Week of 02/28/2022

Justice And Tyranny
– by David Matthews 2

There are two historical events that happened the week previous to this article that really have captured America. And, as much as I wish I could keep them separate, they really have connections thanks to a certain political faction that embraces fascism and surrounds itself around a corrupt and malignant narcissist.  And if you think I was referring to the Democrats or Joe Biden as the faction in question, then not only are you wrong, but you are also part of the problem.

The first is something that affects the world.  Russian dictator Vlad Putin followed through with his much-feared invasion of the Ukraine.  This wasn’t a surprise to anyone with a functioning brain who doesn’t watch Fox News or any of the other fascist-leaning propagandist media.  You don’t build up military forces at a border to an obscene level if you don’t plan on using them.  We did that during the Gulf War.  Nobody in their right mind would look at the buildup of troops in Saudi Arabia and think we would just go home and let Iraq keep Kuwait.  The only person who didn’t was Saddam Hussein.

Speaking Saddam Hussein, one of Vlad’s many excuses for invading the Ukraine was that it’s supposedly part of some ancient Russian territory is ripped right out of Saddam’s fraudulent claim that Kuwait was originally part of some larger Iraq territory.  If Saddam were still alive, I’m sure he’d be suing Vlad for plagiarism.  Thankfully he’s not alive.  But the idea itself is as absurd as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sending the national guard to invade Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania because once upon a time the Massachusetts Bay Colony once claimed those lands as theirs. 

Times change.  Borders change.  I’m sure the Turks would love to get back their old Ottoman Empire lands, or the Italians all of their territory lost from the Roman Empire, or the British Empire getting the East Coast of America back, or the indigenous tribes getting all their parts of America back.

The rest of the world, including the United States, is doing everything they can to punish Russia for this invasion without going to war.  As of this article, we are only days into the invasion and of the sanctions imposed in response.  There are plenty of sanctions still being considered and how badly all this hurts Russia in general and Putin specifically has yet to be determined.

What disgusts this commentator are all the politicians and media personalities from the political faction of hate and hypocrisy and narcissist cultism and nationalism and fascism – the ones that still identify themselves as “conservatives” and/or “Republicans” in the same way as pop stars identify themselves as “they/them” – that have spent the past few years embracing Russia, condemning the Ukraine, and said that the talk of invasion was “nonsense” or a “distraction”, and are now either validating Putin’s barbaric aggression or claiming that President Joe Biden wasn’t doing “enough” and this was all somehow his fault.  Then again, they blame Biden for just about every cloudy day in the sky, especially when there are no clouds.

Their narcissist messiah has even gone so far as to claim that the invasion wouldn’t have happened if he was still in the White House.  This is the same malignant loser man-child that was first impeached for blackmailing Ukraine over promised military funding in exchange for supposed “dirt” on Biden’s son.  The same orange turncoat who sucked up to Putin like a two-dollar prostitute and threw his own intelligence people under the bus with the whole world watching.  Like hell it “wouldn’t have happened” under the watch of Putin’s “useful idiot”.

The other historical event was President Biden’s choice to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the United States Supreme Court.  On February 25^th, Biden stayed true to his campaign promise and nominated the first black woman to the vacating seat.  He also stayed true to his earlier promise to nominate someone by the end of February.  Federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has another first under her belt.  She is the first nominee since the late Justice Thurgood Marshal to not be a corporate attorney or prosecutor, but a defense attorney. 

It won’t really change anything other than that particular distinction.  She’ll still be part of a faction that is outnumbered 2-to-1 by a gaggle of Federalist Society drones.  It just prevents the highest court from going from a 6-to-3 majority to a 7-to-2 supermajority.

If, that is, she gets confirmed by the United States Senate.

And therein lies the problem.

Yes, the Democrats have – on paper – a 50-plus-Veep advantage.  They technically have a majority in the Senate.  But the other 50 are of the Party of Fascism and the Cult of the Narcissist.  The same party of hate and hypocrisy that deliberately and maliciously held one Supreme Court seat vacant for one presidential election year and then rammed through another just weeks before another presidential election.  The same party with a history of shutting down the federal government multiple times for the flimsiest of reasons.

