Joe Biden ran for president because with Trump and the GOP in charge, we were in a battle for the soul of our country. We still are. We risk losing our democracy, our civil liberties, personal freedoms and rights. Biden was elected and he has stabilized our democracy…something he doesn’t get enough credit for.
But the battle turns out to be broader and harder than he and many others anticipated. Trump is part of a larger authoritarian push. In France, Macron, who strongly supports Ukraine’s fight for freedom against Russian tyranny, won the face off against Marine Le Pen who would have ushered in an authoritarian government that supported Russia. But Vicktor Orban, another authoritarian, won re-election in Hungary. Orban is seen by Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson as the aspirational model of a leader our country needs to stay “free”. That thinking is just part of the warped house of mirrors alternate universe promoted by so called “conservative” media. These people are not conservatives. They are radical extremists.
The truth is that if we want to stay free we have to keep our democracy and Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the inspirational role model. He is empathic and forceful, unafraid to be direct and even willing to face death to preserve his country’s democracy. I wish we had more leaders in our country who would be as articulate, forceful, message as well and be as charismatic as he is. We need that kind of leadership for our battle ahead.
GOP IS THE PARTY OF LIES AND CHEATING
The Republican Party has become the party of fascists and authoritarians who lie and cheat and overlook corruption as long as they get to be in power. Keven McCarthy is an example of this. After the insurrection he told the truth, blaming Trump for inciting the insurrection on January 6th and said he wanted him to resign. Now he claims that was a joke. That was no “joke”. His pivot was the result of his craven need to suck up to Trump in his bid to be Speaker of the House. Power is the motivator. Lies are the outcome.
The GOP has become an anti-democratic party catering to the base. If not Trump then DeSantis. If not DeSantis then another person with the same tendencies will gain traction. Why? Because the highly motivated Republican base, which includes many ultra rich, greedy radical, extremist “conservatives” along with Evangelicals and white supremacists want a person like that to take charge and give THEM what they want. They will pay big to get their disruptors elected because the pay off for them is so big. Just remember …
A vote for any Republican is a vote against our country and our democracy.
DEMOCRACY vs AUTOCRACY
A true democracy is messy and requires compromise. It follows process, rules and laws. It requires that people be truthful and not only tolerates but celebrates a free press that is empowered to expose lies so that we the people can hold liars accountable by not re-electing them. To thrive and be successful, democracies need to follow the will of the people writ large not only an angry base or the ultra wealthy.
The GOP is massively failing to uphold our democracy. It has given up on being a big tent party that welcomes everyone. It is a shrinking party grasping for control by cheating and lying and pretending they aren’t.
Autocracies and dictators get what they want by smashing and grabbing. Like Putin. They are emboldened if they are not held to account. Trump and the insurrectionists are not being held to account yet. They are emboldened. So is their base.
If an angry emboldened base is able to get a wannabee dictator like Trump or DeSantis elected, the power of the presidency will be wielded for their benefit and used against others. We saw that with Trump and we are seeing that with DeSantis in Florida. DeSantis is trying to prove he is as much of an authoritarian as Trump. He took away Disney World’s special tax status because Disney did not go along with DeSantis’s Don’t Say Gay law.
Force is used by autocrats to silence the opposition. What kind of force? Everything and anything they can get away with from passing laws to putting truth tellers in jail, to missiles and bombs to social media to create and sustain an alternate reality, to poison and murder suicides that are really hit jobs by Putin to warn other oligarchs not to speak out, to attacking or eliminating the independent press. In authoritarian countries people go to jail for telling the truth. War crimes be damned. There are no rules for dictators. They flip the script and accuse their detractors of whatever they themselves are doing. They create an alternate reality and limit access to the truth to sustain it.
Putin says he is saving Ukrainians from nonexistent Nazis. Trump Republicans are heroically saving our children from nonexistent CRT brainwashing, nonexistent caravans at the border and nonexistent stolen elections. The Big Lie will be Trump’s glide path to power unless we stop him…
A vote for any Republican is a vote against our country and our democracy.
CULTURE WARS
We have to fight back against the culture wars being juiced by Trump Republicans even if it seems really stupid. Culture wars might seem idiotic, but they are an effective way to reframe reality to rile people up to vote for Republicans. Once in power these anti-democratic people will work to dismantle our civil rights. Critical Race Theory is not even being taught in elementary schools but the right is falsely claims that it is and uses the idea to scare suburban moms into thinking their children will be browbeaten for the sins of their forefathers. Why? Because they need the suburban mom vote to win power.
