Politics – Page 2 – The Wallace Element

No More Room For Nice Guys

If you have read this blog before, you will notice I have changed the name from Reflective Thoughts to The Wallace element. The URL remains the same.I made the change because reflective implies calmness. I am not calm. I don’t think I will be calm for a long time.

I am mad as hell. Let me repeat that I am mad as hell. We just lost a beloved, marvelous and iconic Supreme Court Justice in Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a woman who was a giant on the Court. And only a couple of hours after that sad event, may she rest in peace after all of the amazing work she’s done, America’s own Nazi-esque president, Donald Trump, who doesn’t deserve to carry water for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was announcing that he will nominate a new Supreme Court justice within a week

Of course Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham were saying that we absolutely should fill her seat now, right now.

You may remember that when Justice Scalia died in February 2016, which was nine months before the election of 2016, Mitch McConnell announced proudly, and crowed about, his announcement, “Mr. President, you will not fill this vacancy.”

McConnell justified his misuse of his position by saying that it wasn’t proper to fill a vacancy in an election year, because the PEOPLE should have a voice. Well listen to what the old reprobate has to say now. Things are all different now because HIS man in the White House, Herr Trump, promises to nominate a very far right justice to replace Justice Ginsburg.

The delusional and fanatic hard right has already stolen two Supreme Court seats.

The first was given to Neil Gorsuch, and the second went to Brett Kavanaugh, a man with severe questions about his qualifications and his moral qualities making him unqualified and unfit for the post. Now they want to steal a third one.

But wait just wait a second here. Time out! This is an election year! According to the distinctly less than honorable McConnell himself, and Lindsey Graham, we are not supposed to select or appoint a new Supreme Court justice during an election year, because the PEOPLE have a right to have a say.

But surprise surprise, they tell us. The situation is all different now. Why? Lindsey Graham likes to say that “You were so mean to Brett Kavanaugh about his drinking and debt and questionable income and sexual assault history, that we think we should have the right to go ahead and place a new justice on the court. Since Democrats were mean to Brett Kavanaugh, so Republicans should get a gimme, a freebie. Mitch McConnell is at least a little bit more honest. He simply says right to your face that it’s different now because his man is in the White House.

I saw something posted on Facebook the other day that made an impression. This individual said, ” You liberals don’t get it. I didn’t want that seat vacated by Justice Scalia in 2016 to be filled because Barack Obama was a progressive and I’m hard core far right. But now we have a far right president who will nominate a far right individual I approve of to fill that seat, so I’m all for it.

He went on to say, and this is the important part, “What you liberals don’t understand is that it’s all about power. And we want that power. It’s just that simple.” Hi might as well have added that this is the reason the far right calls liberals snowflakes, because they on the right know the game and are ready to be ruthless, while those on the left don’t and aren’t.

You know what, he was right. `He was absolutely 100% correct. It’s about power. Whoever has the power wins, and the other poor sucker, that other dumb loser, plays by plays by the winner’s rules, however they wish to make them up.

One of the biggest mistakes the Democratic Party has made ever since 2016, is, again, simple. It’s civility. It is the kid gloves syndrome, the old fashioned and obsolete philosophy that we must follow certain protocols, that there are certain considerations and traditions and practices that are just the proper way to do things and always have been. Thus, the Democratic Congress remained polite and civil ever since McConnell’s outright theft of a Supreme Court seat. and have continued to do so since Donald Trump stole a crooked election. Oh sure, they have made some noise now and then As my grandfather would say, they’ve flapped their gums. But they have remained determined to take the high road, to do things the “right way.” They have almost exclusively played nice with Donald Trump, a man who is as corrupt as they come; A man who is a bigot, and a racist, a man who has been accused of sexual assault by over 20 women, a man who has been investigated almost constantly by law enforcement, a man who asked for and willingly accepted the help of a foreign nation, a man who makes fun of the disabled and doles out nasty nicknames for anyone who disagrees with him, a man who encourages white supremacists and Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan and promotes violence on their part, a man who uses the federal police in much the same fashion as Hitler used the Gestapo.

