A declaration of war

Whether you realize it or not, the Republican Party has declared war on 99 percent of the American

people. In doing so, it has made it clear that the only people in the United States who count for anything are the one percent. The question now is whether those of us with any sense of decency and conscience can fight back; and, if so, how.

Let’s start by trying, briefly, to understand what has happened to get us to this miserable juncture in our nation’s civic life. First, in the 1950s we had the birth of the religious right, just without that label. The movement used the “godless communist” threat to add the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Second, in the 1960s and 1970s, we saw the beginning of America’s dumbing down. The hippie movement was a resistance to the attempts to kill off critical thinking, but thanks to the propaganda efforts of the Republican Party and the Nixon administration, American students devolved into regurgitators of facts without the ability to use that information productively. Third, the 1980s saw the Republican takeover with the Reagan administration playing the “greed is good” card, undoing the progress from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Concurrently, propagandists extraordinaire like Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh and other hate mongers began the systematic attack on the media. In doing so, they stimulated the pent-up fear and perceived threats of a diverse society in that generation of those whose critical thinking skills had been destroyed.

 The last quarter century saw the poisoned seeds of the right wing and Republican Party bear fruit. The successful propaganda distracted oh-so-righteous Christians and those with some secular sanity left using hot button issues — birth control, abortion, gay marriage. Sex sells, right? Meanwhile, corporations like Diebold and others have suborned our voting machines. The feds militarized local police forces. Corporatists took over government at all levels and lawmakers are now wined, dined and owned while immunizing themselves against accountability.

Now, with the pending inauguration of an insane, narcissistic, lying, sociopathic (if not psychopathic) authoritarian with a record of business failures, we face an uncertain, if not dystopian, future. At this point, we face the possible outcome of an election that has seen a popular vote mandate be overturned by the Electoral College. But, the Founders wrote the Constitution in such a way as to protect us from this kind of crazy. The electors can, in fact, rightfully abort Donald Trump’s faux victory; and, they have the obligation to do so to protect our republic from the depravity of the current incarnation of the GOP. Instead of calling them “faithless” electors, we should call them “faithful” electors for upholding the true values of the Founders of these United States.

From now until the Electoral College meets, I will do everything in my power to use my words and what little resources I have to bring sanity back to our great nation. I will contact members of Congress, for what it’s worth. I will continue to blog to counter the propaganda from the right wing. I will use my blogs to embarrass, as best I can, those politicians who are betraying decent Americans to foster a corporate and dystopian America. I will explore ways to get to the electors to convince them that a Trump presidency is a massive fraud. Please join me in that effort. Write local newspapers, contact politicians. Do whatever you can. Please join me in this effort.