Republican Normalization

A few months ago I posted an update on Facebook complaining of media bias against Democrats. One of my friends challenged me on it. It caused me to re-evaluate my statement.

After re-evaluating I realized I was oversimplifying the issue. The issue we are seeing today is normalization of a political party that has gone off the deep end into far right conspiracy and all out culture wars.

The Republican Party is currently the vessel for a modern day fascist movement. They’re actively dividing our nation and positioning white people, especially white males as victims who’s country is being taken away. They’re actively demonizing racial justice movements and protests as criminals. They’re actively trying to erase our nations history and saying kids should not “feel shame” for our county’s history. They’re using things like CRT (which isn’t even taught in K-12) to fashion policy which will make teachers unlikely to teach our actual history. Not to even speak of voting law in places like AZ that will allow them to pick their own slate of electors.

Whitewashed America

The latest Republican culture war, and disturbing new trend - is the banning and censoring of books. In this latest NBC News special report they uncovered some of the books parents have asked school libraries to remove.

Records requests to nearly 100 school districts in the Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin regions — a small sampling of the state’s 1,250 public school systems — revealed 75 formal requests by parents or community members to ban books from libraries during the first four months of this school year. In comparison, only one library book challenge was filed at those districts during the same time period a year earlier, records show. A handful of the districts reported more challenges this year than in the past two decades combined.

These parents feel empowered now to come out of the woodwork, fueled by white grievance stoked by Republicans and the former president. They wish to have their kids grow up in a whitewashed version of reality, devoid of thought or critical thinking.

Lets Talk Voting Rights Act

We are at a critical moment in our democracy, where our fundamental right to vote is at risk. With President Biden’s speech today, I wanted to put together a list of what is in the Freedom to Vote Act that is before the Senate. Every single Republican Senator is in opposition to this bill, as well as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. They don’t even want to debate it, let alone vote on the bill itself.

And before I go too far, the Constitution more than allows for the Federal Government to create or alter election laws, despite Republican talking points:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

What does this bill do? Let’s go over the key points:

Capitol Insurrection

Today marks the one year anniversary an attack on the very seat of the United States Democracy. I sat here, in this very spot one year ago — and watched in horror on TV as a mob of angry supporters of Donald Trump, stormed the capitol, and called for the hanging of the Vice President of the United States because he chose the constitution and his oath over a single man. They erected a gallows out front ready for the task.

All while Donald Trump sat comfortably in the White House watching it unfold on TV doing nothing to stop it. As his supporters, fueled by his lie that the election was stolen beat law enforcement officers while carrying thin blue line flags. These people were not patriots. They wished to install Donald Trump as leader despite losing a free and fair election. I’ll also note that many Republicans won in 2020. Did they challenge their own elections?

For a very short time Republicans said enough is enough — we cannot proceed like this. There was a glimmer of hope that maybe, they’d realize their error in supporting a man like Trump.

Democracy Requires Compromise*

As we enter a new era in US politics there’s a tendency for an all out battle of us vs them. And rightfully so, the last four years have felt like four decades for many of us. In a democracy, compromise is needed to accomplish almost anything. But on the flip side, there are some things that there should be absolutely ZERO compromise on.

Until we as a country can get to the point when we agree on a set of shared values and most importantly truth compromise will not be possible. The last decade or so the Republican party has adopted a platform of division and obstruction. Their entire goal is to block anything Democrats do and as a result block any social or democratic progress forward. Their goal, is to further the hierarchy where the rich are at the top and the bottom should just deal with it and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The Republican party isn’t really even conservative, they are reactionary - their entire platform doesn’t even consist of any real ideas or policies anymore. Everything they do is us vs them, giving immigrants citizenship? They’re taking “our” jobs! They don’t want opportunity to be equal.

In order to proceed forward in pursuit of the more perfect union our founders envisioned our citizenry must have equal rights and without this, we exclude our fellow citizens. This most certainly isn’t an all inclusive list but some of the ones I feel are most important.