The result has been that for the last four years, actually five years if you count 2016, and you should,when for eight months, Mitch McConnell, who now insists it’s proper to install a new justice of his and Trump’s choosing less than two months before a new election, refused to even hold hearings for Merrick Garland; for the last five years the Republican Party has functioned essentially as a mob.

This mob has exactly one goal, and they make no bones about it: to gain complete power and stage coup of the American Republic, for the radical white supremacist and religious extremist minority of American citizens to rule over the majority.

What this mob wants is for far right religious extremism, which can only be compared to the Taliban and ISIS, to tell all of America what they must do and cannot do. What this mob wants is to enforce the bigotry of racism, the bigotry of sexism, the bigotry of persecution or even murder of anyone who is not of their preferred sexual orientation or the right skin color. What this mob wants is a drastic far right violent white nationalist control of America. I can’t say it any simpler than that. They have broken every rule every long-standing protocol of Constitutional procedure, that exists. Donald Trump himself has defied Congress time after time; he has taken the unprecedented step of telling White House employees to ignore and defy subpoenas. He has defied the Supreme Court itself. Mitch McConnell has railroaded an impeachment process that was a farce, refusing to even allow witnesses. He has functioned as a virtual dictator, a one man goverenment, and will continue to do so if he is allowed. This mob recognizes no right or wrong, only an unquenchable quest for absolute power. That is exactly like Nazism..

They cannot be allowed to succeed, or the American Democratic Republic is lost. It is reported that in 1787, as Benjamin Franklin was leaving Independence Hall on the final day of the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” to which Doctor Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

In the year 2020, a thoroughly corrupt, far right Republican mob the likes of which we have not seen since the Civil War, is on the cusp of taking that democratic Republic from us. We cannot, you cannot, the Democratic Congress cannot let that happen. It’s long past time for the Democrats in Congress to play hardball. If Trump is reelected and/or Republicans maintain their Senate majority, we are already lost. But if Democrats succeed in taking the Presidency and the Senate, they must be prepared to play this terribly serious game exactly as Republicans have taught them. The goal is to win, and the goal is to exercise the power. They must begin by restructuring the Supreme Court.

63 Days

It IS happening here, just as it happened in Germany when a supposedly intelligent and thoughtful populace sold their souls to Adolf Hitler.We have 63 days.

Note: This post is a day late. I wrote it on September 1, 2020

63 Days…September 1, 1939, Hitler started WWII by invading Poland. This was six years after Hitler took power, becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

We have a Nazi in the White House:…openly promoting white supremacy and theological government, and ruthless authoritarian rule……openly urging his supporters to act as Hitler’s brown-shirts, promoting their violence……openly promoting a rigged election guaranteeing his reelection, while shamelessly lying and accusing his opposition of exactly what he is doing…… openly defying the Constitution, the Congress, and the Supreme Court……openly destroying the American economy for all but the wealthy and the favored……openly destroying the environment for the benefit of the wealthy and those who pander to him……openly turning away from our allies of generations to join the ranks of Putin and other dictators……openly killing thousands upon thousands of Americans through incompetence and plain sociopathic cruelty……openly psychotic.

If this American monster gets a second term, those who vote for him and empower him will be among the first to say, in the aftermath, in the remnants, “But I didn’t know.” These people must never be allowed that excuse. They know exactly what they are doing.

America is facing its greatest crisis since the Civil War. The hate of racism and white supremacy, the dementia of blind nationalism, the greed of the wealthiest, and the minority who embrace twisted religious cultism, have come together in an assault on the Constitution and every good and positive and progressive quality that America is supposed to stand for. Nazis parade, armed and threatening, in our streets. White nationalists create mayhem and commit murder in the midst of peaceful protests. These low-life nation destroyers have the support of the very man who is supposed to speak for all of us, but aligns himself with only the most egregious few.