Don’t think for a moment that Senate Minority Leader Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell won’t do everything in his power to stop this nomination from being confirmed.  He was already hating the nomination a month before it was even announced.  And while he cannot filibuster a Supreme Court confirmation he already has forty-nine members of the Party of Fascism plus two Democrats in his back pocket that can tie it up indefinitely.  This is, after all, the party that firmly believes that *only they* can choose who sits on the Supreme Court. 

Yes, Judge Brown Jackson did survive Senate confirmations before, and did so with bipartisan approval.  But that was then, and it wasn’t for the highest court in the land.  Let’s not also forget that she has previously said that “presidents are not kings” when it came to that certain orange-faced narcissist, which puts a political bullseye on her back from the cult-party of said narcissist who seemingly believes himself to be a king in perpetuity.

Some in the party of fascism have even whined about President Biden’s nomination announcement coming while the invasion of the Ukraine is going on, like the affairs of the nation should come to a grinding halt for something that the party of fascism had previously claimed was just hysteria.

Let’s get brutally honest here... the nomination of Judge Brown Jackson to the highest court should not be treated as a fait accompli, nor should her confirmation be considered assured.  The Democrats and President Biden will have to fight and fight hard for her confirmation.  They will have to go to political war for her.  They are facing a party of hate and fascism that will do everything they can to get their way.  A party that sides with authoritarian Russia over a democracy like the Ukraine and sees nothing wrong with tanks and bombs and mass casualties and human atrocities.  After all, fascists love conflict and war and bullying.

This commentator condemns the actions of the Russian leader.  His actions are neither “great” or “smart”.  They’re not even original.  They are the actions of a thug, just like the late Saddam Hussein.  Likewise, while I would hope that Judge Brown Jackson gets confirmed, I also know that the same party that supports the Russian leader’s unlawful invasion would do everything they can to prevent that from happening.  Because that’s what thugs do.

Week of 02/21/2022

One-Party Control Is Still One-Party Rule
– by David Matthews 2

The word “fascism” is something that gets bantered about a lot, and, in some instances, it is overused simply to object to a government rule or law that certain people don’t like.  For instance, the anti-mask and anti-vaccination crown call mask mandates and vaccination requirements to be “fascist” simply because they hate them and don’t want to follow them.  This is the same political crowd that called the whole desegregation bussing program of the 1940’s to the 2000’s to be “fascist” because they didn’t want their precious tax deductions going to different schools with “those people” in them.  On the other hand, when police are called in to break up a disruptive protest, liberals will call the police “fascists”.

But when we’re talking about fascism as a government or a political policy, there are several key qualifiers that define that kind of governing.  Qualifiers that were spelled out when fascism ruled Italy a century ago by the party and the strongman that actually wrote them, and by Germany a decade after them to an even greater and more horrific degree.

The first are easy.  A strong sense of nationalism and/or race.  A cult-of-personality leader.  An aggressive and confrontational might-makes-right mindset.  A strong hatred of communism; or socialism since that faction considers both interchangeable.  And an enemy to focus the cult’s hatred on.

It’s the last part that has been the hardest to achieve: one-party rule. 

People who decree that fascism “can’t happen here” when it comes to America will always point to the two-party duopoly that has controlled American politics basically since the Civil War.  As long as there are two parties, we are told, there can never be fascism.  Voters can simply vote for the other party.

But what if they can’t?

For four years, America was under the grip of a malignant narcissist with a strong cult following and a party of enablers who gave him whatever he wanted in most instances.  A bigoted, sexist, hypocritical leader that had either a dislike or outright hatred of certain groups to the point of encouraging violent actions.  A thug who repeatedly declared all journalists “the enemy of the people”.  A failed businessman with multiple bankruptcies who demanded that corporations address his whims, like changing lightbulbs because they supposedly make his face look orange; and toilets because – as we quite recently reportedly learned – it takes 10-15 flushes to dispose of the documents he wanted destroyed.  Let’s not forget his demand that NFL owners ban football players from kneeling as a form of peaceful protest.

