Too many Noogies & Wedgies Spoil the Democracy
[The following contains adult language. But even minors will find it boring as fuck.]
What some see as a historical event this week is far less earth shattering to most. It wasn’t detected on the Richter scale at all. Wikipedia has several movie synopses that are similar.
When it catches up to the unfolding soap opera in the House of Representatives yesterday, Wikipedia’s entry will likely be close to this.
The audience score was even worse. They gave it five What-The-Fucks. Meanwhile the College president is being dragged into numerous courtroom battles where he’s regularly launching diatribes about his disappointment with the judges’ and prosecutors’ tits.
You might wish to refer to this Reference Point or this one if you’re not up to date on the GOP’s performance art.
There are also warnings about the danger to democracy caused by this episode from experts like this:
“We are watching a very small number of folks from the House Republican conference have an outsize role in promoting a lot of congressional dysfunction and fiscal dysfunction,” said Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University. “This is a move for volatility and not a move to pass legislation.”
Yes, I read that as ‘congressional dysfunction and fecal dysfunction’ too. You’re not alone in that. Pass the stool softeners, please.
”Other democracy advocates say the loss of faith in the government itself has created a vicious cycle, one in which some elected representatives appear determined to prove that the government doesn’t work by actively undermining it.
“We can and should have vigorous debates about spending priorities and national debt,” said Mark Medish, co-founder of Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan civic education organization. “But if we are inclined to repeatedly call into question the functioning of the state, we are on the road to unraveling as a republic.”
As disconcerting as the events of the past few weeks have been, more worrying is what might come next. History has shown that government dysfunction can be a prelude to the erasure of democracy altogether, with authoritarianism rising in its place, said Harvard’s Ziblatt.
“What precedes a democratic breakdown is political stalemate and extreme dysfunction where there’s a sense that nothing can get done,” Ziblatt said. “When governments can’t respond in genuine crises, it has a delegitimizing effect, and it reinforces the sense among citizens that we have to resort to other means.”
Violent Extremists pushing Nazi shit in Tennessee? I was visiting towns in Tennessee in recent years. Plenty of nice people around. But also Nazis. Every state has some Nazis. Only a few like Tennessee have Nazis bragging openly about their love of violence to kill people they don’t like; Blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, gay people, Jews, Muslims.
Such abberant, abnormal, deranged behavior is a threat to everyone in any country, including the white people they claim to champion. Nobody can be ignorant about this threat to maintaining a civil society. If you think gun control or equal opportunity laws or Joe Biden are the worst problems in the country, you’re wrong.
Nazis will steal every right you ever had and strip you of your every asset, including your life. If you see them outing themselves, stand up against them as if everything and everyone you love are threatened. Because they are.