The greediest and wealthiest among us support this criminality and the destruction of our environment in order to increase their wealth, while half, or more, of working Americans cannot afford a house or even a decent apartment rental. While those working Americans go bankrupt trying to pay outrageous medical and pharmaceutical bills. Millions of Americans face the destruction of the Social Security and Medicare they depend on for their very lives.

All of these users and abusers are being encouraged, and led, by a man of such small mind, such evil intent and lack of any kind of morality, that he could qualify as the anti-Christ. This demon nourishes and empowers the demonic instincts, the pettiness, selfishness, blind hatred and violent criminal impulses of the smallest minds among us. The greater America, the sane and thoughtful American majority, must stand up at the ballot box and stop this segment—yes, they are deplorable with a capital D— and the psychotic gangster who both seduces and feeds off of them. Otherwise our democracy, and every decent quality our flag stands for, including our very freedom, will be ground into dust and blood before this is over.

It IS happening here, just as it happened in Germany when a supposedly intelligent and thoughtful populace sold their souls to Adolf Hitler. We have 63 days.

Yes, GONE WITH THE WIND Should be Shelved

I think GWTW is perhaps the greatest example of cinematic art in American film. Scripting, costuming, cinematography, scoring, grandness, emotional impact. I do not think you’ll find a purely American film that is better in the eighty-on years since its release. I understand the sad irony of having Hattie McDaniel’s wonderful performance shaded by any restricting of this movie. But I will add these bits of information about her award.

Loew’s Grand Theater on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia was selected by the studio as the site for the Friday, December 15, 1939 premiere of Gone with the Wind. Studio head David O. Selznick asked that McDaniel be permitted to attend, but MGM advised him not to, because of Georgia’s segregation laws. Clark Gable threatened to boycott the Atlanta premiere unless McDaniel were allowed to attend, but McDaniel convinced him to attend anyway.

McDaniel received a plaque-style Oscar, approximately 5.5 inches (14 cm) by 6 inches (15 cm), the type awarded to all Best Supporting Actors and Actresses at that time.[33] She and her escort were required to sit at a segregated table for two at the far wall of the room; her white agent, William Meiklejohn, sat at the same table. The hotel had a strict no-blacks policy, but allowed McDaniel in as a favor.[34][35] The discrimination continued after the award ceremony as well as her white costars went to a “no-blacks” club, where McDaniel was also denied entry.

I believe that in terms of racist impact, GWTW is—and always has been—more dangerous than D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation.” Griffith’s film so powerfully exhibits the hatred, destruction, and vileness of racism that it delivers to any intelligent audience the exact reverse of the message Griffith intended. GWTW, however, does just the opposite. It paints this romanticized picture of a lovely south and a mostly benign image of slavery that makes it easy for people to accept the “Slavery wasn’t all bad, slaves were happy and well cared for…” illusion. Though it vividly depicts the destruction of slavery and the old south, it does so with a nostalgic sadness. It does little, if anything at all, to address the reality of slavery, or the Jim Crow era that followed. I don’t think the film is going to disappear, in the same way as Disney’s “Song of the South” rightfully did. I believe it may have a prologue and perhaps even an epilogue attached and still be available for purchase. It will undoubtedly be seen on University campuses and in film schools. But the sad reality is that as individuals, and societies, grow and mature, some things that were beloved along the way must be examined under a bright light recognized as the negative reality they hid, instead of the romanticized fantasies they presented.

Does that word mean what you think it means?

Facebook post 06122020

There is a word, a pretty important word, that I think needs clarification. Even Donald Trump uses it, as a slam against the left, because it’s an accusation that the left regularly uses against the right. The word is bigotry, and both sides are correct in accusing the other side. But it’s deceptive. You see, when you look up bigotry, the simple definition of it as provided by Merriam-Webster is “obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices.”

So when you’re accusing somebody of being a bigot, you need to delve a little deeper and specify what kind of bigotry you’re talking about. What are the opinions and prejudices that you are accusing them of? Let’s do that.

