Looks like it's time to explain again:
I don't care if you're the raddest, reddest pro-Trump Republican in the country or a mealy-mouthed, lukewarm, "He's not my guy, but..." anti-anti-Trumper: if you're not against Mr. Trump* and his regime, you're helping enable fascism in the United States of America, and you should stop that. It's unAmerican. I am not going to be nice to you, I'm not going to consider your tender, wounded feelings and you will not get the benefit of the doubt.
There's an administration in Washington, DC right now that is using normalcy bias, entrenched respect for institutions and a tradition of civility as weapons to destroy our freedoms, to trash the separation of powers, to exploit the law for their own benefit and to ride roughshod over the civil rights of all Americans. I refuse to play along.
You shouldn't play along either. Some of you, lifelong conservatives, are going to have to vote for better GOP primary candidates, and when they lose, if you want to keep on having elections you're going to have to bite your tongue and vote for Democrats in the general election, saving arguments about social and monetary policy for later. Yes, it sucks to be you, oh the pain of having to vote for a woman of color who won't sit down and shut up, but your party leaders and politicians had the chance to stop Donald Trump and they chose to fail, thinking they could ride his coattails to glory. That's not the direction he's headed and it'll be a damned close thing if he doesn't drag the country down to ruin with him.
No commenter gets to lecture me on how to behave. In her old age, my maternal grandmother became very outspoken. This was in the 1960s; elderly women were supposed to be demure if not downright invisible. She was neither. Her five daughters were horrified, but she told them, "If I cannot speak my mind now, when will I be be able to do so?" I'm old; I'm past my planned retirement age and the way things are going, I'm not going to be able to retire until I'm too worn out to work. If I can't speak my mind now, just when the hell will I?
If you don't like it, don't read my blog. I'm not going to miss you. I do this for me, not you.
__________________
* On my blog, I do not use cute or disparaging names for politicians. They get full names and/or titles and salutations, just the same as if they were decent folks. A few of them -- notably, the odiously racist Woodrow Wilson -- have left such a stink that I will add that description when they are mentioned, but Mr. Nixon isn't "Tricky" here nor is Mr. Clinton "Slick." Presidents and Congressthings are Just Some Guy, exactly the same before the law and their fellow citizens as the dude down the block, and I don't call him asinine nicknames, either.
Update
9 months ago
4 comments:
Well said words that need to be repeated, widely and loudly, at every opportunity.
Politicians-including Ds-are too gutless. It will come from voters below, or-as I fear-too little and too late.
Trump's misconceived tariffs are a tax on Americans, not on the foreign exporters (as he regularly lies).
As I recall, Americans once rebelled against a distant king and his taxes.
These Trump Taxes may hurt and anger ordinary Americans so much that they rebel at the ballot box in 2026. Let's hope.
One huge problem is the mindset that one has to back Their Guy 110%- deliberately ignoring any and all obvious problems*, and shouting down any doubters & critics.
It's an approach that hasn't worked, doesn't work, and will never ever work. But people still do it anyway. Because people are moved by emotions, not reason.
*until things go totally wahooni-shaped, at which point everyone suddenly Knew All Along This Wouldn't Work.
77 million wrong thinkers that you and all your friends believe should be sent to the gulag and reeducation camps. It’s not a good look.
I live in a neighborhood which is nice by anyone’s standard but we have a new mob that demands we stop whatever we’re doing and replace the majority of teachers immediately with black male teachers. This is from the same crew that demanded the same resolution to every ‘problem’ over the last 30 years and I wonder, would I be some king of king rat for simply pointing out that educated black males who “made it” probably have teaching black students in public schools somewhere down at the bottom of things they intend to do?
Is there any way to communicate this without coming off as a racist SOB?
Here’s a piece of advice, “Unknown:” if you are thinking you can’t say something “without coming off as a racist SOB,” that probably means it’s a deeply racist thing to say, and you might not want to say it in public; maybe you should examine your reasons for thinking it.
The reason you give, “…a new mob that demands we stop whatever we’re doing and replace the majority of teachers immediately with black male teachers. […T]he same crew that demanded the same resolution to every ‘problem’ over the last 30 years […],” is, without any citation, just a racist scare story, a fairytale spun up from reports about people worried that some kids don’t seem to have enough positive role models. Point me to these thirty-year-old “new” (???) mobs; they’re no more real than the boogeyman.
Then you write about “77 million wrong thinkers that you and all your friends believe should be sent to the gulag and reeducation camps.” [Citation needed], as they say. I certainly don’t believe it, nor have I noticed such sentiments being shared on social or mainstream media. There’s only one political party that has members who are cheering on newly-built Federal prison camps – mass-internment camps, not work-camp gulags or “re-education” camps – and it’s the party Mr. Trump heads up. Nor are every one of those 77.3 million voters true-red ride-or-die Trumpists; a lot of them just wanted to make the pandemic and the economic crap it caused unhappen, and they hoped giving the GOP a do-over would produce that. It hasn’t worked out so far, and many of those voters are noticing. On the other side, 75 million voters didn’t want him back. As it works out, neither of those is more than 50% of the total vote; enough voters went for someone different that not only was there no poplar landside, there wasn’t even an absolute majority. I think there’s a large persuadable middle, many of whom are regretting the most recent outcome, and if things keep on, they’re liable to lean away from the GOP in the next election. No camps required.
Wouldn’t you be happier back in the fever-swamps of the authoritarian far Right? I hear Walmart’s having a sale on boot polish!
Post a Comment