Last updated on July 18th, 2012 at 08:14 pm
I have to talk candidly with my fellow Democratic Party members. After an extensive disputation with myself, I’ve opted for the tough love of treating the politically painful wound of republicanism without the anesthesia of the soft pedal.
In the aftermath of the November 6th general election, the republicans could keep or even add to their majority in the House of Representatives, acquire a cloture margin to still opposition in the Senate and install Mitt Romney in the White House. Yes, he lies – a lot. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell recently dedicated the entire 60 minutes of his show to Mitt’s BS. But Romney lies make no difference to republican voters whatsoever. Add to the GOP’s potential national dominance, the party’s gubernatorial and legislative margins in the states and the continued additions to their partisan judicial base and you’ve got an impenetrable political barrier.
If that happens, here is your life for the foreseeable future. Know one thing above all others. Once the republicans seize the kind of political power just described, they will not let go. Ever! Through continued control of the media (the implications of NBC taking full ownership of MSNBC will be my next contribution), huge campaign money, redistricting, Voter ID bills, voting machine mischief, the geography of polling places, numbers of machines, messing with early voting, vote counts and whatever other sordid logistics are required to deny the democratic vote, it will be a physical impossibility for democrats to participate in fair elections with republicans.
The republican power fetish, their hatred of all who differ from their tea party reflections in the mirror, the ease with which their uninformed minions are fooled by the power elite, their lust for guns, their slavish adherence to self-serving interpretations of the bible and serial cheating and lying will lock the doors of influence forever to the democratic party.
Here’s what you’ll get from post-2012 nouveau America. Everything will be based on profit and/or right-wing Christian theology. Health Care, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid even food stamps – all will be quickly flipped into profit-making ventures for favored corporations. All government services (except armed services) will be pared severely and agencies will disappear. Oil will see to it that the EPA is the first to go. Man-made climate change? Nonsense. Every regulation designed to head off the pending global warming catastrophe ripped to shreds. Financial regulations will meet the same fate. The Department of Education is history as well. Evolution? It’s the man upstairs buddy! Several other agencies should start packing.
There will be a skeletal quasi military federal government and the walls between church and state will crumble; “Mr. Romney, tear down this wall!”
Unions will die off completely as will living wages. Most families will rely on at least two of their number working at or near minimum wage levels for basic sustenance. The wealthiest corporations and individuals will become unimaginably rich, paying virtually no taxes. Roe v. Wade will be attacked with a vengeance. Abortions will be illegal in the U.S. Most likely even in the case of rape or incest. Birth control will be next. Brown-skinned immigrants will continue to be harassed while performing stoop-labor for giant corporate farms. Overseas wars will be a constant with the lower classes doing the fighting and dying for little more than enriching defense contractors sucking in billions in blood money. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.” Ike – 1961.
‘Justified’ Castle Doctrine killings will be the daily norm in your communities. The prime victims will be minorities. Gays will be among those whose casualties will rise dramatically and most will be forced back into the closet after being locked out of the American experience constitutionally.
Women will be (stay) second-class citizens to be used by males for work (mostly menial), sex on demand, child-rearing and cooking. The print and electronic media will be little more than political propaganda delivery systems and the latest on the Kardashians. Pretty much as they are today, only worse. True culture will be virtually non-existent with the feds and most states eliminating Arts funding. Schools will operate at different extremes. Exclusive and expensive private schools will be given an inordinately high percentage of public money (even church schools) and charge tuitions that only the wealthy can afford. Public schools will continue to see budgets slashed and teachers fired. Any critical thinking Liberal Arts curricula at the high school and/or college level will be wholly and totally discouraged by defunding classes that feature such an advanced intellectual concept.
How do I know this? Because in the republican-controlled house and the red state legislatures it’s largely what’s happening today – now! I’m only writing about the inevitable proliferations that are a certainty once republicans control the political process.
Now to assign blame for the potential extinction of the Democratic Party and by extension, America as we know it. Here are the people who allowed republican political paramountcy to take root. The radical tea party evangelicals of course and their billionaire exploitative sugar daddies. But, being radicals, hypnotized and incapable of listening to a liberal, this destructive segment of our society is beyond rational discourse or repair as are the billionaires, unless democrats are willing to act like republicans.
We’re not.
That leaves ideologically pure democrats as the prime enablers of this current crisis through not bothering to vote. On Election Day 2010, minorities and the 18-29 demographic barely showed up at all. Women voters favored republicans by 2% in 2010, while the ’08 count was a 14% margin for democrats.
Last June 5th, an incredible 38% of rank and file Wisconsin union members gave Wisconsin’s governor Scott Walker permission to continue to destroy unions and collective bargaining.
My peers, so-called ‘golden-agers’, do vote. I wish they wouldn’t. These low-information, naive oldsters have usually been the margin of victory for even the most radical of tea-stained, right-wing candidates. The year 2010 was no exception.
Reclaiming America is simplicity itself. The obscenely affluent could spend every last penny of their fatuous fortunes on republican ad buys and every one of their candidates could lose by double digits. How? By democrats staging the greatest civil rights action in history. A huge democratic march to the polls in November. Call it Occupy a Polling Place. There have to be numbers that can’t be overridden by messing with the software and innards of voting machines.
That is the challenge democrat minorities, youth, women, thoughtful independents, union members, aware seniors, the LGBT crowd and even the occasional white male.
Register and vote November 6th.
Updated: 9:00 AM to correct Indiana to Wisconsin re Governor Scott Walker
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