Questions every American oughta be asking... while we can

I have questions.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson covered a lot of turf, the last 94 years of US history in a condensed form. From the Depression to today, she covered economics, the social safety net, human rights, worker rights, the building of essential infrastructure, the birth of NATO and more, including the backlashes against new government policies.

The points she made were that our government has accomplished quite a bit for everyone in society. But some have tried to undo almost all of it, mostly by pitting one group against another. The Undoers didn’t want businesses regulated to protect workers or the environment. They didn’t want people of color to have the full array of human and civil rights. They didn’t want government helping citizens struggling for any reason.

The Undoers called the Doers ‘anti-capitalist’, ‘communist’, ‘anti-God’, ‘globalist’, have pushed isolationism and the dissolution of NATO and the UN, have promoted the hatred of Jews and Muslims and immigrants while completely rejecting bipartisan efforts to accomplish immigration policy reform, have tried to recruit soldiers and citizens to destroy the federal government in the 1930s, 1950s and the last 15 years,
and have undone nuclear arms treaties.

They’ve even tried to destroy our country’s most successful anti-poverty program, Social Security.

Richardson didn’t give details of events like the Business Plot that tried to recruit our most decorated Marine - Smedley Butler - to take part in a coup against FDR that would result in a fascist dictator ruling the US. She did cover the efforts of some Republican and Libertarian businessmen in the 1950s to return the federal government to the way it operated in the 1920s, which had led to the Great Depression, and how their efforts gained traction after the SCOTUS desegregation ruling of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). She wrote “That decision enabled them to divide the American people by insisting that the popular new government simply redistributed tax dollars from hardworking white taxpayers to undeserving minorities.” 

Big Business, from industrialists to the Chamber of Commerce, have long supported Republican & Libertarian economic policies that lowered taxes on the wealthiest and largely ignored the needs of the working class, the disabled, housewives and the poor. Some have exploited societal divisions like racial and gender bias (see the fight against the ERA), the heterosexual vs homosexual, and the economic classes, where anyone utilizing social services were demonized as lazy, socialistic leeches and the wealthy were touted as the backbone and brains of the country.

Richardson also provided some detail about a fresh alliance that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, when very conservative men - self-defined as fundamentalist evangelical Christians - began wielding greater influence in the GOP. What had begun as the ‘Moral Majority’ under Nixon in the wake of the socially turbulent 1960s, congealed as the Christian Coalition during Reagan’s presidency.

Americans alive at that time will recall the demonization of AIDS victims, women who had to temporarily rely on Aid For Dependent Children and Food Stamps, budget busting expansion of military spending and a massive increase in the national debt caused by Defense Dept spending and big honkin’ tax cuts for the wealthiest. The national debt was $903 billion in 1980. When Reagan left office 8 years later, it was over $2.6 trillion, almost tripling.

As the population and Gross Domestic Product numbers grow, expansion of government spending occurs, but the only comparable rapid national debt expansion prior to Reagan’s term was WWII through the Korean War, when stopping fascism and the early stages of the Cold War became paramount.

And after Reagan, the next rapid expansion began in 2008, due to the housing bubble collapse and massive bank fraud that triggered a bailout of the same financial industry that had been yapping about the need to reduce government spending since the 1930s. In 2008, the debt was $10 trillion. In 2022 - 14 years later - it has more than tripled again. The GDP-to-debt-ratio hit its all time peak in 2020 when the government and Federal Reserve had to keep the entire country afloat during the initial covid pandemic shutdowns.

From the late 1970s through today, that conservative Christian Coalition has seized on every political scandal and cultural shift, claiming the morality of 335 million was sending us all to hell. Their proposed fix is always reducing the rights of women, gay people and people of color, to return us to the glory days when white males owned nearly everything and ruled over everyone: the 1920s.

That didn’t turn out so well. Neither did ‘state’s rights’ when they were last heavily invoked, resulting in the Civil War.

But the extremist religious propaganda is unyielding. It’s now reaching for Taliban-levels of social and political control.

And look, nobody, left or right, was happy after the housing bubble collapse and bank bailout. The populist left has sought banking reforms, more affordable national healthcare and a reduction in vastly inflated higher educational costs. The populist right has sought the reversal of every social and cultural advance of the past 9 decades. With much of its voice amplified with secret funding by the wealthiest in our country.

Now we are told that Democrats are socialists, communists, baby killers, and even more delusional definitions like pedophiles and cannibals. The pursuit of evidence for these claims has been abandoned (since there is none). Major advances in medical science are ridiculed like the unlocking of the human genome that has provided fresh ways to counter disease and faster development of vaccines.

