toni Morrison's message: Black people have the high moral ground when it comes to suffering and oppression. We did not enslave or lynch white people.
While white women had annoyed me by voting for a pussy-grabbing, racist maniac instead of a competent, sane woman, I appreciated that they immediately went to work to resist him. I knew from working with white women in my department, including my second officemate, that they are effective organizers, and as Mitch McConnell pointed out, they can be persistent. A white woman does not mind manipulating and badgering men, women, and probably children to recruit them to their causes. They are also obviously more experienced at dealing with crazy white men than we nonwhite women are. Helping me forgive the stupid white women who voted for a crazy, racist pig were the heroic Republican Senators from Alaska and Maine who stood with Vietnam hero McCain against draft dodger Trump and his enablers in the Senate to protect the ACA. Then Heather Heyer joined Viola Liuzzo as a martyr for civil rights, and I decided that nonwhite women willing to serve (word choice deliberate) Trump were much worse than KellyAnne Conway and the most obnoxious Sarah since Palin--Ms. Huckabee Sanders. I turned my ire on reality star Omarosa, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and probably the worst nonwhite woman in the world, Elaine Chao. Any nonwhite woman who can marry Mitch McConnell and serve under (word choice deliberate) Donald Trump is really an old white man in nonwhite women's clothing.
Then the Weinstein whiners started whining, and I went to war with white women. I was triggered by two white women talking on MSNBC. The co-creator of "The Daily Show," Lizz Winstead, and the anchor of the 11:00 a.m. (2:00 Eastern) MSNBC show, Trump abuse victim Katy Tur, were discussing Weinstein's dirty deeds when they decided to call out Obama and Hillary Clinton. I almost lost my lunch. Being able to sound off on Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, and Google+ had stopped me from screaming at the television until Trump's nomination and then election. Now I occasionally have to scream. I screamed at the two smug white women who were claiming that Obama and Clinton had to say something or they would lose credibility: "Well, maybe if you white bitches had voted for them (I knew they probably had, but their sisters hadn't), they'd say something." "What did y'all say about birtherism?" I bellowed. Later, I mean-tweeted both women, telling Lizz that I couldn't find her comments on birtherism, Trayvon Martin, Charleston, and Charlottesville. I looked for such comments before I tweeted, so I knew that if she said anything on those issues, her comments didn't make much noise. I tweeted Katy to say that she should have asked Lizz about her comments on racism and to make the point about voting. I said that maybe if a black woman complained about Weinstein, Obama and Clinton would speak out since we voted for them. I also suggested that she should have asked Lizz about Emmett Till and the Scottsboro Boys. Maybe because she's a humorist, Lizz engages with her mean-tweeters, so she told me to look harder. Oh, no, she didn't tweet back to me! I let her have it, pointing out that Hillary lost not only because white women voted for Trump but also because all of their whining made Hillary look either weak or unnatural since she wasn't as weak as other white women. I said that the first female President would probably be nonwhite because white women are seen as too weak to be Commander in Chief. I may have told her (or maybe it was Katy) about black women cleaning the homes and taking care of the children of white women and about white men using white women as weapons against black men, lynching and castrating them, while the white men raped black women. And I might have mentioned Strom Thurmond's half-black daughter and Arnold S.'s half-Latino son. Ms. Lizz, as I called her in my mean-tweets, is as smart as my second officemate was. She meekly tweeted "Okay" in response to my tirade. Maybe she didn't realize I am a black woman until I unleashed that twitter storm. Katy didn't respond to my tweets, but the next day discussed Weinstein with two non-white women. However, they were just analysts, not so-called victims.
Besides the fact that the Weinstein scandal was taking attention away from more serious issues--natural disasters in Puerto Rico, California, Texas, and Florida, and unnatural disasters in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.--this trendy sexual assault discussion set me off because it reminded me of my second least favorite person on earth after Trump--Gloria Allred. About two weeks before Weinsteingate, I read a profile of the bigot-in- liberals' clothing. The writer made a point of telling us that Gloria taught in mostly black high schools and wrote her English Honors thesis on black writers, including Ralph Ellison. But there was no mention of the race of most of Cosby's accusers or of Tiger Woods' mistresses. I wrote a letter to the editor (it was not published in this week's issue), pointing out that Allred's crusade against black men who have sex with white women, not just Woods and Cosby but also OJ Simpson and Herman Cain, may have been triggered by a character in INVISIBLE MAN named Sybil, a white woman who wanted invisible man to rape her because she had dreamed of being raped by a black man since she was a child. When I taught that novel, some white women were offended and defensive when they encountered Sybil. I didn't include this point in my letter, but I also wonder if her experiences with disrespectful, rowdy black students, especially males, caused her to be subconsciously hostile toward them. I taught at Evanston Township High School for one year; it's a highly ranked, mostly white suburban high school, but I encountered a few unruly black boys and girls there who helped me decide that I preferred teaching college. Maybe Gloria decided she'd prefer putting black men in jail, extorting them for money (Tiger didn't commit a crime), or ruining their careers to trying to teach them how to read and write while they hazed her.
Since I can't tweet (or tweet about) every white woman who annoys me with her whining or her attacks on black men, let me address them the way I addressed the white Trump supporters in an earlier post (12/4/16): White women, you are not the primary victims in America. You have to get behind black men, black women, all Latinos, all Native Americans, all Asians, all turban- and hijab-wearing people with pigmentation, all other people of color or people who appear to be of color, as well as poor white people in the most oppressed Americans line. Also, white women, being a victim is not empowering, and joining a lynch mob is not brave. And, oh, white women, if you take hush money, you should stay hushed or give the money back. If you had been a nonwhite woman, you might have done what the nonwhite foreign model did, go straight to the police and then wear a wire to try to build a criminal case against the powerful pervert. Finally, white women, learn what working-class black women already know. There is no free ride; everything has a price. You can't hang around powerful white men, hoping to take a shortcut to the top, without something bad happening. Sucking up to power to move to the front of the line might be dangerous; you can be sucked into a "traumatic" experience. If you want to make it in any town, do what those of us who are not white women have to do--work hard.
Before Trump was elected, I tried to tell women that all the whining about sexual assault (the Emily Doe nonsense and the overreaction to the "Access Hollywood" tapes) would make it harder for Hillary to win, and as Trump likes to say, "I was right." I'm also right in being disgusted that there wasn't as much outrage expressed over Trump's birther lies as over his bragging about sexual assault. All Americans, but especially the media, should be ashamed that he wasn't demonized off television as soon as he started claiming that our first (half)-black President wasn't really born in Hawaii. So, Americans, let's all say together, "America's original sin was not sexism; it was and still is racism." Let's also say, "The worst people in the world are racists."
While white women had annoyed me by voting for a pussy-grabbing, racist maniac instead of a competent, sane woman, I appreciated that they immediately went to work to resist him. I knew from working with white women in my department, including my second officemate, that they are effective organizers, and as Mitch McConnell pointed out, they can be persistent. A white woman does not mind manipulating and badgering men, women, and probably children to recruit them to their causes. They are also obviously more experienced at dealing with crazy white men than we nonwhite women are. Helping me forgive the stupid white women who voted for a crazy, racist pig were the heroic Republican Senators from Alaska and Maine who stood with Vietnam hero McCain against draft dodger Trump and his enablers in the Senate to protect the ACA. Then Heather Heyer joined Viola Liuzzo as a martyr for civil rights, and I decided that nonwhite women willing to serve (word choice deliberate) Trump were much worse than KellyAnne Conway and the most obnoxious Sarah since Palin--Ms. Huckabee Sanders. I turned my ire on reality star Omarosa, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and probably the worst nonwhite woman in the world, Elaine Chao. Any nonwhite woman who can marry Mitch McConnell and serve under (word choice deliberate) Donald Trump is really an old white man in nonwhite women's clothing.
Then the Weinstein whiners started whining, and I went to war with white women. I was triggered by two white women talking on MSNBC. The co-creator of "The Daily Show," Lizz Winstead, and the anchor of the 11:00 a.m. (2:00 Eastern) MSNBC show, Trump abuse victim Katy Tur, were discussing Weinstein's dirty deeds when they decided to call out Obama and Hillary Clinton. I almost lost my lunch. Being able to sound off on Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, and Google+ had stopped me from screaming at the television until Trump's nomination and then election. Now I occasionally have to scream. I screamed at the two smug white women who were claiming that Obama and Clinton had to say something or they would lose credibility: "Well, maybe if you white bitches had voted for them (I knew they probably had, but their sisters hadn't), they'd say something." "What did y'all say about birtherism?" I bellowed. Later, I mean-tweeted both women, telling Lizz that I couldn't find her comments on birtherism, Trayvon Martin, Charleston, and Charlottesville. I looked for such comments before I tweeted, so I knew that if she said anything on those issues, her comments didn't make much noise. I tweeted Katy to say that she should have asked Lizz about her comments on racism and to make the point about voting. I said that maybe if a black woman complained about Weinstein, Obama and Clinton would speak out since we voted for them. I also suggested that she should have asked Lizz about Emmett Till and the Scottsboro Boys. Maybe because she's a humorist, Lizz engages with her mean-tweeters, so she told me to look harder. Oh, no, she didn't tweet back to me! I let her have it, pointing out that Hillary lost not only because white women voted for Trump but also because all of their whining made Hillary look either weak or unnatural since she wasn't as weak as other white women. I said that the first female President would probably be nonwhite because white women are seen as too weak to be Commander in Chief. I may have told her (or maybe it was Katy) about black women cleaning the homes and taking care of the children of white women and about white men using white women as weapons against black men, lynching and castrating them, while the white men raped black women. And I might have mentioned Strom Thurmond's half-black daughter and Arnold S.'s half-Latino son. Ms. Lizz, as I called her in my mean-tweets, is as smart as my second officemate was. She meekly tweeted "Okay" in response to my tirade. Maybe she didn't realize I am a black woman until I unleashed that twitter storm. Katy didn't respond to my tweets, but the next day discussed Weinstein with two non-white women. However, they were just analysts, not so-called victims.
