Saturday, May 25, 2024

Gilead


It's been a minute. I hope that all of you field hands are doing well and thriving while doing your best to survive in this moment that we are living in.  These are crazy times.  America, as we have come to know her, is no more.  And that my friends, is not hyperbole. 

Personally, I have never believed that this is such a perfect union, and I have always suspected that the American experiment is flawed. But I always hoped that the American people were so proud of their country and the idea of its ideals, that they would not allow dark and sinister forces to hijack the perception of the world's greatest democracy. My hope is fading. Amend that. It has faded.  I didn't see America becoming the Republic of Gilead from the Handmaid's Tale.

What really brought it home to me was the knowledge that a Justice on the Supreme Court of America was willing to openly declare that he is a Christofascist who endorsed the actions of the January 6th insurrectionists. Now I am not naive enough to believe that judges aren't political, they all are. They are appointed by presidents who check their political loyalties before selecting them. But in the past they would at least pretend to be impartial and do their best to follow the law, even if they would twist it to suit their own political ideology.  No more. The actions of Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas should scare us all. We should have seen this coming when Alito gave his bitter, resentful, and grievance filled speech to the Federalist Society in November of 2020.  As one writer put it: " Alito's speech is marked by the sense of bitter resentment and grievance of white Christian men that runs through the whole Trumpist fascist movement."  Now, emboldened by the actions of Trump and his allies, the push for a Christofascist takeover is in full effect. Roe v. Wade was just a start. The legislature in Louisiana, for instance, just passed a bill to make abortion pills a controlled substance. Let that sink in for a minute. Soon, there will be laws banning the teachings of certain things in schools and  pushing a far-right version of Christianity down the throats of school children. Wait.. they are already doing that. I see you Texas and Florida. 

There will be more to come.  America will keep going deeper down this right-wing rabbit hole, and when we realize what we have become it will be too late. We will be living out a dystopian Handmaid's Tale, and only mega church preachers and white nationalists will be happy. It's almost here. Google Project 2025 when you get a chance, and make yourself a stiff drink before you read it, you will need one. America will need a  dictatorship style form of government and leader in order to make the new Christian white nationalist nation a reality.  And here is the shocker: almost fifty percent of the voters seem to be cool with that.   

It's scary to think that the only thing standing in the way of all this happening is a shaky 81 year old man with a woman of color on his ticket. (Nothing against Kamala, but no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room: the thought that Uncle Joe could  check out at any minute and  his successor would be a...gasp! Black woman.) Throw in the fact that I have zero confidence in the DNC and their so called campaign experts, and you see where this is going.  Project 2025 could well become a reality. 

The perfect storm is brewing.  Pack your rain gear and batten down the hatches. We are in for a rough ride. 

Wednesday, May 01, 2024

Cricket deserved better.




Every now and then a member of the MAGA crowd shows you who they really are. Take the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, for instance. It recently came to light, by way of her hastily penned book, that she murdered her family puppy, Cricket.  She did it because she could not control its behavior, and in her own words, she "hated" the dog. 

I am sure she thought that this revelation would bring her closer to the rest of her MAGA friends and put her in the driver's seat to be Donald Trump's VP pick, but it backfired. She has been living in a MAGA bubble where being cruel to poor and underrepresented people was fashionable, so she thought that this mentality would translate to animals as well.   

Sadly for her, and her political career,  her calculation was way off. She forgot how much American's love their pets, especially their dogs. (I could have told her. I wrote about this very thing years ago.) Now,  Americans are united in their outrage at her actions. I mean seriously, who murders a puppy?! She tried to rationalize away her actions by saying that she lived on a farm, and that farmers have to make  tough choices between life and death when it comes to their animals. But no one is buying it. We are talking about a puppy for crying out loud. The thing is, the man she has been auditioning for would have probably done the same thing. Cruelty to animals is a known trait of sociopaths. Donald Trump hates dogs, and Kristi Noem knows that.  This little blurb from her book was to  him and the rest of the MAGA base. These folks, after all, believe that cruelty is sexy. The cruelty is the point with them. 

This, though, was a bridge too far. And Noem knows it. Her political career is over. If Trump wins he might reward her with a  position in his cabinet, but that's the best she can hope for. 

Americans will forgive her cheating on her husband with a known scumbag, but not killing a puppy.  

RIP Cricket.