Disrespecting Voters

 Recent Republican gerrymandering tactics are about as blatant in their disrespect and anti-American behaviors as Americans have ever experienced.  And that’s saying something from a country that often blathers about “our democracy” while never having had anything that even approaches a representative democracy.  American history is a 250-year story of the rich and powerful beating back democracy at every attempt from the 1700’s Shay’s Rebellion to the billionaire-contaminated 2024 national elections.  Apparently, the only way citizens of the current United States of America will ever experience democracy is to either move to Canada or to break up the current 50 states into several smaller, less powerful, and likely less stable nations with part of those new countries being democratic and the south/southeast and Midwest definitely being fascist oligarchies or kleptocracies or both. 

The fact is, it would be difficult for any rational society to create a more fucked-up mess of a government than did our “founding fathers.”  Those self-infatuated, 3^rd tier, elite boys were more concerned with protecting the institution of slavery, which was rapidly falling out of favor in the rest of the world, and the idle-rich lifestyle of slaveowners than creating a democratic government that would flourish and last.  As a result, the US has been plagued with corrupt corporations and vile, spoiled nepo-baby “businessmen” for the country’s entire lifetime.  Trump and the refuse who populate his mis-named “administration” are just the latest in a long line of ruling class idiots.  

   

The obvious thing about these two Texas maps is that Republicans are convinced that their voters are so stupid and cultish that their votes can be taken for granted, no matter how badly Republican foolishness and corruption treats them.  Inflation, national bankruptcy, wall-to-wall corruption, desecration of national monuments, war, even world war with a universal draft and without a single rational, competent, responsible ally from our nation’s 250-year history haven’t made a dent in their loyal infatuation. 

The Republican Motto is clearly H.L. Menken’s “No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people,” commonly shortened to “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American voter."  The other obvious thing about these maps is that the state’s stupid, self-destructive people are concentrated (to abuse that word) in the vast, unpopulated, uneducated, unemployed and poor rural hinterlands of Texas. 

That same analysis holds true for Florida.  Florida Republicans had already isolated the few educated, intelligent, and decent voters from the bulk of the awful people who call themselves Republicans.  But their latest gerrymandering is blatantly assuming everyone who ever voted Republican is a total fucking moron and, again, couldn’t be knocked out of the cult with a sledgehammer. 

The old political saying is “liberals fall in love and conservatives fall in line.”  Today, with what passes for “conservatives” totally infatuated with the MAGA cult and Donald Trump’s mobster administration, “love” and “falling in line” have merged into the dumbest political movement in American history; and we’ve had some really dumb moments in our awful 250-year history.  If there is any hope, any comeback from this pitiful moment in time, it is likely going to be from another plague.  This time there won’t be any medical backup from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which was instrumental in developing vaccines and getting the country ready to distribute that technology when Trump’s Ship of Fools left the government in 2021.  This time, Democrats won’t be back in power in time to stop the plague from running its course.  Trump has practically dismantled the NIH and anything resembling the federal government’s ability to respond to any national health crisis.  Hegseth has dumbed-down the military to Fox News “standards” and the country is ripe for another pandemic; natural or man-made.  In fact, our nation is less secure in every way than any time in modern history.  And that may be the nation’s only hope for restoration, after a hundred million or more die on the pedestal of stupidity. 

So, for what they’re worth, keep your vaccination record up-to-date, stock up on N95 masks and hand sanitizer, and keep your cupboard stocked with at least a few weeks’ worth of up-to-date canned and dry goods staples.  One way or another, we’re going to be in for a lot of wild times and they aren’t likely to be much fun.