The bigotry of the right is devotion to authoritarianism, racism, sexism, hatred of homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, and in short in a kind of sexual they don’t personally approve of. The bigotry of the right is support of white supremacy, and intolerance of anyone who does not believe religiously as they do.

The bigotry of the left, conversely, is rejection of all of the above. Or to put it another way, the bigotry of the right is based upon hatred and intolerance because of who you are, while that of the left is based on how the right behaves, and its refusal to acknowledge the basic universal and constitutional principle that all men, and women, are created equal.

The bigotry of the left insists on separation of church and state, and this is in line with the founding fathers. The bigotry on the right, meanwhile, insists on combining church and state, and is adamant that that their personal religion be the church of choice.

The bigotry of the left calls for the love of all people, while the bigotry of the right calls for the love only of those of whom they approve.

The bigots on the left believe that every citizen working a full-time job is entitled to a living wage, one that allows them to plan for retirement, affordable health care, and affordable higher education. The bigots on the right believe the exact opposite, as proven not by their words and protestations, but by their actions.

You see how this works, then. The question we’re dealing with, is not bigotry per se, but the principles and beliefs upon which each side’s bigotry is founded.

I hope I have provided some clarity. As for myself, I happily admit to being bigoted. And I will take the bigotry of the left over that of the right every second of every minute of every day.

An Open Letter to Joe Collins, Republican

Well, it happened again. l sat down with my first cup of coffee, opened my email, and there was a campaign slug from a Republican. This one is Joe Collins, and he’s running against Maxine Waters in California’s 43rd district in November. His salutation was “Friend”
My response to Joe is this open letter.

Joe,

Your campaign letter to me opened with “Friend,”

I’m not your friend, Joe. I never will be, and I do not want Maxine Waters gone. The Republican party has not been the friend of Americans since Eisenhower, the last great Republican. Today’s GOP is a sludge of greed and corruption. Don’t talk to me about tax breaks. Republican tax breaks go to the 1% and the wealthiest corporations. The $1200 given to each American in the recent stimulus bill was an insult, while the ultra-wealthy were favored, even to the point of allowing rich corporations to steal help intended for small businesses. Your Republican party today is a disgrace. It is the farthest thing from concerned about “average Americans.” It has become a sludge of corruption, racism, and the destruction of the middle class. Ike would be ashamed of what the Republican party has become, just as have the many prominent Republicans who have renounced the party of Trump and McConnell It is a party that has waged class warfare against the middle class begun by Nixon, supercharged by Reagan, and now reached the level of traitorous obscenity when working Americans have to have two incomes, two or three jobs, to survive, and then barely; a party that daily endeavors to twist and nullify the intent of the founding fathers for this to be an America where all men—and women, are equal; a country where LGBTQ people, those who dare to not be evangelistic cultists, and the entirety of the American working class that is denied decent wages while being charged exorbitantly for both housing and health care—are considered as nothing more than servants to corporations.

Your party is not the party of Lincoln. It never was. It is the party that opposed Lincoln. Check your history to find out how the two parties morphed in the decades after the Civil war. Today’s GOP was the Democratic party of Lincoln’s time, only worse. No, don’t call me friend. The Republican party has become an abomination.

You will never have my support, only my disgust. I was long an Independent, with progressive leanings and a tether rooted in cautions conservatism. The GOP has changed that. Your foundations in a conservative philosophy that can only be described as Medieval, your fealty to wealth above the common American, your hatred of everything—and anyone—not rooted in evangelistic ignorance, your disdain for the rights of women, and anyone who isn’t “straight,” your inability, or refusal, to face the fact that civilization either grows, changes, moves forward, and evolves, or perishes in a pool of their own ignorance and obstinance, is astounding.

No, Joe, I’m not your friend, and you are not the party of Lincoln. You the opposite. You are not the party of Eisenhower. You do not deserve to invoke either of those names. The GOP today is the party of regression, destruction, corruption and hate. You are the party of a particularly onerous fascism. You are the party of Trump, and you are the party of Hannibal Lector. Your leadership is rooted more in 1930’s Germany than in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.

