Resist

How do fascists get a foot in the door of your nice country? The United States of America, for example? Here is the key:

No one knows better than conservatives, in the U.S. our Republican party, how to stir up this hatred, and use it to their advantage. Our very own fascists, ready to hand over our country to wealthy, even foreign, interests for personal gain.

Everything Republicans say and do is projection and deception. Believe nothing. Trust not one of them. The only way they can win is to lie, cheat and steal.

They’ve had years to plot and plan. Decades. They tried to assassinate  FDR. They aligned themselves with Nazis in WWII. They tried to stop Medicare by calling it socialized medicine, a “Red Menace” that will destroy our country. They lied us into war after war, economic disaster after economic disaster. They have effectively neutered our media, our Fourth Estate that keeps them in check, that caught Watergate and investigated other scandals, that now focused solely on a woman’s emails instead of Russian hacking and illegal influence in our nation’s affairs.

They worked for 30 years to discredit Hillary Clinton, then deliberately sabotaged our election and her candidacy to keep her from winning the 2016 presidency.

They did this by gutting the Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering, engaging in voter suppression, then getting FBI director and stooge James Comey to drop a meaningless letter that inspired salacious headlines again Hillary just before election day.

And still she won the popular vote by an astonishing margin.

They have desecrated democracy in the process of picking our pockets to line their own.

Instead of  fighting racism and misogyny, they have fanned the flames of both with carefully crafted lies and propaganda designed to appeal to willfully ignorant poor white men.

And these poor white men, from the highest to the lowest, have applauded this. Along with their white women counterparts who seem to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, they are indeed poor in spirit.

These poor whites cheer on fascist looting that satisfies their yearning for certitude that they are the chosen ones, confirmation that they are the superior ones.

They are small in number, but easily provoked. Mindless. They operate on emotion. Thrive on disinformation. Easily manipulated. Attack dogs.

Now, thanks to the GOP’s dirty tricks and flying monkeys, we’ve got a president-elect who knows nothing about government. He is a malignant narcissist, a colossal buffoon, so self-absorbed nothing or no one outside himself is real or has meaning.

His electoral college votes are much smaller than President Obama’s.

But he is the perfect stooge for Republicans who have achieved a dangerous majority in Washington and are preparing to gut our social safety net and take all our money for themselves, and a useful idiot for Russians who want to dismantle NATO, peace, and democracy for world domination.

This is not a movie plot. This is really happening. To us. All of us.

This president-elect rabidly tweets his dog-whistle every morning and the poor whites fly into action on his behalf while the fascists laugh. Don’t feel sorry for them.

Resist.

Save

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Money is not speech

No, really. Money is not speech. Look it up.

Also, too, spending is not speaking.

Our American Fascists are at it again. Hyperbole? I wish.

Here are the 14 Points of Fascism. Click on the link and read the entire page. It won’t take long. Here is a very brief summary, with number 9’s text in full, relating to money and speech:

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.

5. Rampant sexism.

6. A controlled mass media.

7. Obsession with national security.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.

9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment. 

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. 

14. Fraudulent elections.

Any of this look familiar?

 

 

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The Fourth Horseman

Yes, Margaret Thatcher did achieve a level of  power not known to many women before her. This was her greatest accomplishment.

But she must have sold her soul for it, as so many men before her have done. As did her partner in crime, U.S. president Ronald Reagan. Apparently, they both took meetings with Mephistopheles, Inc., corporate genius.

Thus was born right-wing authoritarian conservatism, which has evolved in the United States into today’s tea party.

It was a dizzying whirl of privatization of public services, de-nationalization of financial entities, pre-emptive and illegal wars, tax cuts for the wealthy with tax increases on the working class to make up for some of the loss of revenue, union busting and general anti-labor policies, corporate takeover of media, exploiting workers, demonizing the poor, seniors, disabled, veterans, women and children, and generally taking us back to a feudal system run by an elite few with money and power.

And now the great experiment of corporate rule is over. It is a failure.

It was about greed, selfishness, and unchecked power.

And Thatcher did that to England, and the world.

And I wonder if she really knew the consequences, or did she say, “Damn the consequences, I’ve got what I want, screw everyone else”?

Will we ever recover from the damage the Reagan-Thatcher duo did to the world? How many millions have died, suffered, and/or lost all they had to the insatiable lust for money and power these two unleashed, an event of biblical proportions.

Someone, I don’t remember who, said Thatcher was the Fourth Horseman. That is the most apt description of her I have seen. When Death arrives, riding a pale horse, she brings the apocalypse with her.

The world we live in today was formed by Thatcherism and Reaganomics. We’ve lost our way as a country, we’ve lost sight of each other. We’re hostages to corporate greed which celebrates profits at the expense of people.

Maggie Thatcher was the first female Prime Minister of England, a very important milestone for women. Sadly, we must also remember that women have the same capacity for evil that men do.

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Obamacare Can Help

Most real conservatives left the Republican Party 20 years ago. They gradually took over the Democratic Party, and today’s centrist Dems are actually Eisenhower Republicans. Progressive Democrats are still a part of the party. There is room for both in the DNC.

What’s left in the GOP is primitive creatures dwelling in the right-wing fever swamp.

This primitive right-winger lives in a closed information system, which is impermeable to unwanted facts, evidence and information. They created an alternate reality out of ignorance, prejudices, fears and hatred, and reinforced it with rightwing blogs, newspapers, television and talk radio spreading disinformation and lies around the clock.

Never having actually read the Constitution, and with no knowledge of world history, they made up what sounded good to them, and called it, “America.” It has dinosaurs as Jesus ponies, slavery, misogyny, racism, homophobia, theocracy, biblical law, war, pestilence and famine, all based on their hatred, prejudices and fears.

And now the RW is actually shocked, shocked that the majority of Americans do not live in that same wasteland, nor believe the same lies. Well, we tried their way, and it nearly destroyed the country. Now the grownups are fixing the problem.

These poor creatures refuse to leave their bubble, blaming their massive losses on everything but their inability to face reality. It’s to be expected. The real world is just too painful for them. They would rather believe lies that fit their innate prejudices than do the work it takes to live in reality. They are lazy intellectually, spiritually and physically, they are morally bankrupt, uneducated, bullying, willfully ignorant, vindictive and vengeful. Thankfully their numbers are small, and dwindling.

Telling the same lies over and over again in the face of facts indicates mental illness. The good news is Obamacare can help them with that.

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