Two important casualties in autocracies are always the loss of truth and the loss of freedom. Currently Ukraine is the center of the fight for democracy and for freedom and we can see how truth and freedom are being attacked. The differences between a Putin and a Zelenskyy are exceedingly and painfully clear for all the world to see. If you tell the truth in Putin’s Russia you can be jailed or killed. That’s what is coming to Ukraine unless they win this war. Ukrainians understand the value of democracy for their freedoms and they are willing to die to keep their democracy.
A vote for any Republican is a vote against our country and our democracy.
LOSS OF TRUTH
Dictators impose a tyranny of alternate reality and insist that everyone buy in. Dictators warp the truth, use gaslighting and other devices to rewrite reality in favor of the dictator. We in America can all see that Putin has created an alternate reality and is trying to force Russians to buy that version of reality because our press is telling us the truth about what is happening in this uncalled for war. We can see that situation more clearly than we can see what’s happening in our own country thanks to the propaganda being used by conservative platforms to keep blue collar Americans believing in an alternate reality so they will vote Republican: Fox News, Breitbart, talk radio and more.
In Putin’s alternate reality, for example, their flagship Moskva was not hit by Ukrainian missiles causing it to sink to the bottom of the sea. Yes it sank, that undeniable reality had to be admitted. But in the alternate universe reality insisted on by Putin, it sank because of incompetence of the crew- there was a fire on board and that caused it to sink. How do we know that was not the truth? Because Russia moved other ships within missile range of the Ukrainian assets to more distant locations where they could not be hit by a missile. And they retaliated to punish the Ukrainians by striking Kyiv again after saying they were moving on to “liberate” the Donbas region.
In our country we know that Trump’s Big Lie is an alternate reality to help himself get reelected in 2024. If Republicans do not buy into the Big Lie they are excommunicated from the party. Trump will only endorse those candidates craven enough to support the Big Lie. Just remember…
A vote for any Republican is a vote against our country and our democracy.
LOSS OF FREEDOM
In a dictatorship people lose their freedoms. They are not free to follow their beliefs or take action in their own best interest. In our country this is happening with reproductive rights. A woman who dares to exercise control over her own body and her life by making the most important decision a woman can make for herself about whether to carry a pregnancy to term will soon be fully denied that freedom of choice in red states across the nation. The Republicans in control of red state legislatures have been limiting reproductive choice for years by restricting it with statutes and regulations. The deconstruction of Roe was going on for the last 40 years in red states but it is about to get way worse.
Thanks to Trump and Mitch McConnell, the Rs have finally succeeded in packing the Supreme Court with enough handpicked anti-choice politicized justices that Roe will be overturned or limited so much that women will soon be unable to get an abortion in red states. Women in some states will be arrested after miscarrying and charged with murdering their fetus. I am not being histrionic here. Some red states will criminalize travel to another state for an abortion. In red states the fetus will have rights as an unborn child and those rights will interfere with the rights of the mother who will be downgraded to the status of a pack mule. Many red states will go after birth control and medical abortion pills. They already are.
More civil rights will be attacked. They are already attacking LGBTQ rights and kids who have a different sexual orientation. More attacks on human rights are on the way if Republicans are not kept from office.
A vote for any Republican is a vote against our country and our democracy.
WHAT DOES UKRAINE TEACH US?
Putin thought that Volodymr Zelenskyy would be too self-interested and timid to fight back. But Zelenskyy surprised almost everyone. He refused to leave Kyiv. He became the inspirational leader of his people. His fearlessness emboldened his people to rise up and fight against Putin’s war machine.
We could use some inspirational leadership to fight the GOP’s war machine against our democracy too. We suburban women could help to lead on this. The GOP wants and needs our vote. We need to tell them they are wrong about what they think we want by refusing to vote for ANY Republicans until they drop Trump and Trumpism. We do not want a reduction of civil and reproductive rights. Stop the lying. Stop the cheating. Stop the attack on kids who are sexually different. Stop attacking our reproductive rights.
Michigan State Senator Mallory Mc Morrow gave us a blueprint. She spoke out against a shockingly false accusation by a Republican colleague that she was “sexually grooming” kindergartners by standing up for LGBTQ rights. She lashed out against these horrible lies. The GOP is falsely accusing Democrats of sexual deviance and pedophilia more frequently these days as a perverse way to try to create fear about voting for Democrats. Here is part of what Mallory Mc Morrow said:
“We have to talk about hate and identify it and say it’s ugly and disgusting and what it means as a deflection of other issues.”
Elizabeth Warren also took on Keven McCarthy calling him a “liar and a traitor”. Thank you very much!
We need more of this kind of talk from EVERY Democrat!! Speak up! Speak out! Tell it like it is.
Suburban women are important because the GOP needs our vote. We can send a strong message that until this authoritarian impulse passes we refuse to vote for ANY Republican. We reject what they are doing to our country!
