Pearl clutcher Hand wringer Bed wetter
All are terms that have been used to describe Democrats in the MAGA era. All, in fact, have been terms used to describe me.
Let’s be honest: fifteen years ago, few Americans envisioned the Nation that we have today. So forgive me if I do sometimes act shocked. I never thought our civil and voting rights could be so endangered. It never occurred to me that our personal rights, like the right to make decisions about our own bodies (and yes, I mean the right of a woman to choose an abortion) would be abolished wholesale in many of our states. And it didn’t even occur to me that we would have a multi-billion dollar quasi-military force set to “root out” the undocumented, deny them their civil and criminal rights, and hold them in private prisons.
And that’s not even considering the breath-taking corruption taking place out in plain sight in Washington DC (and Columbus, Ohio). Maybe I should add “emolument defender” or “payoff objector” to the list. For those who counter: “well, that’s how politics always were”, I call BS. Even if you think that Hunter Biden abused his last name to gain influence and wealth, he’s a “piker” compared to the Trump family. Donald Trump is finally (really) a multi-billionaire, but much of that is at the expense of the American people.
Alternate Facts
Remember when then-Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway coined a new term in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press in the first days of the Trump Presidency? The “discussion” was about the number of attendees at the Inauguration, the one that Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed with the “greatest, largest, ever!!!”. It was not. When Todd challenged Conway, she simply said that Todd had his facts, and she had “alternate facts”. Todd, reasonably, argued that there could only be one set of facts, truth, versus fiction.
Today, the President who once promised that there would be a WALL and Mexico would pay for it (there isn’t, and they didn’t), desecrated the White House by tearing down the East Wing, and is building a ballroom, completely taxpayer free. That is, of course, except for the one billion dollars he wants the US Congress (us taxpayers) to pay. I guess it depends on the meaning of the word “free”.
War of Choice
And he is constantly lying about the state of affairs versus Iran. First we “obliterated” their nuclear development program, spending billions of dollars in the effort (The Nuts and Bolts of Bombing Iran). Then, we destroyed their leadership in order to promote “regime change” (It’s Not That Simple). Then we launched massive attacks against their military forces, in order to destroy their ability to resist. Oh, and then we attacked again, to re-obliterate the nuclear program we didn’t get in the first place.
And then, using the most low-tech weaponry available (speedboats, drones, mines), Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. The “leaderless” Iranian government, now run by the hardest of the hard liners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, shut down twenty percent of the world’s oil production. And here we sit, spending billions of American taxpayers’ dollars, in a stalemate with a country that we “militarily defeated”. And, surprise, there’s confusion on who we should negotiate with to end our “great victory”.
In Billions we Trust
And besides all of that, Artificial Intelligence has been unleashed unfettered by regulation or constraint. “Claude”, the AI created by Anthropic, is expressing regret at being used to target our weaponry on Iran. Good for (him, it, that). But it simply underlines the point: we don’t know what we don’t know about AI, but we’re letting it/him/that do whatever it/him/that wants.
Why are we so reckless? Because we trust the billionaires behind AI many the same ones behind the MAGA movement?
The Democratic Offer
A friend tells me that all Democrats do is “later, rinse and repeat” (another cute term). What are we offering? A return to civil rights. An end to para-military forces going into our cities to “run operations”. Facts, not fictions displayed as facts. A foreign policy that isn’t based on teenaged, “Call of Duty” heroics. A government that is concerned about more than just how the rich get richer. And a concern for the issues that are impacting us day to day, from gas prices to health insurance costs (another issue controlled by the wealthy, for the wealthy).
And a full view of a future America: multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-gendered and multi-cultural. The “Schoolhouse Rock” view of the American melting pot, a stew of differences, is what we are destined to be. The MAGA last ditch effort to “Save White America” is doomed.
The sooner we recognize that, the better.
