Once again, I am compelled to share a piece by Chauncey DeVega in Salon because the man is brilliant! I have said it many times in previous posts, and it seems he unfailingly reaffirms my high opinion of him with each new article. I swear he pulls thoughts right out of my head, but he is much more eloquent in his delivery, while I allow my id to write for me.
And once again, I am forced to quote from his article, “Don’t be fooled: The GOP love affair with Putin is worse than it looks,” at length because so much he says is absolutely spot-on. He writes, “Never mind the opinion polls and the Republican posturing. When the right sees Putin, they want what he’s got. … America is a pathocracy. The masses take their cues from corrupted elites. Malignant normality is the new normal. Political deviance has been normalized. The Age of Trump constantly offers further proof that a sick and broken society can accept just about anything, no matter how surreal and grotesque. Fascism thrives in such societies. But the poison could not have spread so quickly if the soil and foundations were not toxic to begin with. … The American people and the world should also not be seduced by superficial public opinion polls that purport to show that Republican voters are now vigorously anti-Putin and do not support his war against Ukraine. Today’s Republican voters and other Trumpists are part of a political cult. They follow, uncritically, whatever directives and various signals are sent to them by Donald Trump, Fox News, the white right-wing evangelical churches and the larger right-wing echo chamber. Public opinion polls taken before the invasion of Ukraine show that Republicans view Vladimir Putin as a better leader than Joe Biden. … Putin is an authoritarian and a demagogue. He is anti-human, anti-freedom and anti-democracy. He stands against the future and human progress and pluralism. To many of his admirers in America and the West, he is a leader of ‘White Christianity.’ Putin has persecuted and imperiled the LGBTQ community, and is hostile to women’s rights and women’s equality. He kills and imprisons journalists, and is doing his best to silence free speech. … The American people have been repeatedly warned about the dangers represented by the Republican fascists and the Trump movement. The past is prologue — but it does not have to be. The American people can choose to learn the lessons of the past about how democracies succumb to fascism and authoritarianism and act accordingly, or they can continue to insist, against all available evidence, that such evils only bloom elsewhere and cannot possibly happen here. But democracy must be an active choice. Indifference and passivity are sure to destroy it. What choice will the American people make?”
Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! He says it all, so I will not comment, except to answer his closing question: What choice will the American people make? Probably not all that surprising to some, I think America will, naturally, make all the wrong choices because Americans are just too f***ing G.D. stupid. I think we are too far down the road to losing our democracy for countless reasons I’ve laid out in other posts. Still, in a nutshell, the RepubliKKKlan Party has won the trifecta: Super-majority on SCOTUS, RepubliKKKlan control in most state legislatures, and redistricting. Thus, RepubliKKKlans have the means through state legislatures to write laws that suppress voters (and citizens more generally) and create RepubliKKKlan controlled districts that give them permanent political control, with all their machinations protected by SCOTUS. Once they take over the U.S. Congress and the White House, then the end of American democracy will be sealed, replaced with a mixture of autocracy and theocracy. And no one will care because I live in stupid hell! Mark my words! Welcome to stupid America! Remember: Biden is the intermission to the end.