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What Would Nellis Say?

Save Our Democracy - September 2022

Save Our Democracy

 

Finally, after years of hypocrisy, lies, bigotry, hate, and armed insurrection spawned by a petty illiterate thug who conned his way into the presidency, a real statesman stood up to explain the threat the radical right poses to the survival of our democracy.

 

For centuries, our opposing parties have fought and squabbled over policy differences but, for the most part, they found ways to compromise for the good of the country. Since the advent of the obstructionist Tea Party in 2010, negotiation has given way to confrontation and defiance, where anything proposed by the opposition is a cause to be challenged and defiled. Very few bipartisan bills have passed through Congress in the years since Dark Money began financing the radical right’s conquest of the Republican Party. 

 

A tiny violent vocal base repulses moderation in party primaries backed by deceptive hateful advertising campaigns paid for by corporate and privately funded national PAC’s. Those fanatical patrons have no interest in governing but invest with the singular goal of obtaining and asserting absolute political and economic power to eliminate taxes and governmental regulations that impede their accumulation of vast wealth. Democracy be damned, autocracy is the ultimate objective!

 

The menacing turmoil rumbling just beneath the surface of American society is the manifestation of that relentless propaganda campaign to entice ignorant white-nationalist audiences to believe that they are the victims of oppression or injustice inflicted by “everyone who isn’t like us.”

 

That message is disseminated through coordinated and diverse media networks where no lie is too brash, no insult too sleazy, no personal attack against a convenient enemy too shameful to groom their audience to accept the narrative of “our people” being assaulted by any fitting “them”.

 

Hate is an easy sell and a relentless flurry of carefully constructed fabrications grant permission for their “oppressed” community to hate a common enemy together. As we have seen, from there it is a small step to confrontation and armed intimidation.

 

Many red states have loosened or eliminated laws controlling the use or possession of firearms with few restrictions on minimum age, requirements for licensing, and constraints on openly carrying a weapon of war. Republican elected officials in Congress brandish firearms on television ads, threaten their colleagues, and advocate violence to rally extremists to insurrection in a desperate battle to maintain power.

 

53% of Trump voters anticipate an armed civil war and more than 40% would support it. The attempted kidnapping and assassination of Michigan’s governor and the invasion of our Capitol by armed militia leading mobs of fanatics hoping to lynch the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House are just a warmup for coming confrontations.

 

Election deniers are running for governor, secretary of state, and legislative seats in countless states with the intention of preventing opposition voting, dismissing ballots, and overturning elections that don’t provide success for radical Republican candidates. 

 

 “Observers” are being dispatched to minority polling places to intimidate voters and, in Florida, a special “election police” unit has been arresting former felons “suspected” of voting without court permission, although the election commission granted all of them voter registration certificates. It seems all of those charges will be dismissed but institutional terrorism scares voters away from the polls, which is the purpose of their national campaign to diminish or extinguish minority voting rights.

 

Trump said, “Stand back and stand by”, so after the attack on the Capitol, the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and their brethren militias await permission to begin killing anyone who opposes their goal of installing white supremacy rule.

 

The fascist powers that control what used to be the Republican Party have no use for democracy, majority rule, the Constitution, or the good of the country. Their singular goal is taking and maintaining control of our government.

 

There is nothing to stop them from succeeding, except your dedication to protecting our grand experiment by speaking out, organizing, and voting to prevent these monsters from destroying the things we treasure most. Only you can end American fascism.

 #Elections #Propaganda #Fascism #Revisionist History

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