Besides the fact that the Weinstein scandal was taking attention away from more serious issues--natural disasters in Puerto Rico, California, Texas, and Florida, and unnatural disasters in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.--this trendy sexual assault discussion set me off because it reminded me of my second least favorite person on earth after Trump--Gloria Allred. About two weeks before Weinsteingate, I read a profile of the bigot-in- liberals' clothing. The writer made a point of telling us that Gloria taught in mostly black high schools and wrote her English Honors thesis on black writers, including Ralph Ellison. But there was no mention of the race of most of Cosby's accusers or of Tiger Woods' mistresses. I wrote a letter to the editor (it was not published in this week's issue), pointing out that Allred's crusade against black men who have sex with white women, not just Woods and Cosby but also OJ Simpson and Herman Cain, may have been triggered by a character in INVISIBLE MAN named Sybil, a white woman who wanted invisible man to rape her because she had dreamed of being raped by a black man since she was a child. When I taught that novel, some white women were offended and defensive when they encountered Sybil. I didn't include this point in my letter, but I also wonder if her experiences with disrespectful, rowdy black students, especially males, caused her to be subconsciously hostile toward them. I taught at Evanston Township High School for one year; it's a highly ranked, mostly white suburban high school, but I encountered a few unruly black boys and girls there who helped me decide that I preferred teaching college. Maybe Gloria decided she'd prefer putting black men in jail, extorting them for money (Tiger didn't commit a crime), or ruining their careers to trying to teach them how to read and write while they hazed her.
Since I can't tweet (or tweet about) every white woman who annoys me with her whining or her attacks on black men, let me address them the way I addressed the white Trump supporters in an earlier post (12/4/16): White women, you are not the primary victims in America. You have to get behind black men, black women, all Latinos, all Native Americans, all Asians, all turban- and hijab-wearing people with pigmentation, all other people of color or people who appear to be of color, as well as poor white people in the most oppressed Americans line. Also, white women, being a victim is not empowering, and joining a lynch mob is not brave. And, oh, white women, if you take hush money, you should stay hushed or give the money back. If you had been a nonwhite woman, you might have done what the nonwhite foreign model did, go straight to the police and then wear a wire to try to build a criminal case against the powerful pervert. Finally, white women, learn what working-class black women already know. There is no free ride; everything has a price. You can't hang around powerful white men, hoping to take a shortcut to the top, without something bad happening. Sucking up to power to move to the front of the line might be dangerous; you can be sucked into a "traumatic" experience. If you want to make it in any town, do what those of us who are not white women have to do--work hard.
Before Trump was elected, I tried to tell women that all the whining about sexual assault (the Emily Doe nonsense and the overreaction to the "Access Hollywood" tapes) would make it harder for Hillary to win, and as Trump likes to say, "I was right." I'm also right in being disgusted that there wasn't as much outrage expressed over Trump's birther lies as over his bragging about sexual assault. All Americans, but especially the media, should be ashamed that he wasn't demonized off television as soon as he started claiming that our first (half)-black President wasn't really born in Hawaii. So, Americans, let's all say together, "America's original sin was not sexism; it was and still is racism." Let's also say, "The worst people in the world are racists."
The Not So Proud Boys And Girls: Why Covert White Supremacists Are More Dangerous Than Trump And His Cultists
I was initially outraged that Democrats fighting the white supremacist act of rushing through a Supreme Court appointment a few days before a presidential election focused on Roe versus Wade and the ACA instead of the unnamed black woman whose seat the racist Republicans were stealing. I even angrily e-mailed (I was angrier when I saw that her staff didn’t include “race” as one of the possible issues her diverse California constituents might want to discuss) and left an emotional message on my senior senator’s San Francisco office telephone, telling her to stand up for black women, before I started to think about how politics and politicians work. I realized that they (including my junior senator at the Vice President debate) were deliberately avoiding making that point because they knew it might cost them votes. The Democrats knew that some of the whites (mostly women) who might be pro-choice and pro keeping their healthcare plans would be against a black woman being placed on the Supreme Court. When I saw Trump-Pence signs appear in two yards near my neighborhood on Friday, signs that were not there on Tuesday, I realized the Democratic politicians were right not to mention that unnamed black woman being denied her place in “the room where it happens.” I believe those signs appeared because one early VP debate question that referenced Biden’s age alerted the covert white supremacists living in those well-maintained, upper middle-class homes that the black/East Indian woman whom they would accept as Vice President but would not vote for to be President in 2024 could be President as early as 2021. The Republicans showed they understood how covert white supremacy works by pretending that Pelosi’s trolling Trump with a bill designed to involve Congress in the 25th Amendment process was really preparation for replacing “feeble-minded,” moderate Biden with “socialist” Harris. The covert white supremacists need a non-racist excuse for their racist behavior. They need to pretend they care about the Supreme Court justices or they fear Joe Biden will turn into Bernie Sanders or that a former prosecutor is really a more liberal senator than Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to justify voting (again) for an insane, overt white supremacist who is destroying our democracy. They need racism deniability.
Some covert white supremacists know they’re racist and work hard to hide it from the world while others actually believe that they “don’t have a racist bone in their bodies.” Of the three key covert white supremacists involved in this racist court-packing scheme with Trump two appear to be aware of their racism and are working hard to hide it. Moscow Mitch McConnell is married to an Asian woman while mentoring the black conservative race traitor serving as the Attorney General in Kentucky, and still another annoying white woman named Amy (Senator Klobuchar was on my nerves for over a year until she took her name out of contention for Democratic VP nominee a few months ago) has adopted two Haitian children. I pity those children. Their white supremacist “mother” is sitting in a seat as judge that McConnell stole from a black woman appointed by Obama and now is happy to be appointed to a seat that she knows will go to a black woman unless Trump figures out a way to steal the election. The third not so proud bigot Lindsey Graham may not be as aware of his racism. His best friends in the Senate were two white guys named Joe (not Biden, although Graham tearfully praised him around the time Joe B’s son died) and John until Joe left the Senate and John died. Also, he and the black junior senator from South Carolina have not written a book describing their friendly relationship as Senator Scott did with an undoubtedly racist former representative. In fact, I’m not sure that the two South Carolina senators have a friendly relationship.
While Graham and ACB, as I like to call her, are despicable bigots, McConnell has been the most efficiently destructive white supremacist in America. He, not Trump, is responsible for stacking our courts with overwhelmingly white justices. Of the 200 justices appointed during the Trump term, only 28 were people of color, and not one circuit justice was black. Moscow Mitch blocked so many of Obama’s justice appointments when he was the minority leader that then majority leader Harry Reid had to eliminate the filibuster for lower courts, allowing McConnell to do the same for the Supreme Court so that the racist Republicans could continue to keep that court majority white.
There were not enough Proud Boys, Neo-Nazis, and KKK members to elect Donald Trump in 2016, even with the help of the Russians, James Comey, and a rigged electoral college. Nor were there enough cultish, celebrity-worshipping, low-information Americans of all races to elect him. The overt white supremacist is in the White House (still) destroying our reputation around the world and trying to destroy our democracy because of the covert white supremacists, many of them evangelical Christians, who voted for him despite his obvious insanity and immorality. They voted for the racist malignant narcissist for the same reason that the “proud” white supremacists did—to stop the browning of America.
The Proud Boys and other overt white supremacists are dangerous because they are willing to kill people of color to make America white again, but the covert white supremacists are more dangerous to our democracy because they will use whatever power they have to keep whites in power, no matter how brown the nation becomes. These not so proud racists are hiding in plain sight. They’re in our police departments, our churches, our schools, and at every level of government, including governors of populous states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia, as well as judges on district courts and on the Supreme Court. They’re also in charge of the Senate.
Whatever happens on November 3 or whenever the 2020 election ends, if the majority of white folks vote for this very insane, racist man who is literally killing us, the covert white supremacists will no longer be able to hide. After all that we have learned about Trump from White House insiders, close friends, and even his niece, if he still wins the white vote, it will be official. America is still racist after all these years and all of these equity movements. If the majority of white folks vote for Trump in 2020, the headlines in every paper around the world should read: THE MAJORITY OF WHITE PEOPLE WHO VOTED IN THE USA ARE WHITE SUPREMACISTS! Any white person reading this blog should know that I believe if you vote for Trump, you are a racist white supremacist. Are you proud?
Some covert white supremacists know they’re racist and work hard to hide it from the world while others actually believe that they “don’t have a racist bone in their bodies.” Of the three key covert white supremacists involved in this racist court-packing scheme with Trump two appear to be aware of their racism and are working hard to hide it. Moscow Mitch McConnell is married to an Asian woman while mentoring the black conservative race traitor serving as the Attorney General in Kentucky, and still another annoying white woman named Amy (Senator Klobuchar was on my nerves for over a year until she took her name out of contention for Democratic VP nominee a few months ago) has adopted two Haitian children. I pity those children. Their white supremacist “mother” is sitting in a seat as judge that McConnell stole from a black woman appointed by Obama and now is happy to be appointed to a seat that she knows will go to a black woman unless Trump figures out a way to steal the election. The third not so proud bigot Lindsey Graham may not be as aware of his racism. His best friends in the Senate were two white guys named Joe (not Biden, although Graham tearfully praised him around the time Joe B’s son died) and John until Joe left the Senate and John died. Also, he and the black junior senator from South Carolina have not written a book describing their friendly relationship as Senator Scott did with an undoubtedly racist former representative. In fact, I’m not sure that the two South Carolina senators have a friendly relationship.
While Graham and ACB, as I like to call her, are despicable bigots, McConnell has been the most efficiently destructive white supremacist in America. He, not Trump, is responsible for stacking our courts with overwhelmingly white justices. Of the 200 justices appointed during the Trump term, only 28 were people of color, and not one circuit justice was black. Moscow Mitch blocked so many of Obama’s justice appointments when he was the minority leader that then majority leader Harry Reid had to eliminate the filibuster for lower courts, allowing McConnell to do the same for the Supreme Court so that the racist Republicans could continue to keep that court majority white.
There were not enough Proud Boys, Neo-Nazis, and KKK members to elect Donald Trump in 2016, even with the help of the Russians, James Comey, and a rigged electoral college. Nor were there enough cultish, celebrity-worshipping, low-information Americans of all races to elect him. The overt white supremacist is in the White House (still) destroying our reputation around the world and trying to destroy our democracy because of the covert white supremacists, many of them evangelical Christians, who voted for him despite his obvious insanity and immorality. They voted for the racist malignant narcissist for the same reason that the “proud” white supremacists did—to stop the browning of America.
The Proud Boys and other overt white supremacists are dangerous because they are willing to kill people of color to make America white again, but the covert white supremacists are more dangerous to our democracy because they will use whatever power they have to keep whites in power, no matter how brown the nation becomes. These not so proud racists are hiding in plain sight. They’re in our police departments, our churches, our schools, and at every level of government, including governors of populous states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia, as well as judges on district courts and on the Supreme Court. They’re also in charge of the Senate.