World history is full of examples of shitty outcomes when Big Money allies with extreme religions. Democracies disappear, human rights are taken away and bullies and fascists multiply. Lifespans grow shorter. And every sordid organization proclaims they are acting out God’s will. Is it really just an amazing coincidence that the Taliban, Al Qaida, ISIS, Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Ku Klux Klan and Hitler all used religion to control, imprison and slay people?

Yet this is where we are now.

An abusive misogynist with a long history of adultery, thefts and lies became our president with the support and approval of religious zealots. A guy with several advisors like Steve Bannon whose stated goal repeatedly is to ‘burn it all down’, referring to the federal government. In return, that now ex-president let them have control of the list of potential federal court nominees. The zealots achieved their first goal of overturning Roe v. Wade. Abortion wasn’t even an issue in most Christian religions till Reagan took office. They’ve now returned to the good old days of book banning, demonizing drag queens, college students & professors. Now they have their eyes on repealing gay rights.

And they gained another foothold with their selection of Michael Johnson as House Speaker. Johnson’s made it clear that he’s extremely opposed to gay people, wants prayers returned to schools (but only prayers of his religion). He and his wife have hosted a podcast for several years. When people started finding some controversial statements they made, they pulled all their online podcasts.

Why the secrecy? What are they trying to hide? Their effort came too late as at least one researcher copied all the podcasts before the Johnsons pulled them. What other secrets are they hiding? Are they part of the violence touting extremists who’ve spent years trying to steal the last presidential election? Or the ones who continually lambaste a Jewish Holocaust survivor who became a billionaire and has used part of his fortune trying to spread more democracies to many countries across the globe (George Soros)?

Johnson’s said their foster parenting of a young black man now in his forties hasn’t included him in most family photos because the man wants to steer clear of politics and Mike & Kelly respect that right. They do not respect the wishes of the family members of political opponents, however.

They claim their guidance always comes from God though there are no sacred scriptures that contain a God advising such rank hypocrisy or support for an obviously unreformed criminal like Trump. As many have repeatedly noted, Johnson organized and led the Congressional support of efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

What’s next on their pseudo-religious agenda? Questions like these should be asked by every supporter of democracy. There’s increasing concerns that they may want to dissolve NATO. They clearly want to reduce spending to aid the Ukrainians trying to repel Putin’s efforts to overthrow and rule their country and all its assets.

If you haven’t read Richardson’s October 29th newsletter that my first link referred to, at the very least read her last 6 paragraphs. Campaign contributions in his 2018 re-election came from whom?

Unless you want to surrender our country to a dictator who’ll outlaw your future questions, now’s the time to ask the most serious questions of our lives.

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Not just the GOP extremists, but most of the Congressional Republicans have been fighting to overturn the extra IRS funding that President Biden got passed. A lot of the extra was to replace agents lost to normal attrition like retirement. The extra agents hired will be trained to conduct audits of wealthier people who have so many tax loopholes to exploit that they’re much harder to audit. In recent years, most of the IRS audits performed have been directed at middle class and working class taxpayers so some of that new funding was just trying to level the playing field so every economic class has similar rates of auditing. It’s pretty important since most of the tax fraud is being done by the wealthy, costing the country hundreds of billions in tax revenues.

So what has Speaker Johnson proposed? Funding the conflict in Israel and its occupied territories but with deep cuts in the IRS funding tied to that aid.

That, plus cuts to aid to Ukraine top the aims of the Republican House majority. Plus a continuation of multiple investigations of Biden family members that have occurred in the past 3 years that have repeatedly failed to find evidence of any wrongdoing.

Already GOP lawmakers and their media mouthpieces are claiming that Democratic lawmakers are anti-Bible, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic in their propaganda campaign.

All of these efforts increase the odds of a government shutdown after November 17th due to the extremists’ refusal to accept any compromises, the same thing that cost former Speaker Kevin McCarthy his job. The House Republicans won’t even compromise with Senate Republicans to continue the aid to Ukraine.

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Recommended reading:

A second judge permits the reinstatement of a gag order to protect the safety of witnesses and court personnel from the threats still being made by Trump.

What do these personality types mean and where did this odd hocus pocus come from?

When did Jesus speak out in support of war weapon ownership?

The stated ‘proof’ that doesn’t exist and has never existed.

An interview you can listen to about what to expect next.

A fair consideration.

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On a much lighter note…

And this was the precursor to climate change concerns.

And from 1970: