“Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms.” - Abraham Lincoln
I stole the title of this piece from Glenn Schatz, Naval Academy graduate, former submarine officer and Vice President of Veterans For Responsible Leadership, an organization I proudly support. Glenn sent out an eloquent letter to veterans on Memorial Day in which he wrote: “Because you know more than most that there really are bad people in the world, you know that it is important as ever, for countries that value liberal democracies, to continue fighting to keep them intact. Because you know what it means to sacrifice for a cause larger than yourself, I’m asking you to stand up. Stand up and speak up against authoritarians in your own backyard. We need you to work your hardest to support and elect responsible leaders, who understand that politics is not a game or a venue to put points on the board against the other team.”
Since I’ll be dead a year from now, if the late eminent virologist Luc Montagnier’s prediction comes true that 100-percent of the people jabbed with MRNA COVID vaccines will be dead in two years, I figured I’d better stand up while the standing is good and say a few words about some obnoxious authoritarians I’ve identified lately in the Republican Party. Author James Howard Kunstler, who reported Montagnier’s disturbing prognostication on his popular conservative blog Clusterfuck Nation, likened this chilling information to “the proverbial turd in the punch bowl.” A talented writer often praised for his colorful language, readers can also count on him to put lots of peanuts in the poop. Although I’m hoping that Kunstler’s report turns out to be Republican “disinformation,” we’ll have to wait to see how things turn out. In his previous blog this week Kunstler also presented some harsh truths about the causes of the recent massacre of nineteen innocent children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas in one of the nation’s schools Kunstler described as “fantastically depressing places designed to look like medium security prisons and insecticide factories.”
Harsh criticism no doubt, but there is no hint of sophistry in Kunstler’s somber conclusions about Uvalde, earnestly delivered by a concerned writer in reaction to a gloomy week news-wise dominated by a tragic event made even more grievous by the disingenuous explanations on the part of the so-called “authorities” as to the causes, resulting in a volatile media imbroglio that brought a lot of smoldering truths about the Republican Party bursting into flame in the national consciousness. I’m talking about the Republican Party of Trump, an organization that deems gun rights more important than citizens’ constitutional liberties, a traitorous syndicate of gangsters that is now emblematic of everything violent, dishonest, and despicable about American politics. As Rebecca Solnit points out in her Guardian article on Memorial Day 2022, “Guns symbolize the power of a minority over the majority, and they’ve become icons of a party that has become a cult seeking minority power through the stripping away of voting rights and persecution of women, immigrants, black people, queer people, trans people—all of whom have been targeted by mass shootings in recent years.”
The issue at stake here is collateral damage—not in this case about what our military weapons inflict on so many innocent civilians in other countries—but the casualties that unregulated firearms exact on the teachers and innocent children of our own citizens right here at home. Heather Cox Richardson’s report about Golden State Warriors basketball coach Steve Kerr’s comments at a press conference after the massacre says it all about the character of the 2022 Republican Party. “We are being held hostage by 50 senators in Washington who refuse to even put it to a vote,” Kerr said about the issue of gun control, “despite what we the American people want.” Kerr walked out of the press conference ending his statement with “I’ve had enough.” Sadly, Kerr’s sentiment doesn’t apply to the Republicans who have repeatedly demonstrated that they are more than willing to sacrifice innocent children on the altar of gun control in order to get their way. Polls show that We the People, on the other hand, stand with coach Kerr against what Substack commentator Berry M once described as “the rats’ nest of evil” that the Republican Party has become.
The Republican approach to politics is emblematic of the proverbial bully who attempts to instill fear amongst the weaker members of a group in the quest for dominance, using the tactics of intimidation against, in the case of the GOP, the marginalized and economically-challenged Americans they seek to subjugate with their exploitive, kleptocratic policies and lies. To wit: Writing in his excellent Today’s Edition Newsletter, distinguished lawyer and public intellectual Robert Hubbell reported the remarks of Texas Senator John Cornyn, who tweeted that criticizing the law enforcement response to the tragic massacre in Uvalde, Texas was “unfair” and “distracting” among other attempts to evade the truth and deflect blame for the tragedy away from the issue of gun control and the possibility of offending the arms makers who finance so many Republican elections. “Cornyn has begun the official Republican campaign to tell Americans how they are ‘permitted’ to talk about the mass execution at Uvalde,” Hubbell went on to say, calling the senator’s tweets “reprehensible.” “Cornyn, and other Republican apologists for mass killings, want Americans to ‘be civil,’ to ‘avoid politicizing’ the death of children, to refrain from criticizing police, and to refrain from using language that would describe the horrific reality of what happened in the classroom. In attempting to control our language, the GOP is trying to control how we think about what happened at Uvalde.”