Whatever happens on November 3 or whenever the 2020 election ends, if the majority of white folks vote for this very insane, racist man who is literally killing us, the covert white supremacists will no longer be able to hide. After all that we have learned about Trump from White House insiders, close friends, and even his niece, if he still wins the white vote, it will be official. America is still racist after all these years and all of these equity movements. If the majority of white folks vote for Trump in 2020, the headlines in every paper around the world should read: THE MAJORITY OF WHITE PEOPLE WHO VOTED IN THE USA ARE WHITE SUPREMACISTS! Any white person reading this blog should know that I believe if you vote for Trump, you are a racist white supremacist. Are you proud?
Child-Eating, Blood-Drinking Socialists: Why The Democrats Are Demonized
I spent most of last week making a point that should be obvious to anyone living in the real world and paying a little attention to politics: Democrats are the best behaved and the most criticized and demonized political party in the USA. When Chelsea Clinton tweeted that some of Trump’s deplorable cultists were outside her parents’ home shouting, “Lock her up,” one of the more polite Clinton critics (Chelsea received mostly positive support) said that the Trump family probably suffered the same treatment. I pointed out that Chelsea’s parents hadn’t mocked a disabled journalist, trashed a tortured Vietnam War hero (I didn’t add “even when he was sick and even after he had died” because I was on Twitter and had to limit my words), or mean-tweeted everyone except family members and Putin. They weren’t bullies. A Trump supporter and/or Clinton critic who must not know about me or he wouldn’t have responded to my tweet claimed that Hillary had mocked more people than Trump because she called Trump supporters “deplorables.” I explained to him the difference between an evaluation of bad actions and mocking. I explained why Trump supporters (uh, they supported a corrupt, self-confessed sexual assaulter but wanted to lock up Hillary) were deplorable and pointed out that Hillary didn’t mock Trump’s slow, fish-lipped walk down the West Point platform or his panting for breath like a catfish out of water stand on the White House balcony after he ripped off his Covid-filled mask (again, I used fewer words on Twitter) the way he mocked (at a 2016 rally) her fainting spell during the 9/11/16 ceremony. A day after that exchange, I read the editors’ opinion in my local paper (I forgot how conservative those opinion editors are and so will now have to stop subscribing to that paper) and felt my blood boil as they chastised the media-made “leader of the Democratic Party” AOC for saying that we should remember what the Republicans did and not let them walk away from their bad acts (I pictured Susan Collins as I read those words). The DAILY BULLETIN conservatives wondered how Biden could unite the country if the Democrats mistreated the Republicans. I wrote a brief (they have a 150 word limit, although some of the published letters seem longer) letter to the editor titled “Accountability Versus Demonization.” The letter opened with the following facts: “At least AOC didn’t say that Republicans eat children and/or drink their blood. She didn’t accuse Trump, who claimed he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes, of murder the way the Republicans have the Clintons.” Of course, the conservatives didn’t do what the more liberal and very anti-Trump opinion editors of the LA TIMES did: Devote a whole page to letters with opposing viewpoints. They published two letters that were mildly critical of their opinion, but for the second time didn’t publish mine. But this old black woman can’t be silenced. She not only has Twitter and Facebook accounts, but she has a Goodreads blog and knows how to use it. I’m going to use as many words as I need to point out why Democrats are demonized while Republicans are literally killing us: We hold better behaved people to a higher standard and/or use false equivalencies. Badly behaved people demonize the better behaved to justify their behavior and/or to feel less guilty. The badly behaved might also be projecting, distracting, and/or putting the better behaved on the defensive by demonizing them.
Conservatives aren’t the only media folks who attack Democrats while giving Republicans a pass. I spent several weeks in 2019 verbally spanking one of my favorite MSNBC anchors for badgering Nancy Pelosi and the very dignified Jim Clyburn, trying to convince them to impeach Trump. I let Ms. Joy Reid know that I trusted the people who gave us the ACA more than those who promoted media whore and crooked lawyer Michael Avenatti. I also pointed out that impeachment didn’t lead to the removal of the other two Presidents who had been impeached and that Nixon left voluntarily. I wondered why people didn’t attack the Republicans for not telling Trump to resign as the seventies Republicans did with Nixon or for not impeaching Trump during his first two years in office when they were in charge of the House. I also had to go after Hallie Jackson for interrogating one of the Democrats in Congress about whether or not he was being paid while the government was closed. Trump closed the government, not the Democrats. Why do we blame Democrats for not cleaning up the messes that Republicans made? The media and some Americans treat the better behaved party the way some bad parents treat their better behaved child, expecting that child to be perfect and maybe even to police the bad child(ren) who get(s) away with everything.
As “the Hillary mocks too” example shows, we also equate minor offenses by the better behaved party with deplorable actions by the evil party. The latest example is the attempt to compare what Gore did in 2000 (which was finally to concede when he should have kept fighting since he had a good case) to what Trump is doing now. Without looking at the way the Republicans cheated (Bush’s cousin declared he had won Florida on Fox, and the other stations followed his lead), we can easily see the difference. Bush “won” one state, the one where his brother was the governor and the Secretary of State was a GWB campaign chair, by fewer than 600 votes, and Gore won the popular vote. Biden has won both the electoral college and the popular vote in a landslide. Sometimes when the conservatives can’t find an equivalency, even a false one, they make one up. Since I didn’t watch Trump’s inaugural speech, I didn’t realize he had thanked Obama for his help during the transition. But I knew that Obama had graciously welcomed the man who had for five years accused him of lying about his place of birth, who had joined the racist birther movement and made it go viral, to the White House. Trump’s fourth press secretary in fewer than four years, the one who said she wouldn’t lie, claimed that the Obama-Biden administration had behaved during the 2016-17 transition worse than Trump and his minions are behaving now.
Of course, the most outrageous lie told by conservatives comes from the QANON cultists who I hope don’t really believe that liberals eat children. Because so many of the crimes conservatives accuse liberals of committing or planning to commit—voter fraud, killing babies (Tamir Rice and the many black babies who die in poverty or from ingesting too much lead), creating death panels (because of Covid)—I wonder if it’s possible that some of them are eating children or drinking their blood. Are the Republicans projecting again? They accuse us of being unpatriotic, yet they are the ones who are helping Putin to destroy our democracy. They rant about how much money is spent and how much debt is created when Democrats are in charge of the federal government, yet they run up the debt giving tax cuts to the rich. They call peaceful protesters anarchists and terrorists while donating millions of dollars to seventeen-year-old Killer Kid Kyle (he’s out of jail on a two million dollar bond) and not criticizing their “dear leader” for telling a truly dangerous terrorist group to “stand back and stand by.” Is it possible that these cruel politicians, who went home for Thanksgiving without providing aid to so many Americans who don’t have enough to eat and may not be able to pay their mortgage or rent, actually eat children? Who looks more like they eat children? Donald Trump, Bill Barr, and Mike Pompeo or Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and AOC? Who looks like he’s more likely to drink blood? The spooky looking man from Kentucky who happily calls himself the Grim Reaper or smiling, occasionally crying Chuck Schumer from New York?
The lies told by the Republicans are often used as distractions from their bad behavior and/or to put the Democrats on the defensive while they’re being offensive. The best example of that despicable tactic happened when McConnell, Graham, and the rest of the Republican racists in the Senate rushed through the appointment of racist mother of adopted black children ACB to prevent Biden from appointing a black woman to the Supreme Court. The Republicans actually tried to claim that the Democrats were discriminating against ACB because she’s Catholic. Fortunately, the media didn’t play their game, pointing out that Biden and Pelosi are both Catholics, and the court is already packed with Catholics, including a Catholic woman appointed by Obama.
Perhaps the primary reason Republicans demonize Democrats is the same reason white people demonize black people and family members demonize their better behaved spouses or siblings. They feel guilty, so they try to convince themselves that they’re better than the people they are hurting. White people don’t want to believe that good and decent humans were enslaved, raped, and lynched in earlier centuries and are being murdered by cops today, so they claim blacks are lazy criminals; we’re animals. The spouse who is committing adultery claims that the betrayed spouse is a drug addict and/or abusive. The siblings who neglect their elderly parents criticize the ones who are caring for them, suggesting they’re cold and mean or maybe they’re stealing from the parents. How can Republicans, especially evangelicals and women, justify supporting a thrice-married, sexist, racist, narcissistic adulterer, who was heard bragging about sexually assaulting women and was seen hanging out with a man arrested for operating a child sex ring, who encouraged his followers to physically assault protesters, and mocked and bullied everyone except Putin? Well, if the Democrats run a child sex ring, eat children, and/or drink their blood, then Trump doesn’t seem so bad. He is the lesser of two evils. And those of us who support the Democrats are more evil than his supporters are.
Like blacks and the more decent family members, Democrats have to fight back against the attempt to demonize them by their more evil counterparts. When the Republicans call us socialists, we should say, “If FDR, who gave us Social Security, is a socialist, then I’m a socialist. If LBJ, who gave us Medicare and fought the war on poverty much more effectively than he did the Vietnam War, is a socialist, then so am I. If BHO, who battled the demonizing Republicans, who screamed about death panels and pulling the plug on Grandma, to give us the now beloved by most Americans ACA, is a socialist, then I’m proud to be a socialist too.” Less verbose and steeped in history Democrats can simply say, “I’d rather be a socialist than a white supremacist.” When they call us baby killers, we can wonder why they care about a fetus only when it’s inside its mother’s womb. Why don’t they care about Tamir Rice or the two white people killed by Killer Kid Kyle? Why do their supporters tear down signs that say “Black Lives Matter”? We can ask them if they believe that all lives matter more than buildings and businesses. The Republicans are the pro-death, pro-corporate welfare, anti-health care, anti-education, anti-democracy white supremacist party. They are the party of Grim Reaper Mitch McConnell and racist malignant narcissist Donald Trump. We are the party of empathetic Joe Biden and civil rights icon John Lewis. We may not be saints, but they’re definitely the demons.
