Not a lot makes me “happy” these days as the future looks dimmer thanks to a society that becoming increasingly ruled by extremists—mostly from the right, but also certain “liberal” activists who practice their own brand of fact-free oppression. At least I can say that I probably won’t live long enough to see the worst of it, like this country devolving into a fascist authoritarian state that some people in this country want now because they think it will protect their “culture.”
Still, one thing is making me happy this week: the Warner Archive Collection is releasing the pre-code classic Safe in Hell on Blu-ray; now why the hell don’t they release the Gable/Harlow classic Red Dust on Blu-ray? Hell, Warner has the rights to the Robert Redford film The Candidate and that has only seen a full-frame DVD release now long OOP. Now I’m unhappy again thinking about all that; I’m not exactly a “kid” anymore, although sometimes I think like one, I admit.
Back in the proper mood, Republicans are back to their old tricks of disenfranchising voters they don’t want going to the polls, or changing election processes to insure that their guy has the best chance of winning, or in the case of Montana, insuring the best chance that the other guy doesn’t. It’s same old thing: in states like Georgia when it “flips” in both the presidential and Senate seats, state Republican lawmakers and the governor scramble to pass laws that they hope prevents that from happening again; to hell with the will of the majority of people. Republicans don’t believe in “democracy”; they believe in power, and how to best serve their corporate masters.
Texas, of course has also passed laws to make it more difficult for certain groups to vote; apparently Republicans want to “stave-off” what happened in Georgia from ever happening in “their” state. The governor, Greg Abbott, and his attorney general have both shown their hand that they don’t respect the rule of law anyways, by attacking a Hispanic prosecutor and promising to “pardon” a white supremacist who was convicted of killing a BLM protester in "self-defense."
But Ron DeSantis already has that covered in Florida; although a court struck down part of a law as being too broad making it a crime to conduct protests in “groups” of more than a couple people and made it easier for police to arrest people who might just be “hanging out” to see what is going on, the state still basically allows people to “express” themselves with a gun when they are “threatened” by “dangerous" left-wing talk, which DeSantis is doing his best to ban entirely, at least in schools.
Of course DeSantis' hatred of free speech extends even to the Disney corporation, which angered him by criticizing his anti-free speech and gender-identity laws; DeSantis is now fighting to remove Disney’s autonomy at its Disney World location and force a new governing board on to it to make it more “friendly” with his own bigoted attitudes.
Maybe a few people my age remember the comedy skit show Fridays, but if not the show’s best moment was the Rocky Horror Picture Show parody, with John Roarke’s Ronald Reagan in the Tim Curry Frank-N-Furter role; he presents a figure covered-up like a mummy which he claims is his greatest “creation,” the “ultimate” conservative. But after unwrapping it, the “ultimate conservative” is revealed to be a Black Panther rebel, who informs the shocked conservative partygoers that this is what they have really created with their hate-talk and history denying:
As if we need more of that, but that is what Trump, DeSantis and Abbott have wrought with their openly race-baiting and fascist talk. Maybe some of their supporters just like to whine and pop their mouths off without really understanding that what they sow, they will eventually reap. They think things are “bad” now? Wait until “nature” joins in the fray full force, and then people will really hating each other, and it won’t be for merely racial or ideological reasons; everyone will be for themselves, because they have forgotten how to work together.
In the meantime, stupid is as stupid does. Joe Biden's cognitive abilities have been in question for forgetting a word or two, as most of us do when we reach a certain age. But how is that worse than Trump slurring over words? Note in his speeches these days he seems to be talking in slow motion, as if he needs to take a moment to remember a word or find a replacement if he can’t remember it. On the other hand you have people like Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Majorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert who would be better off taking a few moments to think about what they are saying, although it seems unlikely that they are capable of understanding that what they say is fit only for an insane asylum, not in the real world.
But Republicans soldier on in their own idiotic way. Tennessee’s own RNC chairman admitted it was a “bad look” to younger voters that two black state legislators were expelled for protesting the inaction after the Nashville mass shooting, especially since the white legislator who joined them was not. In Montana, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester announced he was running for re-election in 2024, which angered Republicans who hoped to flip his seat. The state legislature passed a law that was only due to effect that particular Senate election and no other afterward. The election will now only allow the top-two vote getters in the primaries, and no third-party candidates will now be able to run. Republicans hope that Tester will not be able to win “this time.”
Two black
Democrats in Tennessee ousted, but MTG and other Republicans were not during their
disrespectful outbursts during Biden’s State of the Union addresses. Montana changing election laws to prevent a Democrat from winning reelection. DeSantis running roughshod
over free speech rights and Disney for partisan political reasons. Texas and
Georgia passing election laws meant to make it more difficult to vote for already disenfranchised legitimate
voters. Shorter voting times and dates, and you think that right-wing business owners are
going to let likely Democratic voters take time off to vote, unlike, say, office workers?
The cynicism never rests in this country. Democratic legislators in Louisiana and North Carolina recently switched parties to give Republicans “supermajorities” that are veto-proof. North Carolina’s Tricia Cotham was called upon to resign her seat instead, since she was accused of shamelessly conning voters in a largely Democratic district to win election. There is limited options to recall her, and she is daring constituents in her district to “vote her out” in 2024. How much were these ex-Democrats paid off to do this, or were they just power-mad con artists following their “conscience” and gave the finger to those who thought they voted for someone else?
Why are people dumping on Kamala Harris for merely PR “misfires” that are mostly spitballs compared to the nuclear blasts by far-right Republicans? Biden has low approval ratings? Maybe it is just voters way of saying he should retire and let someone with more “vigor” run; a majority of voters don’t want Trump or DeSantis—or any Republican, given that the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections.
When Republicans mess things up, voters always come running to Democrats to save them from themselves, although they are usually only given two years to do it, before the mid-terms, and unlike the time that FDR was given to fix things, that is only enough time to put a band aid on a broken arm. It happens all the time in this country: Republicans screw things up like the weakening of banking regulations passed by Democrats in the wake of the “Great Recession” that itself was a result of the weakening of New Deal regulations to combat unsound banking practices that helped bring about the Great Depression. In 2018 Trump weakened the Dodd-Frank law and what happened? You have the recent bank failures that were a direct result of Trump’s stupidity, and you have a Republican majority in the House that will of course cry in pain to anything the Biden administration does to “fix” the problem.
It sure is tough to keep things “sane” these days, but there we go again. We really know, deep down, who is responsible for this, but into the rabbit hole Republicans leads the mindless into, who have little idea of the consequences of their support of certain fear-mongering politicians who believe they have a “mandate” for destruction. It seemed that the country had avoided allowing these potentates of perversion to guide them into perdition in 2020 and 2022, yet it appears that Trumpism/fascism is far from “dead.”
Even an ex-president with a decades-long history of activity of questionable legality who finally may reap what he has sowed is not enough to bring second thoughts or even shame to people who still seem to be mesmerized with the sky-is-falling rhetoric that only offers paranoia and scapegoating as the “answer” to all problems…
…oh hell, what’s the point? The unholy trinity of Russia, China and Iran only seem to have destruction of world order on their minds too. That Barry McGuire song “Eve of Destruction” is more relevant now than it was in the 1960s:
Man, I’m just going to watch a movie.
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