This blog entry is one that is near and dear to my heart. I, personally, have been concerned about the direction of our country’s societies for several years, actually dating back more than a decade. While I am a staunch, died in the wool Democrat with slight liberal leanings, I am also a realist and my politics completely reflect that personal position.
For a pretty long time, I have been concerned with the direction and the political changes that are occurring in our country, primarily on the right side of our national aisle, but also the central and left side as well. Frankly, I can recall vividly when our nation’s political parties were not that far apart and comity was the watchword for our Congress and our major political entities. I can recall having dinner in a few of the Washington, DC restaurants and seeing political figures of both parties having a meal and good conversations. During those times, we had a lot of legislation that came through with a true bipartisan vote. Granted there were still angst and harsh delineation among some of the members especially concerning certain legislative bills. But all in all, one could count on the political leadership herding the cats into a semblance of comity and actions for the betterment of our country and benefits to our people.
Sadly, those days appear to be completely lost and most likely it will take many Congresses to bring some sense of bipartisanship back into our governing body, our Congress. But even more worrisome is the schisms and defaults that are happening in our state, local, and municipal governments. We as a voting body, pay far more attention to the national elections than we do on the state and local. This is definitely to our detriment as a free society.
Another area where we fail as a national body is in the attention of our people to the very basic of the election process. Sure, when the national electoral process kicks off, lots of publicity ensues each night on our televisions and radios, in our newspapers and now a days, in our online media. But, we have a tendency to deny the appropriate level of attention to our local elections. Our city councils, our county board of supervisors, our mayor, our state legislators, our attorneys general, and of course our governors and lt. governors. We pay minimal attention to the election campaign of our state chief executives, and as a result, we wind up with people like Abbot in Texas, DeSantis in Florida, and for me, Youngkin of Virginia. Oh there are others, like North Dakota, Tennessee, Mississippi, and so on.
Why do we make time to assess and vote for the President and Vice President of the United States, yet allow vicious, dishonest, and integrity challenged men and women to occupy our State Governor’s house?
Consider Glenn Youngkin, who, during his campaign presented a false image of a true centrist moderate Republican. However, if one actually delved into just who Glenn Youngkin was, they would find a totally different person. As a co-CEO for one of the larger Vulture Capitalist companies, Youngkin was responsible for the acquisition of a group of senior citizen assisted living and nursing homes in one of his capitalist take overs. Usually this company would take over a company, strip out its value and the shut the remaining husk to the side, putting hundreds of people out of work. One thing that struck me about his tenure at that company was that instead of the Board promoting him as the actual CEO, they made a co position putting another executive in the same role and it was pretty clear that they really didn’t trust Youngkin with the total control. Yet the voting public in Virginia look the other way, cast their votes and Virginia was handed a Christo-fascist lying business person to serve as Governor.
I literally wept for our state. YET, the Democrats were not without blame, we had a candidate who had previously served as a governor and their campaign was very lackluster without being able to overcome the rumor mill from the Republican propagandists.
I recall when Obama was elected President, I was so hopeful that we as a nation had finally come to our senses and elected an educated, erudite, and compassionate human being to the highest office in our land. Unfortunately, after his election, I discovered that nothing had really changed! Even the majority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell made the statement that he would see that Obama was a one term president and then set out to put up road blocks to every single thing that the Obama administration attempted to implement. Screwed us over with judicial appointments, put unending destructive insertion into legislation designed to bring health care to all our people. And so on.
Then came the election for Obama’s replacement.
Wow, the Republicans had over 8 challengers for their primary pick, and among them was a failed TV host and corrupt businessman, Donald Trump. Of course many, many people laughed at the Republicans saying that Hillary Clinton had this election in the bag and from all accounts they were right. But then came the voting time. At that time, my wife and I lived on a 54 foot motor yacht in the Washington, DC waterfront/harbor. On election night we went to sleep with the confidence that we would wake up in the morning to find the first woman president following our first black president. Sadly when we awoke, our news cast gave the fact that Clinton did not win, she had the popular vote by millions, but the outdated Electoral College handed the Presidency to Donald Trump and American took a giant step back, falling into a swamp of corruption, criminal acts, dictatorial actions, and the theft of millions of taxpayer dollars by Trump, his family, and his entire administration.
As we used to say during my Air Force days, we totally screwed the pooch with this presidential election. For four years the worst of our American citizenry rose with the encouragement of the man who squatted in our White House. Every racist, white nationalist, “militia dude” and other dregs of our American society came out of the pits of darkness, bring violent actions, murderous assaults and our Republican Congress both House and Senate went right along with that crowd. We saw voting rights damaged, political insertion into the rights of women to make their own health decisions, books banned, American History courses gutted and a denial of science and education the likes we have never seen in this nation before. Florida and Texas had governors who were second only to Adolph Hitler in their assault on the individual rights of their citizens and in companies/institutions that they disagreed with on political terms.
Hells bells that dipstick fascist governor of Florida has even picked a fight with Disney, one of the two largest employers in his freaking state. Just recently, Disney decided to halt the planned 6 BILLION dollar building program for Florida, it would have brought over 2000 new really good paying jobs into the state. BUT the fascist DeSantis decided to keep up his autocratic, dictatorial and stupid fight with Disney so Florida lost.
I also would hate to see us fall back on the attitudes of the KKK and the like. Unfortunately, what I do see is that we as a society are facing a very verbal and sometimes violent minority of people who are promoting a Christian Nationalist/Fascist Authoritarian style of governance and societal environment. One simply has to take notice of the incremental movements and take a step back to see the evolving picture.
I know that many of you will diminish these observations, especially those in this section of paragraphs. Many years ago, I came to the observations that our nation was in danger of a movement to the right, the far right of religious organizations coupled with politicians whose lust for power and wealth would outweigh their concern for the betterment of our country, our society, and our future. Back then, I was just a young military NCO and my observations were not accepted by many of my peers and acquaintances. But I still felt strongly that our democracy was possibly in danger of being usurped by not foreign attacks, but by internal stresses, ideological changes and people who were gaining power and were only interested in accumulating more and more wealth at the adverse impact on society and on people who had different beliefs.
As things changed over the years, those concerns grew in my opinions and thoughts processes. Factual evidences were cropping up all over the place, in newsprint, in opinion pieces, educational/technical seminars, all coupled with over 8 decades of life and observations of fellow citizens/news media. But, obviously I am far from the sharpest knife in the drawer and my observations and opinion may not be the end point of educated positions.
BUT, I am logically oriented, and have, in my long working career, learned to collate information received into what seems to be a viable postulation. So, take my comments and opinions with a grain of salt if you will, but also make sure you closely observe the statements, policy positions, and actions of these people who seem to be taking actions to reduce and even eliminate individual rights, collective restrictions against the honor and viability of our communities and our very access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Words we’ve come to understand as the bedrock of our country.
Let’s all hope that those people in this nation who are working to undermine our very democracy, can be stopped and we return to a level of community that focuses on progress, not revenge. However, and this is key! We must all take an active part in the political life of our country. I don’t mean run for office, but that would be a great idea for many of your. I refer instead to being active, working for candidates, for your local party offices, encouraging and enabling your friends and neighbors to see and hear the actual positions of the campaigners, not just their tv and photo shots, but who they are, what they really stand for, where their intentions align with yours and your peers. Then, go to the polling stations and VOTE!
Encourage and assist your peers to get out and vote. Give them a lift to the voting area if necessary. My wife and I have taken advantage of the early voting in the places we lived, that had that capability. Like in DC when we voted on the very first day of early voting, and here in Northern Virginia, we take advantage of early voting for every single election. We both lend strong credence to the importance of voting for our local political offices as we do for the presidential elections. Frankly the local politicians can hurt you just as badly as the national political class. As examples, just look at the actions of Abbot in Texas with his assaults on the rights of his people and the threats to physicians of jail time and high fines for caring for their female patients. Then there is the uber fascist DeSantis in Florida who is doing the same things and is actually bringing punitive actions against teachers, librarians, threatening doctors and nurses. And the epitome of stupid, attacking and picking fights with a major state employers who provides millions of dollars in state revenue, provides thousands of decent paying jobs for Floridians and just recently as a response to DeSantis’ continued attacks, Disney has cancelled a multi-billion dollar project and halted the implementation of well over 2000 new job positions in the state.
So yes ladies and gentlemen, pay attention, get involved, and do your responsible duty by participating in the political electoral process and for God’s sake, VOTE damnit.
Musings of a Geriatric Curmudgeon 