Conservatives aren’t the only media folks who attack Democrats while giving Republicans a pass. I spent several weeks in 2019 verbally spanking one of my favorite MSNBC anchors for badgering Nancy Pelosi and the very dignified Jim Clyburn, trying to convince them to impeach Trump. I let Ms. Joy Reid know that I trusted the people who gave us the ACA more than those who promoted media whore and crooked lawyer Michael Avenatti. I also pointed out that impeachment didn’t lead to the removal of the other two Presidents who had been impeached and that Nixon left voluntarily. I wondered why people didn’t attack the Republicans for not telling Trump to resign as the seventies Republicans did with Nixon or for not impeaching Trump during his first two years in office when they were in charge of the House. I also had to go after Hallie Jackson for interrogating one of the Democrats in Congress about whether or not he was being paid while the government was closed. Trump closed the government, not the Democrats. Why do we blame Democrats for not cleaning up the messes that Republicans made? The media and some Americans treat the better behaved party the way some bad parents treat their better behaved child, expecting that child to be perfect and maybe even to police the bad child(ren) who get(s) away with everything.
As “the Hillary mocks too” example shows, we also equate minor offenses by the better behaved party with deplorable actions by the evil party. The latest example is the attempt to compare what Gore did in 2000 (which was finally to concede when he should have kept fighting since he had a good case) to what Trump is doing now. Without looking at the way the Republicans cheated (Bush’s cousin declared he had won Florida on Fox, and the other stations followed his lead), we can easily see the difference. Bush “won” one state, the one where his brother was the governor and the Secretary of State was a GWB campaign chair, by fewer than 600 votes, and Gore won the popular vote. Biden has won both the electoral college and the popular vote in a landslide. Sometimes when the conservatives can’t find an equivalency, even a false one, they make one up. Since I didn’t watch Trump’s inaugural speech, I didn’t realize he had thanked Obama for his help during the transition. But I knew that Obama had graciously welcomed the man who had for five years accused him of lying about his place of birth, who had joined the racist birther movement and made it go viral, to the White House. Trump’s fourth press secretary in fewer than four years, the one who said she wouldn’t lie, claimed that the Obama-Biden administration had behaved during the 2016-17 transition worse than Trump and his minions are behaving now.
Of course, the most outrageous lie told by conservatives comes from the QANON cultists who I hope don’t really believe that liberals eat children. Because so many of the crimes conservatives accuse liberals of committing or planning to commit—voter fraud, killing babies (Tamir Rice and the many black babies who die in poverty or from ingesting too much lead), creating death panels (because of Covid)—I wonder if it’s possible that some of them are eating children or drinking their blood. Are the Republicans projecting again? They accuse us of being unpatriotic, yet they are the ones who are helping Putin to destroy our democracy. They rant about how much money is spent and how much debt is created when Democrats are in charge of the federal government, yet they run up the debt giving tax cuts to the rich. They call peaceful protesters anarchists and terrorists while donating millions of dollars to seventeen-year-old Killer Kid Kyle (he’s out of jail on a two million dollar bond) and not criticizing their “dear leader” for telling a truly dangerous terrorist group to “stand back and stand by.” Is it possible that these cruel politicians, who went home for Thanksgiving without providing aid to so many Americans who don’t have enough to eat and may not be able to pay their mortgage or rent, actually eat children? Who looks more like they eat children? Donald Trump, Bill Barr, and Mike Pompeo or Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and AOC? Who looks like he’s more likely to drink blood? The spooky looking man from Kentucky who happily calls himself the Grim Reaper or smiling, occasionally crying Chuck Schumer from New York?
The lies told by the Republicans are often used as distractions from their bad behavior and/or to put the Democrats on the defensive while they’re being offensive. The best example of that despicable tactic happened when McConnell, Graham, and the rest of the Republican racists in the Senate rushed through the appointment of racist mother of adopted black children ACB to prevent Biden from appointing a black woman to the Supreme Court. The Republicans actually tried to claim that the Democrats were discriminating against ACB because she’s Catholic. Fortunately, the media didn’t play their game, pointing out that Biden and Pelosi are both Catholics, and the court is already packed with Catholics, including a Catholic woman appointed by Obama.
Perhaps the primary reason Republicans demonize Democrats is the same reason white people demonize black people and family members demonize their better behaved spouses or siblings. They feel guilty, so they try to convince themselves that they’re better than the people they are hurting. White people don’t want to believe that good and decent humans were enslaved, raped, and lynched in earlier centuries and are being murdered by cops today, so they claim blacks are lazy criminals; we’re animals. The spouse who is committing adultery claims that the betrayed spouse is a drug addict and/or abusive. The siblings who neglect their elderly parents criticize the ones who are caring for them, suggesting they’re cold and mean or maybe they’re stealing from the parents. How can Republicans, especially evangelicals and women, justify supporting a thrice-married, sexist, racist, narcissistic adulterer, who was heard bragging about sexually assaulting women and was seen hanging out with a man arrested for operating a child sex ring, who encouraged his followers to physically assault protesters, and mocked and bullied everyone except Putin? Well, if the Democrats run a child sex ring, eat children, and/or drink their blood, then Trump doesn’t seem so bad. He is the lesser of two evils. And those of us who support the Democrats are more evil than his supporters are.
Like blacks and the more decent family members, Democrats have to fight back against the attempt to demonize them by their more evil counterparts. When the Republicans call us socialists, we should say, “If FDR, who gave us Social Security, is a socialist, then I’m a socialist. If LBJ, who gave us Medicare and fought the war on poverty much more effectively than he did the Vietnam War, is a socialist, then so am I. If BHO, who battled the demonizing Republicans, who screamed about death panels and pulling the plug on Grandma, to give us the now beloved by most Americans ACA, is a socialist, then I’m proud to be a socialist too.” Less verbose and steeped in history Democrats can simply say, “I’d rather be a socialist than a white supremacist.” When they call us baby killers, we can wonder why they care about a fetus only when it’s inside its mother’s womb. Why don’t they care about Tamir Rice or the two white people killed by Killer Kid Kyle? Why do their supporters tear down signs that say “Black Lives Matter”? We can ask them if they believe that all lives matter more than buildings and businesses. The Republicans are the pro-death, pro-corporate welfare, anti-health care, anti-education, anti-democracy white supremacist party. They are the party of Grim Reaper Mitch McConnell and racist malignant narcissist Donald Trump. We are the party of empathetic Joe Biden and civil rights icon John Lewis. We may not be saints, but they’re definitely the demons.
Masked Santa: Punishing The Naughty And Rewarding The Nice In 2020
If Santa is smart, he and his reindeer will “shelter in place” at the North Pole and not come anywhere near this Covid-infested nation, but in case he decides to ignore the don’t travel warnings, don his mask, and head south on Christmas Eve, I’m providing him with my annual list of the people I believe most deserve to be rewarded with gifts and those who should be punished with a big lump of dirty, unhealthy coal. I wish Santa could punish Covid for killing and scaring so many people and Mother Nature for burning and flooding so much land while destroying so many homes in 2020. But Santa looks only for naughty and nice people, so here’s my 2020 list of the most naughty and nicest:
The Naughty:
1) Anti-democracy and/or white supremacist politicians who still haven’t provided relief for hungry, soon to be homeless American citizens but rushed a pre-election appointment of a racist white woman to prevent the man they knew was going to win the 2020 Presidential election from placing the first black woman on the Supreme Court and then refused to acknowledge the victory of that man whom some of them called a friend. The ones who are still talking about overturning a free and fair election because the insane, incompetent man who would never have been President if America were a real democracy won the majority of the white vote should receive two lumps of coal. But the biggest lumps should go to Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, and Lindsey Graham.
2) Reality-denying, Alternative Facts Believing Americans - The people who believe that Covid is a hoax and that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election, but the Republicans in Georgia and Arizona stole it for Biden shouldn’t be allowed to vote in 2024 and should receive lumps of coal with notes attached describing the coal as chocolate cake. Santa should use a black Sharpie to write the notes in big letters. He probably should also ask the fools to send money to the North Pole so that he can feed Mrs. Claus, the elves, and the reindeer.
3) The news media who continued to allow Trump to play them, most recently reading his tweet announcing the resignation of the even worse Attorney General than Jeff Sessions just after the California electors voted, formally making Biden the President-elect (again), and who played the viewers in the days after the election, treating a consequential election like a sporting event. These ratings-obsessed, wannabe reality television stars need to tone down the entertainment (I like Steve K and his big board, but he should not be moonlighting on sports broadcasts) and the “real housewife” drama. Two otherwise really good anchors Rachel Maddow and Joshua Johnson shared so much of their personal stories recently that I thought I was watching a soap opera or “Real Housewives of MSNBC.” They need some coal and some tapes of Walter Cronkite’s old newscasts. They could even watch Tom Brokaw from the more recent past or the wry, occasionally comical, but always cooly professional Brian Williams today. Stop oversharing, news media drama queens!
4) The over 74 million deplorables, fanatics, cultists, and fools who voted for an insane, incompetent white supremacist, a malignant narcissist, a corrupt con artist who is literally killing us. They should lose their right to vote for at least two presidential cycles.
5) Javanka, the worst couple in the world. Not only did the overconfident idiot who was accepted at Harvard because his father donated millions and who is in the White House because his father-in-law won the electoral college criticize smart, competent, experienced men like General Mattis and Gary Cohn in Bob Woodward’s latest book, but he showed his racism by commenting on how much black basketball players earn during the BlackLivesMatter so-called racial awakening this summer and then later suggesting that black folks don’t succeed because we don’t really want to be as successful as he and his equally fortunate insane father-in-law do. As her squeaky-voiced, blank-faced husband became more visible, the bottle blonde with the fake husky voice seemed to disappear, but she did pose (perhaps appropriately since she’s full of them) with a can of beans, which we all know she would never cook and eat, and she and the overconfident idiot tried to sue the Lincoln Project for trolling them with a huge billboard in Times Square. The most unqualified senior advisers to ever enter the White House need to follow the worst President in American history to Saudi Arabia, Siberia, or wherever he’s going next and take their unfortunate children and their dirty coal with them.
The Nice:
1) The essential workers — doctors, nurses, first responders, senior caregivers, grocery store clerks, bus drivers, mail carriers, delivery men, teachers—who risk their lives while helping us to live ours and in some cases working to save our lives.
2) The poll workers, vote counters, Secretaries of State, and governors who defended our democracy. Surprisingly, some otherwise fairly despicable Republicans like the governor and Secretary of State in my new favorite state (at least until January 5) Georgia showed some integrity and refused to cheat in a presidential election. Most years they deserve coal, but this year they should receive gifts from Santa.
3) Peaceful protesters, especially the ones wearing masks, who risked Covid, jail, pepper spray, violent police officers, and even murder (two protesters were murdered in Kenosha by Killer Kid Kyle) to demand that we recognize that Black Lives Matter and that we reform (not defund, people!) police departments.
4) The truth tellers in the media, including the ones on the least reality-based news channel Fox News and the Never Trump (sometimes former) Republicans in the Lincoln Project, who countered the lies and myths told by Trump and his enablers with reality-based truth. The petite just the facts y’all scientist Dr. Fauci was especially effective when he boldly told the truth while standing near the much larger, pathologically lying President during those early, often surreal Covid briefings. Fauci told us Covid would be bad in the fall, and he was right. I also appreciated interviewers like Fox’s Chris Wallace and Axios’ Jonathan Swan who tried usually in vain to force the insane President to face reality. But no one told the truth like Lincoln Project all-star Steve Schmidt. I’d love to see him debate Jared Kushner or Steve Miller. Steve Schmidt has the same expressionless face, but the words that come out of his mouth would make those two know-it-all racists cry. Schmidt puts the “war” in word warrior! Santa should gift him with a golden microphone.
5) The more than 81 million Americans who braved Covid and in some voter suppression states (looking at you, Georgia) ten-hour lines to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris like our lives depended on their winning. We saved democracy and (hopefully) some of our lives, Santa, and we deserve some wonderful gifts on Christmas Eve.
If we survive Covid and the last few days of Trump, all of us will deserve an “I SURVIVED TRUMP AND 2020” t- shirt or hat next Christmas. Let’s hope the naughty people on the 2020 list will “disappear like a miracle,” that they will be in Siberia, jail, or hell by this time next year, and the nice people will survive to celebrate our ability to eat in restaurants and visit our friends and family again.
The Naughty:
1) Anti-democracy and/or white supremacist politicians who still haven’t provided relief for hungry, soon to be homeless American citizens but rushed a pre-election appointment of a racist white woman to prevent the man they knew was going to win the 2020 Presidential election from placing the first black woman on the Supreme Court and then refused to acknowledge the victory of that man whom some of them called a friend. The ones who are still talking about overturning a free and fair election because the insane, incompetent man who would never have been President if America were a real democracy won the majority of the white vote should receive two lumps of coal. But the biggest lumps should go to Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, and Lindsey Graham.
2) Reality-denying, Alternative Facts Believing Americans - The people who believe that Covid is a hoax and that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election, but the Republicans in Georgia and Arizona stole it for Biden shouldn’t be allowed to vote in 2024 and should receive lumps of coal with notes attached describing the coal as chocolate cake. Santa should use a black Sharpie to write the notes in big letters. He probably should also ask the fools to send money to the North Pole so that he can feed Mrs. Claus, the elves, and the reindeer.
3) The news media who continued to allow Trump to play them, most recently reading his tweet announcing the resignation of the even worse Attorney General than Jeff Sessions just after the California electors voted, formally making Biden the President-elect (again), and who played the viewers in the days after the election, treating a consequential election like a sporting event. These ratings-obsessed, wannabe reality television stars need to tone down the entertainment (I like Steve K and his big board, but he should not be moonlighting on sports broadcasts) and the “real housewife” drama. Two otherwise really good anchors Rachel Maddow and Joshua Johnson shared so much of their personal stories recently that I thought I was watching a soap opera or “Real Housewives of MSNBC.” They need some coal and some tapes of Walter Cronkite’s old newscasts. They could even watch Tom Brokaw from the more recent past or the wry, occasionally comical, but always cooly professional Brian Williams today. Stop oversharing, news media drama queens!
4) The over 74 million deplorables, fanatics, cultists, and fools who voted for an insane, incompetent white supremacist, a malignant narcissist, a corrupt con artist who is literally killing us. They should lose their right to vote for at least two presidential cycles.
5) Javanka, the worst couple in the world. Not only did the overconfident idiot who was accepted at Harvard because his father donated millions and who is in the White House because his father-in-law won the electoral college criticize smart, competent, experienced men like General Mattis and Gary Cohn in Bob Woodward’s latest book, but he showed his racism by commenting on how much black basketball players earn during the BlackLivesMatter so-called racial awakening this summer and then later suggesting that black folks don’t succeed because we don’t really want to be as successful as he and his equally fortunate insane father-in-law do. As her squeaky-voiced, blank-faced husband became more visible, the bottle blonde with the fake husky voice seemed to disappear, but she did pose (perhaps appropriately since she’s full of them) with a can of beans, which we all know she would never cook and eat, and she and the overconfident idiot tried to sue the Lincoln Project for trolling them with a huge billboard in Times Square. The most unqualified senior advisers to ever enter the White House need to follow the worst President in American history to Saudi Arabia, Siberia, or wherever he’s going next and take their unfortunate children and their dirty coal with them.
The Nice:
1) The essential workers — doctors, nurses, first responders, senior caregivers, grocery store clerks, bus drivers, mail carriers, delivery men, teachers—who risk their lives while helping us to live ours and in some cases working to save our lives.
2) The poll workers, vote counters, Secretaries of State, and governors who defended our democracy. Surprisingly, some otherwise fairly despicable Republicans like the governor and Secretary of State in my new favorite state (at least until January 5) Georgia showed some integrity and refused to cheat in a presidential election. Most years they deserve coal, but this year they should receive gifts from Santa.
3) Peaceful protesters, especially the ones wearing masks, who risked Covid, jail, pepper spray, violent police officers, and even murder (two protesters were murdered in Kenosha by Killer Kid Kyle) to demand that we recognize that Black Lives Matter and that we reform (not defund, people!) police departments.
4) The truth tellers in the media, including the ones on the least reality-based news channel Fox News and the Never Trump (sometimes former) Republicans in the Lincoln Project, who countered the lies and myths told by Trump and his enablers with reality-based truth. The petite just the facts y’all scientist Dr. Fauci was especially effective when he boldly told the truth while standing near the much larger, pathologically lying President during those early, often surreal Covid briefings. Fauci told us Covid would be bad in the fall, and he was right. I also appreciated interviewers like Fox’s Chris Wallace and Axios’ Jonathan Swan who tried usually in vain to force the insane President to face reality. But no one told the truth like Lincoln Project all-star Steve Schmidt. I’d love to see him debate Jared Kushner or Steve Miller. Steve Schmidt has the same expressionless face, but the words that come out of his mouth would make those two know-it-all racists cry. Schmidt puts the “war” in word warrior! Santa should gift him with a golden microphone.
5) The more than 81 million Americans who braved Covid and in some voter suppression states (looking at you, Georgia) ten-hour lines to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris like our lives depended on their winning. We saved democracy and (hopefully) some of our lives, Santa, and we deserve some wonderful gifts on Christmas Eve.
If we survive Covid and the last few days of Trump, all of us will deserve an “I SURVIVED TRUMP AND 2020” t- shirt or hat next Christmas. Let’s hope the naughty people on the 2020 list will “disappear like a miracle,” that they will be in Siberia, jail, or hell by this time next year, and the nice people will survive to celebrate our ability to eat in restaurants and visit our friends and family again.
SUE: Defeating White Supremacy While Defending Democracy And Truth
As expected, the cowardly, enabling Republican Senators once again failed to hold the insane, corrupt, autocratic white supremacist responsible for his actions. The smarter and just as evil Moscow Mitch McConnell suggested that he could be held accountable by federal and state prosecutors. Even his pathetically unprepared and in over their heads defense lawyers recommended that Donald J. Trump be criminally prosecuted as a private citizen. However, some television commentators wondered how we could lock up a former President. Would the Secret Service have to go to jail with him? What!? Did Martha Stewart take a stove to jail with her? Did she take her maid? We lose our rights when we’re incarcerated. We can’t even wear our own clothes, and in some states we can’t vote even after we leave jail. Why the hell would a former President who has been convicted of crimes keep his Secret Service protection in jail? He can be protected the way other high profile inmates are—in solitary confinement. But I think there’s an even more effective way to punish the greedy, born-rich real estate mogul. We can take his money and his property. Let’s do what the Southern Poverty Law Center did to the KKK and the New York Attorney General, a bad black woman named Letitia James, did to the NRA. Let’s bankrupt him for real this time. Let’s take all his land and money, and while we’re suing, let’s go after his enablers, especially his family members, his golf buddy Lindsey Graham, his media friends on Fox, and his most effective lawyer, the one who pretended to be America’s lawyer—former Attorney General William Barr.
I’ve encouraged both the NAACP and the BlackLivesMatter activists to sue everyone who has falsely accused the BLM protesters of rioting and looting. Trump’s impeachment attorneys should be added to that long list of bigots. MSNBC’s Sunday morning anchor Jonathan Capehart and other news media folks have pointed out that 93% of the BLM protests were peaceful, but they should also point out that the people arrested for property destruction and rioting during the peaceful protests of the late spring and summer of 2020 were either white supremacists posing as antifa or opportunistic thugs like the ones who moved into the Fairfax district after the LAPD had chased the peaceful protesters out of the area. Like the cops in Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon, and Washington D.C., the LA cops brutalized the peaceful BLM protesters, beating them and shooting them with rubber bullets while the thugs were burning and looting. The Los Angeles branch of BLM is already suing them. But they should also sue the people who are putting their lives and all black folks’ lives in danger by calling them anarchists and terrorists and framing them for damage caused sometimes by white supremacists. They can use evidence like the gun-toting Missouri couple who spoke at the Republican Convention and Killer Kid Kyle, who apparently is missing after being seen hanging out with white supremacists.
The families of the two men killed in Kenosha by Killer Kid Kyle should also sue Trump for inciting that violence with his “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” call to arms. So should the family of the Capitol police officer killed on 1/6. Even the family of the insurrectionist who was killed by the police on that day should sue. She would be alive if she had not foolishly followed Trump’s orders. The more than one hundred police officers who were badly injured should also sue him for not only inciting the violence but failing to stop it sooner and to activate the National Guard. Psychological trauma can be more permanently damaging and even fatal (as the suicides of two Capitol police officers suggest) than physical injuries. All of the Capitol police officers present that day and the Congressional staff members and janitorial staff who were terrorized by the insurrectionists should sue as should rape survivor AOC and any other members of Congress who were severely traumatized (the ones who had served in the military seemed to have been less traumatized) by their hours-long ordeal. If Pence doesn’t want to sue, his family members should. Come on, Mommy Pence, SUE the man who sent a mob to lynch your husband, the most sycophantic and loyal Vice President in American history!
Even before he incited violence in Kenosha, Portland, and Washington, D.C., Trump was responsible for many Americans receiving death threats. I can now laugh about how I briefly thought a hit and run car accident in October, 2018, which badly damaged one side of my car, was a bomb because I had been mean-tweeting Trump. I realized quickly that I’m not Maxine Waters, but she and other high-profile Trump “enemies” like AOC and the other young women of color in the Squad, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and other news media folks, and everyone’s favorite truth-telling scientist Doctor Fauci have received many death threats. Doctor Fauci’s family members have also been harassed and threatened. They should all sue Trump as should the families of people who died because of the botched handling of Covid.
The Secretaries of State and others in charge of vote counting in swing states like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have joined Fauci, Waters, the Squad, and news media folks as Trump cultists’ death threat targets. But they’ve also had their reputations attacked. They’ve been accused of either allowing votes to be fraudulently cast or destroying legal votes that were cast for Trump. These state officials should also sue as should Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight and other voter registration and protection organizations as well as the black and brown voters of those states. Donald Trump and his enablers have accused my people in most of those states and the brown people in Arizona and Nevada of cheating just because they had the nerve to vote, sometimes (as in Georgia) after standing in line for hours. SUE, black and brown folks! Take Trump Towers, Mar-a-lago, and all of those golf courses from the rich white man!
Dominion and Smartmatic, the vote counting corporations in charge of voting machines, have shown how effective lawsuits can be. Trump promoter Lou Dobbs lost his job on the Fox Business channel, and other anchors on Fox and Newsmax had to walk back their lies about the voting machines changing Trump votes to Biden. We shouldn’t have to sue to force people to tell the truth, but lying has become as common as racism and violence in the Age of Sadistic White Supremacist, Pathological Liar Trump. Maybe all sane, pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-racism and violence Americans should SUE Trump, Fox News anchors, Graham, Barr, and other Trump enablers for the trauma we have endured during the last more than four years. We should SUE to defeat white supremacy and defend democracy and truth. But most of all, we should SUE to bankrupt Trump, to take everything he has, and then so he will know we’re not playing, we should LOCK HIM UP in a nice single cell in a low-security federal prison.
I’ve encouraged both the NAACP and the BlackLivesMatter activists to sue everyone who has falsely accused the BLM protesters of rioting and looting. Trump’s impeachment attorneys should be added to that long list of bigots. MSNBC’s Sunday morning anchor Jonathan Capehart and other news media folks have pointed out that 93% of the BLM protests were peaceful, but they should also point out that the people arrested for property destruction and rioting during the peaceful protests of the late spring and summer of 2020 were either white supremacists posing as antifa or opportunistic thugs like the ones who moved into the Fairfax district after the LAPD had chased the peaceful protesters out of the area. Like the cops in Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon, and Washington D.C., the LA cops brutalized the peaceful BLM protesters, beating them and shooting them with rubber bullets while the thugs were burning and looting. The Los Angeles branch of BLM is already suing them. But they should also sue the people who are putting their lives and all black folks’ lives in danger by calling them anarchists and terrorists and framing them for damage caused sometimes by white supremacists. They can use evidence like the gun-toting Missouri couple who spoke at the Republican Convention and Killer Kid Kyle, who apparently is missing after being seen hanging out with white supremacists.
The families of the two men killed in Kenosha by Killer Kid Kyle should also sue Trump for inciting that violence with his “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” call to arms. So should the family of the Capitol police officer killed on 1/6. Even the family of the insurrectionist who was killed by the police on that day should sue. She would be alive if she had not foolishly followed Trump’s orders. The more than one hundred police officers who were badly injured should also sue him for not only inciting the violence but failing to stop it sooner and to activate the National Guard. Psychological trauma can be more permanently damaging and even fatal (as the suicides of two Capitol police officers suggest) than physical injuries. All of the Capitol police officers present that day and the Congressional staff members and janitorial staff who were terrorized by the insurrectionists should sue as should rape survivor AOC and any other members of Congress who were severely traumatized (the ones who had served in the military seemed to have been less traumatized) by their hours-long ordeal. If Pence doesn’t want to sue, his family members should. Come on, Mommy Pence, SUE the man who sent a mob to lynch your husband, the most sycophantic and loyal Vice President in American history!
Even before he incited violence in Kenosha, Portland, and Washington, D.C., Trump was responsible for many Americans receiving death threats. I can now laugh about how I briefly thought a hit and run car accident in October, 2018, which badly damaged one side of my car, was a bomb because I had been mean-tweeting Trump. I realized quickly that I’m not Maxine Waters, but she and other high-profile Trump “enemies” like AOC and the other young women of color in the Squad, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and other news media folks, and everyone’s favorite truth-telling scientist Doctor Fauci have received many death threats. Doctor Fauci’s family members have also been harassed and threatened. They should all sue Trump as should the families of people who died because of the botched handling of Covid.
The Secretaries of State and others in charge of vote counting in swing states like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have joined Fauci, Waters, the Squad, and news media folks as Trump cultists’ death threat targets. But they’ve also had their reputations attacked. They’ve been accused of either allowing votes to be fraudulently cast or destroying legal votes that were cast for Trump. These state officials should also sue as should Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight and other voter registration and protection organizations as well as the black and brown voters of those states. Donald Trump and his enablers have accused my people in most of those states and the brown people in Arizona and Nevada of cheating just because they had the nerve to vote, sometimes (as in Georgia) after standing in line for hours. SUE, black and brown folks! Take Trump Towers, Mar-a-lago, and all of those golf courses from the rich white man!
Dominion and Smartmatic, the vote counting corporations in charge of voting machines, have shown how effective lawsuits can be. Trump promoter Lou Dobbs lost his job on the Fox Business channel, and other anchors on Fox and Newsmax had to walk back their lies about the voting machines changing Trump votes to Biden. We shouldn’t have to sue to force people to tell the truth, but lying has become as common as racism and violence in the Age of Sadistic White Supremacist, Pathological Liar Trump. Maybe all sane, pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-racism and violence Americans should SUE Trump, Fox News anchors, Graham, Barr, and other Trump enablers for the trauma we have endured during the last more than four years. We should SUE to defeat white supremacy and defend democracy and truth. But most of all, we should SUE to bankrupt Trump, to take everything he has, and then so he will know we’re not playing, we should LOCK HIM UP in a nice single cell in a low-security federal prison.
Three To Go: Unstacking The Supreme Court
Proving that he’s almost as corrupt and insane as the 45th President, Lying Ted Cancun Cruz complained about “court packing” when some Democrats suggested that the Supreme Court should be expanded to thirteen justices. Did he miss what happened in 2016 and 20? Did he miss Grim Reaper McConnell’s bragging on Fox about how he prevented Obama from appointing judges? Did he forget why Reid killed the filibuster for appointing lower court justices so that Obama could appoint at least some district justices only to give Grim Reaper/Moscow Mitch the opportunity to kill it for the Supreme Court so that the twice impeached, two-time loser of the popular vote Trump could appoint three Supreme Court justices, two of them to seats stolen from the Democrats, and the third to a seat conveniently vacated by a conservative (Kennedy)? And wasn’t Lying Ted one of the senators who claimed that he would prevent Hillary from appointing judges when he thought she would beat Trump not only in the popular vote but also in the rigged electoral college? But Cruz and the Republicans aren’t the only ones talking crazy about the stacked Supreme Court. One New York Democrat suggested that Justice Breyer should retire to prevent what happened when Ginsburg died. How does Breyer’s retirement help change the numbers for the Court? If Biden replaces him, we will still have six conservatives, five of them appointed by Presidents who lost the popular vote, and three liberals. I have a better solution. Instead of “packing” the court by adding four justices, which will then give the Republicans the chance to add five if they figure out a way to steal more presidential elections (with the current very political, anti-democracy Supreme Court helping them, they probably can), why not pressure three of the current conservative justices to step down, thus unstacking and balancing the Court so that it better reflects America? It doesn’t matter if it’s the three who were appointed by the Putin-assisted, insane, incompetent, twice-impeached, two-time loser of the popular vote or the three who voted to gut the Voting Rights Act so that racist, anti-democracy governors and state legislators could suppress the votes of people of color. Three of them must go.
Maybe the three who should go are the ones who were involved in a real presidential election steal. In an earlier post (7/22/18), I pointed out that the attack on our democracy didn’t start with Trump; it started with the appointment of George W. Bush by the 2000 Supreme Court. That’s when the Court stopped pretending to be apolitical. They picked our President by stopping the vote count in Florida. The only member of that 2000 Court still serving is Clarence Thomas, who should have recused himself during the 2000 vote count deliberations since he was appointed by the father of the loser of the popular vote. At the time that I wrote that 7/22/18 post, Kavanaugh had not yet been appointed, although Kennedy had announced that he was (conveniently) retiring, and the notorious RBG was still alive. Kavanaugh and Barrett, who were appointed in 2018 and 20, were both involved in the Florida vote count as was John Roberts. What are the odds that three people involved in helping the Republicans steal a presidential election from the Democrats and the 2000 voters would end up on the Supreme Court twenty years later, and one of them would be the Chief Justice? Why aren’t more Democrats and media loudmouths commenting on that odd coincidence, which I discovered when Senator Amy Klobuchar confronted Amy Barrett during the latter’s confirmation hearings. If Kavanaugh was confronted about his participation in the 2000 election steal, I missed it because everyone was focused on his sexual misconduct when he was in high school.
The most democratic branch of our government right now is the executive because President Biden and Vice President Harris won both the popular vote and the electoral college. The President’s relatively high approval rating (59% in one recent poll) reflects that he’s really representing the American citizens. While the House of Representatives is a little more democratic than the Senate, gerrymandering has helped the Republicans win seats without winning a majority of the popular vote. Each election cycle, Democrats win many more votes for Congress than Republicans do, and yet they are often in the minority or (as in this cycle) barely ahead. It’ll take a lot of work to reverse that trend, and the work should start with the supposed-to-be-apolitical Supreme Court.
I love that Biden appointed Merrick Garland, the victim of the first Supreme Court steal, to be attorney general. It will be sweet karma if his department investigates and prosecutes the Republican court stackers. He needs to investigate the resignation of Kennedy and McConnell’s role in stacking both the lower courts and the Supreme Court with far right conservatives. Dick Durbin, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also needs to become involved, maybe focusing on the lower courts. Some of those unqualified judges appointed by Trump need to be impeached.