But, that all ended in 2020, when the voters voted the narcissist out of office, right?  He was voted out and the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress in the span of two months.  Democracy worked and the people have spoken.  Right?

For now.  And thankfully it was because an attempted coup by said narcissist and his cult followers had failed.

But ever since that election, state legislators of that political cult have been busy rewriting the rules for voting.  They’ve been eliminating the various ways people voted in the last election, making it harder for people to absentee vote, and even giving themselves the power to override regional voting officials.  Cult followers in Arizona even tried to give themselves the power to negate the will of the voters completely.  In other words, you try to vote them out and they negate your vote.

Then we have tried-and-true weapon of political control, gerrymandering.  This is not new, both dominant parties are guilty of doing this, but, combined with the political cult’s push to change voting laws as described, their use of gerrymandering means that you would not be able to vote that party out at all.  Your vote would be moved to a district where you would be in the clear minority, and that party would stay in power in perpetuity.

How is that not one-party rule?

Then we have the federal level, and here we have that same cultish party with a documented history of denying judges, preventing legislation from being passed, and literally shutting down the federal government over budgets and taxes.  And maybe you could say that it is just a matter of partisan gamesmanship, because that cultish party would be in the majority in Congress and they’re fighting with the executive branch with the “other” party in office, and that was true a decade ago.  But we’re talking about today, after the narcissist cult leader was voted out of office and his party of enablers are in the minority, and they are still doing everything they can to deny the current president legislation, to fill cabinet and regulatory agency appointments, and possibly even deny a spot on the Supreme Court; just like they did to the administration before the narcissist’s, and before rushing through three justices of the narcissist’s choosing.

When you have a political party that firmly believes that only they can choose judges, that only they can get legislation passed, that only they can decide who gets appointed to administrative positions, that only they can decide how taxes are assessed and funding is spent, that only they can decide whose should be “allowed” to vote and whether or not that vote counts, and that this is all regardless of whether they are in the majority, then you have one-party control, and a de facto state of one party rule.

And now the last definition of fascism is complete.

Let’s get brutally honest here... the party of the narcissist, the party of nationalism, the party of hate, the party that still erroneously identify themselves as “Republicans”, is also the party of fascism.  That has been demonstrated by their words and by their actions.  They are no different than the fascists that ran roughshod through Italy a century ago, with the only difference being the fascists of Italy were honest about themselves.

Yes, the word “fascist” has been overused in the past, but that does not mean it should not be mentioned when it is actually happening.  The group that calls themselves “Republicans” or even “conservatives” have taken up the banner of fascism and pretending to be “patriots” or “defenders of freedom”.  To that end they profane their predecessors here in America and make a mockery of their predecessors in Italy.

Week of 02/14/2022

 

Never Count Out The Party Of Narcissist Trump Until It Really Is Done
– by David Matthews 2

In the world of comics, Lex Luthor always gets away with his criminal activities.  He can destroy half of Metropolis in his hate-filled bigoted quest to kill Superman and also rule the world, and even though everything can be traced directly to him, he still finds a way to get away with it.  He has lawyers with manufactured “evidence” and “confessions” saying it was some previously-fired janitor who did it all before conveniently committing suicide.  Then he smiles in front of the cameras and offers to rebuild the destroyed parts of Metropolis, which makes him even richer, and the people love him for it.

Sadly, the rich and powerful get away with pretty much everything in the real world, even murder.  The same applies to powerful groups, like corporations and political parties.

For years I’ve heard how Narcissist Donald John Trump is “done” after some sort of scandal comes out.  We saw this with the audio tape of him talking about how he “pounces” on women.  People stupidly thought that it would be “the end” of the narcissist.  But it wasn’t.  Multiple affairs?  A supposed “blackmail tape”?  The creepy things he says about his own daughter?  None of that stopped the narcissist or his cult followers.  He still became president.