Do not refer to me as “friend.” You don’t deserve either my friendship or my respect. We need a hundred more Maxine Waters in the House and the Senate, and a hundred fewer decayed Republicans.

And Trumpites Still Don’t Get it.

I’ll use this post to share a ‘breaking’ news story out of Washington.

The Trump administration’s ‘monstrous idea’: Direct payments in exchange for cuts to Social Security benefits

Of course, this is unconscionable. Ruinous. Corrupt to the tenth power. The Trump Administration—with the full complicity of the Republikkkan party— has sky-rocketed the national debt by giving trillions to big corporations, billionaires, and millionaires at the expense of ordinary working Americans. They are not only robbing the working class blind, they have been accelerating the process. Their whole philosophy is based on using working Americans as virtual slave labor. And now this?

What is truly incredible, is that he still has the support of the people he will damage most and perhaps destroy. They truly are so ignorant they do not understand that the Democratic party is the one fighting for their Social Security, Medicare, their very future.

And still, even while being vilified by these people, the Democratic party works tirelessly to help them, to maintain the very lifelines the people they support keep trying to destroy with equal furor.

Underneath those MAGA hats resides some of the most astounding levels of hate and stupidity you could ever hope to find. This has to be the most astounding example of biting the hand that is trying to help you I have ever witnessed. The Republikkkans and their chosen Fuhrer are trying to initiate a plan that might as well be poisonous snake in the mail boxes of all Americans receiving Social Security, and the intended victims are hoping they get theirs soon.

It’s time to face the fact that the madman in the White House is only the tip of the iceberg of insanity.

How Moderates are Killing America

. . .and the world

First, I spent most of my life as a moderate. That said, this country can no longer afford moderates, any more than it can conservatives. The problem with moderates—and again, I was one—is that they vacillate. They are incapable of forceful, decisive action, because they are always too ready to “see the other guy’s side.” We find ourselves in a world dying first from those who hate, covet, and destroy, and second from the strength afforded them by moderates who just want to see every side without making anybody uncomfortable. Moderation is fine if we’re talking about ice cream. I like chocolate, you like strawberry, no problem. Your teams are the Braves and the Rams, mine are the Cardinals and the Chiefs, we’re cool. But when we get to things like discriminating against people, denying their basic human and civil rights because “your” religion says it’s okay, we have a problem. Moderation is unacceptable. If “your” philosophy is based on “your” supremacy because of the color of your skin, moderation is out of the question. When 1%, or 3% of the country skates along on obscene wealth created for them by 97% of the country doing the real work while being denied a living wage in return, Moderation becomes obscene. The problem with ‘moderates’ is that they want to keep everybody happy and avoid conflict, and in the process tacitly approve and accept the worst abuses of the society, including the destruction of the very air we breathe, water we drink, land that supports us, and animal life we drive to extinction, through their unwillingness to address the issues in any meaningful way. They embolden the worst humans among us, their abuses and destructiveness, by simply keeping their mouth closed. “Unity” is a myth, unless the stakeholders—as in all of the people—are served, protected, and respected. “Unity” is the cry of the abusers, far too often and too consistently heralded by moderates, who mistakenly see “peace” and “unity” as the same thing. We now find ourselves in a near apocalyptic state environmentally, socially, and economically, largely because of decades of moderates siding with the destroyers and greedy by preaching “unity,” when what they really mean is “let’s just not have any trouble, ok?” Moderates will not serve or save the environment. Moderates will not stop the rise of white supremacy neo-Nazism. Moderates will not ensure the rights of all Americans in the face of “religious” bigotry and racism. Moderates will achieve none of these things because they do not have the strength. They don’t have the stomach for the fights we absolutely must now win. They are unable to face the reality of the fight that must be made, and so they preach peace, let’s not have any trouble here. And to them, that is unity. Their unity is acquiescence to the likes of Trump, McConnell, the 1%, the KKK and neo-Nazis, the insanity of the evangelical church, the greedy polluters who count their money while the world strangles. Moderates are the Neville Chamberlains of today. They see themselves as deal makers, the crafters of reasonable compromise. Check your history. “Reasonable compromise” has always been a sliding step into retreat. We can’t afford them. I’ll vote for Joe Biden, simply because absolutely anybody would be better than Trump. Biden at least doesn’t want to be King. But Joe’s “moderateness” is in reality more angled toward the right wing. He is not a centrist. He ideologically incapable of taking sufficient steps to save us from any of the nation-destroying forces we’re facing, and in terms of an environmental apocalypse, he is a disaster.