The media can assist in the unstacking by questioning the judgment of judges willing to accept appointments from a clearly insane and corrupt President who was openly seeking and receiving assistance from Russian President Putin, one of our chief adversaries. Someone who acted like a drunken fool in high school could grow up and learn to be wiser and more sober (ask Obama and maybe even somewhat wiser GW Bush), but should we trust the judgment of a man willing to accept a lifetime judicial appointment from a corrupt, insane, racist, self-confessed sexual assaulter? The same question should be asked of Gorsuch and Barrett, who accepted appointments to stolen seats. And what about the three remaining conservative justices who voted to gut the Voting Rights Act? What do they have to say about all of the voter suppression laws that have been passed since they took that very political, anti-democracy, racist vote.
Although Congress makes the laws and the President either signs or vetoes them, the nine supposed-to-be-apolitical Supreme Court justices are the ones who have the final say on whether a law will stand. It was the Supreme Court that approved of “separate but equal” Jim Crow at the end of the 19th Century and rejected it during the middle of the 20th Century. These justices are given life terms and don’t have to campaign for elections because they are supposed to be above petty politics, but the 2000 election steal by the Supreme Court changed that narrative. If we can’t pressure three (I wouldn’t mind seeing all six of them go) of these corrupt, anti-democratic justices to leave, then we must have term limits. There can’t be peace and justice in America as long as our highest court is infested with corrupt, anti-democratic justices like the five appointed by two-time loser of the popular vote and twice-impeached Trump and loser of the popular vote in 2000 and appointed by conservative justices in a real election steal GW Bush, and like the man who thought it was appropriate to cast the deciding vote on whether or not the son of Bush Senior, the President who appointed him to the Supreme Court, should win the state (and thus the presidency) where another son of Bush Senior was governor. It’s time for at least some of them to GET OUT!
Maybe the three who should go are the ones who were involved in a real presidential election steal. In an earlier post (7/22/18), I pointed out that the attack on our democracy didn’t start with Trump; it started with the appointment of George W. Bush by the 2000 Supreme Court. That’s when the Court stopped pretending to be apolitical. They picked our President by stopping the vote count in Florida. The only member of that 2000 Court still serving is Clarence Thomas, who should have recused himself during the 2000 vote count deliberations since he was appointed by the father of the loser of the popular vote. At the time that I wrote that 7/22/18 post, Kavanaugh had not yet been appointed, although Kennedy had announced that he was (conveniently) retiring, and the notorious RBG was still alive. Kavanaugh and Barrett, who were appointed in 2018 and 20, were both involved in the Florida vote count as was John Roberts. What are the odds that three people involved in helping the Republicans steal a presidential election from the Democrats and the 2000 voters would end up on the Supreme Court twenty years later, and one of them would be the Chief Justice? Why aren’t more Democrats and media loudmouths commenting on that odd coincidence, which I discovered when Senator Amy Klobuchar confronted Amy Barrett during the latter’s confirmation hearings. If Kavanaugh was confronted about his participation in the 2000 election steal, I missed it because everyone was focused on his sexual misconduct when he was in high school.
The most democratic branch of our government right now is the executive because President Biden and Vice President Harris won both the popular vote and the electoral college. The President’s relatively high approval rating (59% in one recent poll) reflects that he’s really representing the American citizens. While the House of Representatives is a little more democratic than the Senate, gerrymandering has helped the Republicans win seats without winning a majority of the popular vote. Each election cycle, Democrats win many more votes for Congress than Republicans do, and yet they are often in the minority or (as in this cycle) barely ahead. It’ll take a lot of work to reverse that trend, and the work should start with the supposed-to-be-apolitical Supreme Court.
I love that Biden appointed Merrick Garland, the victim of the first Supreme Court steal, to be attorney general. It will be sweet karma if his department investigates and prosecutes the Republican court stackers. He needs to investigate the resignation of Kennedy and McConnell’s role in stacking both the lower courts and the Supreme Court with far right conservatives. Dick Durbin, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also needs to become involved, maybe focusing on the lower courts. Some of those unqualified judges appointed by Trump need to be impeached.
The media can assist in the unstacking by questioning the judgment of judges willing to accept appointments from a clearly insane and corrupt President who was openly seeking and receiving assistance from Russian President Putin, one of our chief adversaries. Someone who acted like a drunken fool in high school could grow up and learn to be wiser and more sober (ask Obama and maybe even somewhat wiser GW Bush), but should we trust the judgment of a man willing to accept a lifetime judicial appointment from a corrupt, insane, racist, self-confessed sexual assaulter? The same question should be asked of Gorsuch and Barrett, who accepted appointments to stolen seats. And what about the three remaining conservative justices who voted to gut the Voting Rights Act? What do they have to say about all of the voter suppression laws that have been passed since they took that very political, anti-democracy, racist vote.
Although Congress makes the laws and the President either signs or vetoes them, the nine supposed-to-be-apolitical Supreme Court justices are the ones who have the final say on whether a law will stand. It was the Supreme Court that approved of “separate but equal” Jim Crow at the end of the 19th Century and rejected it during the middle of the 20th Century. These justices are given life terms and don’t have to campaign for elections because they are supposed to be above petty politics, but the 2000 election steal by the Supreme Court changed that narrative. If we can’t pressure three (I wouldn’t mind seeing all six of them go) of these corrupt, anti-democratic justices to leave, then we must have term limits. There can’t be peace and justice in America as long as our highest court is infested with corrupt, anti-democratic justices like the five appointed by two-time loser of the popular vote and twice-impeached Trump and loser of the popular vote in 2000 and appointed by conservative justices in a real election steal GW Bush, and like the man who thought it was appropriate to cast the deciding vote on whether or not the son of Bush Senior, the President who appointed him to the Supreme Court, should win the state (and thus the presidency) where another son of Bush Senior was governor. It’s time for at least some of them to GET OUT!
Going High And Low: How Democrats Can Save Our Democracy
In the 2/28/21 post, I listed as the seventh biggest lie the false equivalency suggestion that Democratic and Republican politicians are alike. If Democrats behaved more like Republicans, we wouldn’t have six unrepresentative, anti-democracy, conservative Supreme Court justices, we’d already have a Voting Rights Act, Josh Hawley would probably not be a senator because Al Franken would have still been in the Senate campaigning and raising money for Claire McCaskill and other vulnerable Democratic senators in 2018 while the money (and other resources like the campaign time of Democratic senators less popular than Franken but more popular than McCaskill) used to elect his weak replacement Tina Smith could have been used to help reelect Claire (also, Claire’s more independent constituents may have been less upset by her vote against Kavanaugh if they thought she did it for sensible policy reasons like a woman’s right to choose or gun control instead of because of something he did when he was a drunk teenager in high school). If Democrats were more like Republicans, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton would never have conceded in elections where they won the popular vote, and there were multiple “irregularities” that could have been challenged in courts. Most important, if Democrats were more like Republicans, our democracy would not now be on life support.
Two of the biggest and most destructively consequential differences between Republicans and Democrats is the way they treat members of their own party in comparison to each other and the way they respond to sexual misbehavior. The Democrats go high against Republicans and low against each other. Why are Democrats attacking Joe Manchin instead of Mitch McConnell? McConnell, who openly brags about obstructing Democratic Presidents and stacking the courts with conservatives (and often bigots), is being treated as if his behavior doesn’t matter while conservative Democrat Manchin is constantly being attacked. And why are Democratic activists pressuring liberal Judge Breyer to retire instead of calling on the three illegitimate conservative justices appointed under suspicious circumstances (Gorsuch has a stolen seat, Kavanaugh’s seat was conveniently vacated by Kennedy, and Barrett’s appointment was rushed through in the few weeks before an election because everyone assumed Biden would win both the popular vote and the electoral college) by a twice-impeached, two time loser of the popular vote, electoral college President? Why aren’t they calling for the attorney general’s office to investigate the stacking of the courts, including the Supreme Court? Why aren’t they considering impeaching some judges, including the three Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices?
At least the dirty, go-low-against-their-own Democrats haven’t (yet) accused Breyer and Manchin of sexual misconduct the way they did Franken and most despicably civil rights icon Representative John Conyers in 2017 and the way they did Governor Cuomo this year. They can’t encourage Manchin to resign because they would lose control of the Senate if he did. How many Republicans have called on accused sexual freak Matt Gaetz to resign? To be fair, some Republicans did suggest that Trump step down as the Republican nominee when the “I’m a sexual assaulter” “Access Hollywood” tapes were released shortly before the election in 2016, but that was when they thought he was going to lose and take them down with him. Once he won the electoral college, it never occurred to the sanctimonious House Speaker Paul Ryan or any other Republican to say that they couldn’t support Trump as President, and when the Democrats took over the House and finally impeached the most corrupt, insane, and incompetent President in my lifetime (a recent poll of Presidential historians listed him as “only” the fourth worst President ever, making me thankful that I wasn’t living during the 19th Century Civil War era when the three worst ones reigned), only Mitt Romney voted to convict him on one count. A few more Republicans voted to impeach and convict him during the second trial this year, but the overwhelming majority refused to hold their “dear leader” accountable. Even after he sent a mob to kill his Vice President and any other elected officials who tried to protect our democracy and prevent a coup, sycophants like Wannabe Speaker Kevin McCarthy continue to genuflect to the disgraced, insane, now former electoral college President.
I had tried to save our nation by encouraging the malignant narcissist (in tweets and blogs) to resign a few months before the election so that he could avoid the shame of losing the popular vote twice and so that Pence could preemptively pardon him. Of course, he ignored my advice because Republicans usually don’t resign. Gaetz hasn’t resigned, and insane Marjorie Taylor Greene will probably behave like Trump and refuse to concede or leave the House even if she loses next year. To save our democracy, Democrats who have won their offices in fair and legal elections must behave like the governors of New York and Virginia and refuse to resign. And when they “lose” in close elections that feature multiple “irregularities,” like long lines in mostly Democratic precincts where the majority of the voters are people of color, large numbers of ballots challenged (possibly discarded) in those precincts, and overly aggressive poll watchers, they should behave like Trump and Al Franken’s first Minnesota opponent. They should not only refuse to concede as Stacey Abrams did when she “lost” to the man in charge of voting (as Secretary of State) in Georgia, but they should demand recounts and audits while filing multiple lawsuits challenging the results.
