I live and breathe politics far more than is healthy to do. I don’t do this because I love politics. I do this because I am profoundly concerned that the wonderful idea that was our representative democracy at its inception is in peril. Peril. Real, no b.s., train is bearing down on you, and you are tied to the tracks, type danger. Civic responsibility goes hand in hand with democratic rights.
The paucity of compassion for others, the lack of respect for the real Constitution of the United States and its first 10 amendments, also known as the Bill of Rights, the disregard of facts, I find all these things nauseating. Politics has sunk to its lowest level and it is not all on the “right” but I find that the “left” cannot tell lies with a straight face for the most part, and that the right does so with impunity.
I’ve done my share of propagandizing in the last 10 years, but I don’t tell lies. I’ve written pieces that tried to nudge readers toward a certain viewpoint. I’ve used tactics that are less than admirable in my writing over the years. I am not writing from any pristine pedestal. But I am writing from my heart, with my head, and not promoting any deceit. Truth will out. At least that is what I once thought.
Religion has no place in politics in America. Yet the separation of church and state is being attacked. There can be no liberty, religious or otherwise, when the two are mixed.
The extremist right-wing, Koch- backed, boosted, and birthed “Tea Party” sullies the good name of an anti-corporate protest against the original East India Tea Company that was seminal in conveying the message of why the U.S. had to declare its independence from the classist, oligarchical, corporatist British Empire. Check out the REAL story of the Boston Tea Party. I just left a voice message on Thom Hartmann’s comment line asking him to digitize the copy of the first hand account of the real Boston Tea Party, Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773. You could do the same!
But people living in cities in Michigan have had their right to vote tossed out the window by the Governor who disbands duly elected municipal governing bodies and appointing autocratics who act like corporate raiders to sell off the public resources of the municipality, often to their cronies, for short-term financial gain that only hurts the people of the city and does nothing to solve long-term financial problems.
Florida was purging voter rolls according to lists of supposedly non-citizens and they will not say who created those lists, that included natural-born American citizens such as WWII veterans who had been awarded the Bronze Star for actions in the Battle of the Bulge; the Federal Justice Department has demanded an immediate end to the purges.
Rights that women won decades ago to have control over their own bodies and health are being attacked and dismantled systematically on a state by state basis in what is obviously a nationally orchestrated campaign.
The one person, one vote basis of our democratic system has been thrown out the window by politically motivated judicial malfeasance at the highest levels of the land in its Citizens United ruling that allow elections to be swamped by the influence and biased advertisements of a plutocracy of an extremely small number of über-wealthy, corporatist individuals.
A presidential hopeful is an outright liar that seem to not give a damn about anyone or anything and certainly not the truth.
There are so many stories behind these bits of info I’ve splatted onto your screen; stay with me for the month and I will tell you about them in more detail as I participate in another * Blog Every F***ing Day * challenge also known as BlogHer’s NaBloPoMo “Jump”-themed June Challenge.
If you feel strongly about any of the things I mention here, let me know, LEAVE A COMMENT, and I might just expand upon and expound on the particulars you want to know from this list of things we all need to know and about which we disseminate information far and wide.
Happy June, Happy Friday. Go do something this weekend to save our representative democracy.
Note: You may copy and use the featured image, the Vote image at the top of this post, freely for Progressive purposes. My image is a derivative image of one you may find here.
