“You hide behind logic, secure with your facts
You've a history of time to back up your claims
Protecting the future by filling up the cracks
That might expose the real nature of your games”
Dry Weather – Crass
I woke up the other morning to the news that comedian Amy Schumer had been arrested at the US Capitol protesting the forthcoming confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to a life time appointment on the US Supreme Court. An eventuality made certain by the complicity of Joe Manchin and Susan Collins in the wake of the stifled FBI report.
Coincidently, I was also watching episode seven of Ken Burns’ and Lynn Norvick’s breathtaking series on the Vietnam War. It was this episode, centred around the 1968 Presidential election, where I first heard about the treachery of Richard Nixon. Emissaries of Nixon, with his approval, conspired with the South Vietnamese government to undermine negotiations and withdraw from peace talks. In order to win Richard Nixon engaged in treason four years before Watergate.
In fact, with the exception of President G.H.W. Bush (who beat Dukakis fair and square, yes Willie Horton was rough politics, but that is to be expected), every Republican President in the last fifty years has been elected with nefarious help that, in three examples, bordered on treason.
Of course it was likely just coincidence that the US Iranian Embassy Hostages were released at the exact minute that President Ronald Reagan completed his first Inaugural. Just as it is coincidence that the negotiations where slowed down before the November 1980 Presidential elections. This, of course, had nothing to do with the Iran/Contra scandal and the selling of arms to Iran in breach of a legal embargo, that happened later. Pure coincidence and not, definitely not, treason.
Then we get to Dubya. President by decree of the Supreme Court. He lost the popular vote but apparently won the narrowest of Electoral college victories; we’ll never really know for certain, the court stopped the count and 9/11 “united” the country. I am assuming the ignorance regarding the warnings of activities of Al-Qaeda that led to 9/11 was institutional stupidity. I don’t think the US government was involved in some kind of Loose Change grand conspiracy. I am definitely in the 9/11 cock-up camp. But when you consider the damage that the reprobates of the Bush II Administration enabled with that particular cock-up, especially in Iraq… not to mention the lack of action on climate change and the 2008 financial crash, we will be living with consequences of the 2000 election for generations.
Of course the jury is still out on Trump and the likely possibility of massive collusion with a foreign power to an extent not seen since the days of Richard Nixon. We have yet to find out the degrees of sophistication the Russians employed on behalf of the Trump campaign, but indications suggest knowledge that would hint at GOP collusion.
In between these stolen and treasonous elections we have had the millions spent trying to undermine democratically elected Democratic administrations (Whitewater and Benghazi to name but two).
We’ve seen the appointment of at first one, now two accused sex-offenders to the Supreme Court.
We’ve seen the refusal to even consider a Supreme Court Justice (Merrick Garland) and hundreds of lower court appointees, such that the judicial branch is being reshaped for a generation or more, with the threatened attacks on regulations, voting rights, labor rights and, of course, Roe v Wade. Seats stolen from a legitimate Democratic President.
Then there is the use of Gerrymandering at the State level that means the Democrats will need an 11% lead in the popular vote in November to retake the House of Representatives.
I titled this blog post after the phrase “By Any Means Necessary” coined by Jean-Paul Satre and popularized by Malcom X. The phrase was used in the context of class warfare, and I use it here with a degree of irony. Class Warfare is not being waged by trendy-lefties in black polo-neck sweaters and berets, well it is, but they aren’t very good at it. The real class war is being waged by plutocrats and corporations, the elite class that scorns “liberal elites”. If they haven’t actually won this war (and I think they have), they’ve come damn close.
These Republicans who couldn’t care less about the Republic have been a cancer on the body politics for as long as I have been alive. They have fought using all the means at their disposal, they have cheated and they have won, repeatedly. They care not one jot for the constitution of the United States, nor good governance, nor the people. Their Presidential nominees have committed treason. They have consistently lied, falsified and obstructed. There is strong evidence that their latest Supreme Court nominee committed perjury at his own confirmation hearing. They’re laughing at us. They have no honour and they do not care one jot. They have done all of this with total impunity. The believe they are entitled to power and will do anything to retain it, by any means necessary. Anyone who disagrees is un-American. “Lock her up! Lock her up!”
These market-driven Maoists deserve to be turfed out of office in November, not just for a couple of years, but for forever. When we win, if we win, start the hearings. Start the impeachments. Start to treat them as they treat us.
The means is the mid-term vote, and it is necessary.
The Soundtrack has been update… six tracks of righteous female rage… it seems appropriate.