The Democrats should also behave like Republicans (or like they do when a Democrat is accused of sexual misbehavior or politically incorrect behavior) by weaponizing real scandals. Remember what Republicans did with Benghazi, a tragedy which they tried to turn into a scandal? Remember how they crucified Susan Rice for providing some misinformation on the Sunday shows soon after the terrorist attack on our embassy happened and before we were sure exactly what did happen? Remember how Mitt Romney claimed in a 2012 debate that Obama didn’t call the Benghazi attack terrorism? Remember how many congressional investigations there were, investigations that didn’t uncover any wrongdoing? But we don’t have to go back to the teens to find examples of how low the Republicans will go to take down Democrats. We can just look at what they said and did last year during the mostly peaceful BlackLivesMatter protests. Remember how they demanded that Democrats condemn the rioting and property damage, most of it perpetrated by opportunistic thugs who will use any event (like a win by a local sports team) to riot and loot and occasionally white supremacists posing as antifa so that Trump and Barr could condemn the peaceful protesters as anarchists and terrorists, thus endangering the lives of all black people? Well, the Democrats have videos of real terrorists and anarchists, some of them white supremacists, some former military, and some current and former cops. They also have evidence that suggests members of Congress were involved in the planning of the attempted coup. They need to weaponize that evidence.
The white supremacist insurrection on 1/6 is the gift that keeps on giving. But the Democrats are too busy attacking Manchin, Breyer, and Cuomo to weaponize that gift against their conservative opponents. They should be passing resolutions and bills that force Republicans to vote for or against insurrections and for or against democracy. They should force Republicans to support or vote against white supremacy. I want to see a resolution passed that says, “All votes matter. Black, brown, red, and yellow votes should be treated the same as white votes. A President elected by the majority of people of color and a minority of whites, one who wins both the popular vote and the electoral college, is a legitimate President.” I would prefer the addition of the phrase “more legitimate than a President who loses the popular vote but wins the electoral college.” I want to see Democrats demanding that Republicans denounce the destruction of property in the Capitol the way they denounced the destruction of property during the protests last summer. I want Democrats to demand that Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and Kevin McCarthy denounce white supremacy the way they were demanding that key Democrats denounce looting and property damage last summer. I want the Democrats to pass resolutions condemning domestic terrorism in language that targets the actions of the white supremacists who stormed the Michigan Capitol last year (in other words, carrying guns, endangering lives by not masking during a pandemic) and the 1/6 terrorists this year (like carrying bear spray, zip ties, and a noose).
As new books come out with shocking revelations about how close we came to losing our democracy in the last days of Trump’s disastrous reign, the Democrats need to stay focused on attacking Republicans who continue to support the insane traitor who should never have been allowed to enter the White House. They don’t really have to go low against him or any other Republicans. They don’t have to focus on the rape charges and the hush money paid to Stormy and the Playmate. They can go high, defending our democracy against white supremacists and wannabe autocrats, against Putin’s Puppet and his enablers. The Democrats have been presented with the high ground; they just need to take it. They need to ask all Americans, “Are you with the party of white supremacists, insurrectionists, seditionists, traitors, and terrorists, or are you with the party that believes in democracy, the party that wants everyone to vote and every vote to count, the party that believes in education, healthcare, and a living wage for all?”
Clearly, there is only one party that can save our democracy. Unfortunately, it isn’t the party that knows how to battle—to support each other and attack their opponents, to play offense instead of defense, and to brand. When Republicans say “socialists,” Democrats should say “white supremacists.” When they say “illegal aliens,” Democrats should say “insurrectionists,” “seditionists,” “terrorists”! Insane white supremacist, Hitler and Putin fan Trump and his deplorable followers have given the Democrats the weapons to use in defense of our democracy; let’s hope they figure out how to use them!
Two of the biggest and most destructively consequential differences between Republicans and Democrats is the way they treat members of their own party in comparison to each other and the way they respond to sexual misbehavior. The Democrats go high against Republicans and low against each other. Why are Democrats attacking Joe Manchin instead of Mitch McConnell? McConnell, who openly brags about obstructing Democratic Presidents and stacking the courts with conservatives (and often bigots), is being treated as if his behavior doesn’t matter while conservative Democrat Manchin is constantly being attacked. And why are Democratic activists pressuring liberal Judge Breyer to retire instead of calling on the three illegitimate conservative justices appointed under suspicious circumstances (Gorsuch has a stolen seat, Kavanaugh’s seat was conveniently vacated by Kennedy, and Barrett’s appointment was rushed through in the few weeks before an election because everyone assumed Biden would win both the popular vote and the electoral college) by a twice-impeached, two time loser of the popular vote, electoral college President? Why aren’t they calling for the attorney general’s office to investigate the stacking of the courts, including the Supreme Court? Why aren’t they considering impeaching some judges, including the three Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices?
At least the dirty, go-low-against-their-own Democrats haven’t (yet) accused Breyer and Manchin of sexual misconduct the way they did Franken and most despicably civil rights icon Representative John Conyers in 2017 and the way they did Governor Cuomo this year. They can’t encourage Manchin to resign because they would lose control of the Senate if he did. How many Republicans have called on accused sexual freak Matt Gaetz to resign? To be fair, some Republicans did suggest that Trump step down as the Republican nominee when the “I’m a sexual assaulter” “Access Hollywood” tapes were released shortly before the election in 2016, but that was when they thought he was going to lose and take them down with him. Once he won the electoral college, it never occurred to the sanctimonious House Speaker Paul Ryan or any other Republican to say that they couldn’t support Trump as President, and when the Democrats took over the House and finally impeached the most corrupt, insane, and incompetent President in my lifetime (a recent poll of Presidential historians listed him as “only” the fourth worst President ever, making me thankful that I wasn’t living during the 19th Century Civil War era when the three worst ones reigned), only Mitt Romney voted to convict him on one count. A few more Republicans voted to impeach and convict him during the second trial this year, but the overwhelming majority refused to hold their “dear leader” accountable. Even after he sent a mob to kill his Vice President and any other elected officials who tried to protect our democracy and prevent a coup, sycophants like Wannabe Speaker Kevin McCarthy continue to genuflect to the disgraced, insane, now former electoral college President.
I had tried to save our nation by encouraging the malignant narcissist (in tweets and blogs) to resign a few months before the election so that he could avoid the shame of losing the popular vote twice and so that Pence could preemptively pardon him. Of course, he ignored my advice because Republicans usually don’t resign. Gaetz hasn’t resigned, and insane Marjorie Taylor Greene will probably behave like Trump and refuse to concede or leave the House even if she loses next year. To save our democracy, Democrats who have won their offices in fair and legal elections must behave like the governors of New York and Virginia and refuse to resign. And when they “lose” in close elections that feature multiple “irregularities,” like long lines in mostly Democratic precincts where the majority of the voters are people of color, large numbers of ballots challenged (possibly discarded) in those precincts, and overly aggressive poll watchers, they should behave like Trump and Al Franken’s first Minnesota opponent. They should not only refuse to concede as Stacey Abrams did when she “lost” to the man in charge of voting (as Secretary of State) in Georgia, but they should demand recounts and audits while filing multiple lawsuits challenging the results.
The Democrats should also behave like Republicans (or like they do when a Democrat is accused of sexual misbehavior or politically incorrect behavior) by weaponizing real scandals. Remember what Republicans did with Benghazi, a tragedy which they tried to turn into a scandal? Remember how they crucified Susan Rice for providing some misinformation on the Sunday shows soon after the terrorist attack on our embassy happened and before we were sure exactly what did happen? Remember how Mitt Romney claimed in a 2012 debate that Obama didn’t call the Benghazi attack terrorism? Remember how many congressional investigations there were, investigations that didn’t uncover any wrongdoing? But we don’t have to go back to the teens to find examples of how low the Republicans will go to take down Democrats. We can just look at what they said and did last year during the mostly peaceful BlackLivesMatter protests. Remember how they demanded that Democrats condemn the rioting and property damage, most of it perpetrated by opportunistic thugs who will use any event (like a win by a local sports team) to riot and loot and occasionally white supremacists posing as antifa so that Trump and Barr could condemn the peaceful protesters as anarchists and terrorists, thus endangering the lives of all black people? Well, the Democrats have videos of real terrorists and anarchists, some of them white supremacists, some former military, and some current and former cops. They also have evidence that suggests members of Congress were involved in the planning of the attempted coup. They need to weaponize that evidence.
The white supremacist insurrection on 1/6 is the gift that keeps on giving. But the Democrats are too busy attacking Manchin, Breyer, and Cuomo to weaponize that gift against their conservative opponents. They should be passing resolutions and bills that force Republicans to vote for or against insurrections and for or against democracy. They should force Republicans to support or vote against white supremacy. I want to see a resolution passed that says, “All votes matter. Black, brown, red, and yellow votes should be treated the same as white votes. A President elected by the majority of people of color and a minority of whites, one who wins both the popular vote and the electoral college, is a legitimate President.” I would prefer the addition of the phrase “more legitimate than a President who loses the popular vote but wins the electoral college.” I want to see Democrats demanding that Republicans denounce the destruction of property in the Capitol the way they denounced the destruction of property during the protests last summer. I want Democrats to demand that Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and Kevin McCarthy denounce white supremacy the way they were demanding that key Democrats denounce looting and property damage last summer. I want the Democrats to pass resolutions condemning domestic terrorism in language that targets the actions of the white supremacists who stormed the Michigan Capitol last year (in other words, carrying guns, endangering lives by not masking during a pandemic) and the 1/6 terrorists this year (like carrying bear spray, zip ties, and a noose).
As new books come out with shocking revelations about how close we came to losing our democracy in the last days of Trump’s disastrous reign, the Democrats need to stay focused on attacking Republicans who continue to support the insane traitor who should never have been allowed to enter the White House. They don’t really have to go low against him or any other Republicans. They don’t have to focus on the rape charges and the hush money paid to Stormy and the Playmate. They can go high, defending our democracy against white supremacists and wannabe autocrats, against Putin’s Puppet and his enablers. The Democrats have been presented with the high ground; they just need to take it. They need to ask all Americans, “Are you with the party of white supremacists, insurrectionists, seditionists, traitors, and terrorists, or are you with the party that believes in democracy, the party that wants everyone to vote and every vote to count, the party that believes in education, healthcare, and a living wage for all?”
Clearly, there is only one party that can save our democracy. Unfortunately, it isn’t the party that knows how to battle—to support each other and attack their opponents, to play offense instead of defense, and to brand. When Republicans say “socialists,” Democrats should say “white supremacists.” When they say “illegal aliens,” Democrats should say “insurrectionists,” “seditionists,” “terrorists”! Insane white supremacist, Hitler and Putin fan Trump and his deplorable followers have given the Democrats the weapons to use in defense of our democracy; let’s hope they figure out how to use them!