Poor Rush Limbaugh — Not

I see that now Limbaugh claims the coronavirus is a worldwide hoax, and that the “common cold” has been weaponized as a weapon against Donald Trump.

When I think of Limbaugh, I am reminded that in the days of outhouses, they always smelled like feces. The deep stink assailed you even before you opened the door. Rush Limbaugh is exactly like those old outhouses, and for the same reason.

Limbaugh has spent his entire professional life doing nothing but spew garbage for the sole purpose of lining his own pockets. He found a solid audience in a tiny percentage of Americans who are as morally and intellectually as miniscule as himself, and fed them a steady string of bile ranging from that which had little truth, to that which had none at all. He has insulted, maligned, and belittled countless of people—from military veterans to public servants to the elderly and the poor—with no goal other than that already mentioned.

The definition of fraud is one who commits “wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.” That definition could be Rush Limbaugh’s epitaph.

We seem to always try to find at least one or two nice things to say about someone who has died or been struck by a terrible disease like cancer. I actually tried to do that in Rush Limbaugh’s case. I came up empty. Rush Limbaugh was, among other things, one of the world’s most profound hypocrites. I refuse to be one.

Suck it up, Rush. You only have a bad chest cold. The whole lung cancer thing is just a hoax to attack people that don’t like Trump.

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. This ill wind, sadly, happens to millions of people a million times nicer and better than Rush Limbaugh.

Time for Bernie and Liz to come together

I’m going to keep this one short and very much to the point.

It’s time for a dual ticket.
It is time, I believe, for two Democratic candidates to come together and campaign as a president/Vice-President combination. Those candidates are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Liz and Bernie would need to reach an agreement with Bernie at the top of the ticket, I think, with Elizabeth primed to succeed him. I base this strictly on Bernie’s age.
Yeah, I know campaigning as a pre-set ticket ‘just isn’t done,’ but it’s time to change that. A fully-formed ticket would remove the Bernie vs Liz dilemma going into into primaries. I think that if they came together like this, a Sanders/Warren duo would set up a powerful vision of continuity for America. It would could unite the supporters of each, and the entire progressive movement. I don’t think Trump and his corrupt Republican party could stand against it.

Could it backfire? Possible. But here’s the thing. We have reached the point, in terms of a crumbling environment and insane level of wealth distribution that the only way we can save both the planet and our society is with aggressive, unified action. Any move toward centrism is doomed to be too little, to slow and too late.

While we celebrate Labor Day. . .

One of the great incongruities, and condemnations, of Christianity is that black Americans and white Americans both prayed to the same God, from the Civil War, through the Jim Crow era, which has ‘ended’ only in our imaginations right up to present day America, where that conundrum continues.
And while black Americans prayed and strove—almost always peacefully—right up to today, for the simple freedom of equality, white Americans have responded, and respond today, with guns and fires and explosives and other forms of violence. This has always been supported by the conservative church through means ranging from cowardly silence to active participation.
So much for the image of a ‘just’ God, and Godly “Christians.”
Wonder no more about why modern Americans increasingly turn away from this religion awash in its own hatred, bigotry and hypocrisy.
Here ends the sermon.

Labor Day And The Elaine Massacre Of 1919