CSotD: Foxy-Woxy Rarely Goes Hungry
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I can’t argue with Ramirez on this one: Those four nations are certainly a threat to democracy.
But it seems like looking out the window at the neighbors’ place while the smoke detectors are going off in your own house. It is a good and proper thing to worry about the folks next door, but you should have some more immediate concerns.
So I don’t question his analysis, simply his priorities. One of the cliches currently going around is that “The calls are coming from inside the house,” and we’d be well-advised to focus on that.
It doesn’t mean we should leave Kyiv to Putin or abandon the Gazans to the tender mercies of the seaside resort developers, but it does mean we’ve got our own emergencies to tend to, and we’re not going to be of any help to anyone else if we don’t first secure our own democracy.
Much of the real emergency we’re experiencing is being caused by the declaration of a fake emergency, which Dear Leader has used as an excuse to let loose his personal police force on communities that pose a barrier to his ambitions, and to fire officials in government who stand in the way of his transformation of America from a democracy to an oligarchy.
This process didn’t start when Trump took office. Trump was able to take office because the transformation was already under way.
Blame Reagan. Blame Newt Gingrich. Blame Rush Limbaugh. Blame those who made heroes of Oliver North and Gordon Liddy. Blame yourself, or your parents, for not standing up sooner.
But stand up. After we have put out the fire, we can sit around discussing who started it. (It wasn’t Billy Joel.)
A bit of apocryphal Arabic wisdom: Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.
Wish for the best, trust that the best will happen, but recognize the need for common sense and make efforts of your own to bring about that good outcome.
Which means that if someone tells you there is an emergency, you should take steps to be safe, starting out by finding out if there really is an emergency, or if they’re just trying to keep you from interfering with them.
In the current case, for instance, if you are told there is a flood of crime in Chicago, that the local government is doing nothing to stop it and that, therefore, the city must be flooded with Storm Troopers to seize control and restore order, your first duty is not to obey.
Your first duty is to see if, indeed, there is a flood of crime in Chicago.
This is not politics. It is statistics. It is simple math.
There is crime in Chicago, of course. There is crime everywhere. But the crime rate there is within control and is better than in many other cities.
We talk about those who cry “The sky is falling” but how many of us know how the fable ends? In the story, the sky is not falling, but the fox takes advantage of the panicked, gullible poultry to lure them to their own destruction.
You don’t have to like and admire the fox, but he’s not the one to blame.
Without the willing cooperation of pliable fools, he’d have gone hungry.
There is, of course, the usual spinning and lying. Milbrath points out a case in which Trump is taking credit for a Biden initiative that he opposed, and we’ve seen other GOP figures happily telling constituents about the improvements they’ve made possible when, in fact, they voted against those measures.
If only that were the worst of it. But even such transparent lies are not obvious to Ducky-Wucky and Turkey-Lurkey and the rest of the doomed feather-brains.
Two Powerball players are sharing the $1.8 billion prize today, but the lottery did not lose money on the deal.
And Foxy-Woxy rarely goes to bed hungry.
McKee is right to suggest that, while pretending to care about the flag that represents our country, Dear Leader is tracking filth on the fundamental principles upon which the country was founded.
Bish points out the ways in which a court packed by the Federalist Society, with the aide of Mitch McConnell, has reversed lower court decisions that seemed more aligned with legal precedent.
However, once again, it didn’t start with a decision that, although the laws suggest otherwise, Trump can fire “disloyal” agency heads without cause.
It didn’t even start with the overturning of Roe v Wade and yes I know they said it was established law in their confirmations. But before that, there was Citizens United, which turned elections over to the plutocrats, and after that was Trump v United States, a well-named case that formally put the president above the law.
Now apparently it’s legal to grab people with brown skin or who work in menial jobs, slam them into the sidewalk and beat the living crap out of them and then jail them for a week or two, as long as you let them go if they can prove they are citizens before you throw their asses onto a plane bound for overseas gulags.
But don’t worry: We’ll fix it in the midterms next year, and Dear Leader is working hard to make sure those elections are legal, fair and favorable.
He’d like us each to prove our citizenship when we vote, and, if he can get that through before the election, it will help cut down on poor people, on the very old and on those who don’t have $150 to get a passport.
And if your birth certificate says James Donald Bowman, don’t expect to vote under the name JD Vance any more than Nancy D’Alesandro will readily vote as Nancy Pelosi.
Bring your documentation and maybe an attorney.
We have spent too much time already trying to decide if such-and-such a politician is genuinely stupid or deliberately lying, and Dear Leader’s call for hand-counted paper ballots raises the question of whether he has never worked the polls himself or is just trying to foul up the system.
But if you believe it’s unintentional, watch out, because the sky is falling.
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