The threat of impeachment meant nothing to the narcissist or to his followers and enablers.  Hell, he was impeached twice, including for an act of inciting insurrection, and it didn’t stop him.  He got away with it and his cult followers and enablers were even more emboldened.

So now, with the narcissist out of power, we are hearing people talking about “the end” of the Trump Party, which still identify themselves as “Republicans” in the same way as pop stars identify themselves as “they/them”.  We are hearing over and over again how the Trump Party is “committing suicide” and are “on the verge of civil war” between the narcissist’s followers and those enablers that still see themselves as the “old guard” of the party. 

The narcissist is picking fights with anyone who does not march in lockstep with him, calling out anyone in his party who thinks that the January 6^th insurrection was an act of domestic terrorism (it was), or believes that then-Vice President Mike Pence did not have the power to overturn the 2020 Election (he didn’t).  And if they’re up for re-election, then the narcissist is backing anyone that will replace them that will tow his line.

So now we have people getting on cable news channels or getting on progressive talk radio or publishing columns in the newspapers proclaiming that the so-called “GOP” is either “dead” or “dying” or “killing themselves” or is “tearing itself apart from within” over the narcissist.  They’re planning for a political wake that they believe is a certainty.

Don’t buy into it.

Don’t believe even for a moment that either the narcissist or his party are somehow “doomed” simply because of these ego-centered squabbles.

We’ve been here before almost a hundred years ago.  Germany’s notorious “nationalistic” party had an ego-centered leader who was also plagued with scandals, including an alleged relationship with a relative who then killed herself.  There were disagreements between the ego-centered leader and some of his enablers as well.  And everyone believed then that it was “over” for both that leader and his party.  It wasn’t.  They buried the scandal and purged the contrarians.  They were disgraced, dismissed, and even executed.  And then they moved on to do even worse things after solidifying their power.

The same applies to the inheritors of that notorious party here in America.

Let’s get brutally honest here... nobody should be proclaiming the “demise” of the narcissist’s party before it has actually met its demise.  Evil groups like that and their leaders and followers do not fold on their own.  They don’t implode or call it quits.  They have no concept of honor or dignity or morality.  There is no “bottom” or “limit” that they recognize.  They will do whatever it takes to get their way and get away with it.

Do you know what finally stopped that notorious nationalistic party in Germany?  Tanks.  Bombs.  Soldiers from around the world crossing continents winning back every country they took, liberating every death camp they created, and then spending decades hunting down every surviving enabler, every officer, and holding them to account for what they did.  It wasn’t editorials talking about the party committing “political suicide”, or media personalities saying that the party was “done with”. They didn’t wait for that party to collapse on its own, because it never did.  They made sure that it ended.

Manuel Noriega ruled Panama in the 1980’s, and he did everything he could to stay in power, even after he was indicted here in America for his criminal operations.  After he lost the election in 1989, people were saying that it was over for the dictator.  His time was done.  The people had spoken.  He, though, had other plans.  He staged a coup and had the incoming leaders arrested.  It took American forces invading Panama and forcing Noriega to flee and finally surrender in 1990 to face justice.  It took action, soldiers, not people making false proclamations, for Noriega’s reign of terror to end.

Think about Superman versus Lex Luthor.  Sure, Luthor could escape justice a lot of times, but he couldn’t do it forever.  It took persistence and action for that to happen.  A hero with the strength to take on Luthor, prosecutors willing to bring him to trial, and a justice system willing to try him and see him convicted.  It didn’t happen because a bunch of reporters and columnists wrote articles talking about his supposed eminent collapse.

Many of us would like to see the narcissist and the party he co-opted be brought down.  It would be easy to think that they both could implode on their own, but they won’t.  What it takes are voters to consciously show up on Election Day and vote against the narcissist and his party, like they did in 2020.  It also takes prosecutors and a justice department with the courage and the strength to hold the narcissist and his party to whatever crimes they have committed.  And they do not stop until the deed is done and the narcissist and his party are actually finished.  Anything less than that is just idle thinking and daydreaming.