No Words

Except, perhaps, "beyond"

I have no words.

It’s a damned good thing I don’t write this blog for a living, or I’d be out of a job. Every time I sit down to write about the latest underhanded crap our politicians have doled out, they come up with something worse. I have run out of things to say — I just snarl and snap, these days, and probably should be put down.

Over the past couple of years, I have accumulated a file cabinet full of outrage. To what end? I tell you that XYZ shit is going to happen, as if that will somehow encourage YOU to do something, because of course I’m way too busy to do something MYSELF, and let’s face it, there’s not much any of US can do on our own. Then XYZ does happen, and we all decry it and move along.

For example:

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a furious effort afoot by MAGA at both the state and federal level to put the fix in for the midterm elections. As noted, I’ve exhausted my own thoughts on the topic, redundantly insisting that you cannot count on the midterms. Hope is an unfilled expectation. Just like there was no way that Trump could beat Hillary, or Kamala. Two of the finest contestants the Democrats have ever put forward in presidential elections, and yet

Close, but no cigar.

So, here we are again. All the signs point to a “blue wave.” We’ll take the House, maybe even the Senate. Everybody says so. Everybody, that is, except me and a few other crackpot conspiracy theorists of no particular note. Here at home in North Carolina, Cooper is vastly more popular, better known and better funded than Whatley, Cooper’s opponent for Tillis’ Senate seat.

But

The NC State Legislature has wrenched control of the State Board of Elections out of Governor Stein’s grasp, a move resulting in what the New York Times calls “. . . the most consequential reconfiguration of an electoral system of any swing state.” They have vested that control in the hands of the state’s Head Bean Counter, the Republican State Auditor. All of North Carolina’s elections boards now have a 3-2 Republican majority. To salt the wound, not only are we turning over what used to be private and carefully guarded voter data to the Federal Government, we are changing the rules on who can vote and when, including making it easier for NC election officials to reject a ballot filed by someone without “acceptable” ID. Poor? Disabled? Name or gender doesn’t match your birth certificate? Waited too long to register? Tough luck.

All of this is predicated on the ostensible widespread fraud that cost Trump his election in 2020. Except that you’d practically have to be functionally illiterate and oblivious to all matters political to not know, as a matter of well-established fact, and as born out in 60 plus court cases filed by Trump and his advocates, all of which ruled against him (often by Republican judges), that voter fraud is vanishingly uncommon. The only people who truly believe in voter fraud are what the experts call “low information voters.” According to Paul Krugman, “low information voter” is not a pejorative term. For the benefit of low information voters, “pejorative” means “insulting.”

Voter fraud never rises anywhere close to the level of the fraud being committed in the name of keeping the Republicans in power.

Go ahead. Prove me wrong.

We are living in the timeline from hell. It’s beyond Orwellian. The amount of corruption and abuse committed by those in and around the party in power is beyond estimation, and to some extent, probably beyond repair. What the broliarchs and Corporate America have built over the past fifty years is the Golden Calf of capitalism — you can share in it as long as you’re willing to steal and cheat and lie, laugh at the libs, screw the poor and death to scapegoats.

In some sense, these new Nazis are worse than the old ones. The old Nazis killed people who fit certain parameters — political enemies, Jews, homosexuals, etc. The new Nazis don’t like science, and in addition to the usual scapegoats, are just killing people at random, including many of their own. It is the new Dark Ages.

These people in power, they know — better, perhaps, than we know — that the midterms are the tipping point. It will not be enough for us to “do well” in the midterm elections. We must crush that vote, all obstacles aside. This is no time for judicious consideration of the candidates and their positions. This is not the day to whine about Corporate Democrats, much as we all despise that old guard almost as much as MAGA. This is not the time to vote Green. Do not buy into the last minute lies and mudslinging that the media will promulgate in the name of “balance.” Do not sell your hope for a lie. This is the time to unite under the only viable banner, that of the Democratic Party, and vote straight D. That is something we can all do. If not, and without actual control of both houses of Congress, the corruption will continue, unabated, unceasing. The ballroom will be built.

I cannot imagine a worse possible outcome.