In his tweets, Senator Cornyn revealed himself to be a fascist and Hubbell’s encouragement to his readers to reject Cornyn’s urgings inspired me to suggest that Cornyn and the rest of his fascist Republican gangster buddies who have “set out to rule the world,” as Woody Guthrie described the fascists of his era, ought to heed the words of Guthrie’s popular song of the time “All you fascists bound to lose.” Guthrie’s guitar was his “Fascist Killing Machine,” the instrument of justice he effectively used to rouse the popular imagination and challenge the threat to democracy. Well, here we are again, only this time the evil is arising right here in the U.S.A. within the ranks of the Republican Party, and all freedom-loving Americans must now stand together in solidarity and resist, condemn and forcefully defy, via all non-violent civic and political means necessary, the anti-democratic forces the GOP has mobilized via the billionaire class to destroy the Constitution and the Republic for which it stands. Let this Memorial Day be the day we all make the decision to repudiate the cowardly Republican authorities who allowed innocent children and teachers to die while they stood by and watched it happen, and then lied and made excuses about it to deflect blame in the aftermath.
Speaking out and denouncing people like Senator Cornyn and other members of his fascist Republican coalition intent on implementing their insane “11-point plan to rescue America’ and the perverted ideal vision of the American family concocted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, isn’t something we have to think about, seeking conciliatory compromises that won’t offend in attempts to protect the status quo. These are fascists we’re dealing with and confronting them is a split-second decision to act now, in the present moment without any concern beyond the “clear and present danger’ these thugs pose. “I don’t fight fascists because I think I can win,” wrote the great Chris Hedges. “I fight fascists because they’re fascists.” And so we must fight; we must take to the streets and march and we must speak out and speak up as Glenn Schatz says. Woody Guthrie’s weapon was his guitar. Our instrument of resistance and transformation, if we choose to use it, is our right to vote, guaranteed by the Constitution that every veteran took a sacred oath to protect and defend. We must use this power, “all of us this time,” to borrow Cathy Learoyd’s famous phrase. The more than 80 million Americans that typically have failed to vote in past elections need to act now and help the rest of us remove the corrupt politicians, judges, law enforcement officers, and other public officials who made the tragedy at Uvalde inevitable. We must all become citizens again, joining together on behalf of the common good, heeding Abraham Lincoln’s truth that “The ballot is more powerful than the bullet.”
Republican urgings to “tone down” the rhetoric of outrage is a fascist act, so as freedom loving Americans we must do just the opposite and commit loud, boisterous, passionate acts of civil disobedience, and like Beto O’Rourke in Texas, we must get in Republican faces, denounce them, and vote them out of office. It’s time to let the Republicans, as well as all those Democrats complicit in their devious schemes, experience the indignation of the People, our democratic impertinence and our refusal to allow their lies to obfuscate the truth. We must also let Biden and the rest of the conciliatory Democrats know that there is no “high road” here, no paving the way with false promises and good intentions. The Republican Party of Trump has declared war on the American people and our failure to act decisively and denounce the gun lobbies and their shills in congress will only lead us down the low road straight to Hell, which is clearly the destination of the GOP as now organized around the being of Donald J. Trump and all the fascist miscreants who support his cause. This is our moment of truth as a democratic nation. This is an emergency and we can’t afford to wait around indecisively outside the Swamp and let our liberties be murdered like the officials in Uvalde as they stood outside the school while innocent children and teachers were being slaughtered within. As the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre makes clear, the Republican Party has become the party of Death and we must vote in mass to ensure that men and women affiliated with the liars in the Republican Party of Trump never hold public office again. The future of the Republic is at stake and we must act boldly. As Abraham Lincoln said: “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
Memorial Day Mission
Long live Crazy Horse!
Long live Woodie Guthrie! Long live Chris Hedges!
Long live Stewart Whisenant!
Spot on, Sir. I am thankful I found your Reflections in the Frame. I don’t feel so alone. <SALUTE>.