The Easiest Decision in the World

I know that no one here needs to hear this, but I will say it. anyway.

The election choices are so obvious, so overwhelming, that it is depressing just to consider that so many people are struggling with what choice to make, or actually voting for the wrong one.

One party, the Democrats, in large part works for the American citizens, trying to make their lives and prospects better. Are the Democrats perfect, are their ideas and representatives perfect? Of course not. But given the nature of political parties, the Democratic Party from 1928 or so, has been one of the world’s great political parties.

Look around you, and realize that Social Security and Medicare are wholly due to the Democrats. The Republicans decried them as socialism, and now think they are strong enough to actually take them away from you. Vote for Republicans, and they will make that one of their first goals. And people who are not millionaires are okay with that? Because gas prices went up for a while, with the oil companies making literally billions of dollars of profits, and trying to blame it on the Democrats, who had a bill which would have tried to stop price gouging, and the Republicans blocked it?

Minimum wage was a Democratic idea. For decades, Republican have blocked any attempt to raise the minimum wage past $7.25. They do this through use of the filibuster. You want to vote for that? All the legislation which helps protect your safety in the workplace, was passed by Democrats. Anything which tries to combat climate change which could destroy life on this planet, was passed or supported by Democrats. And Republicans fought or blocked all of it, and they will let the planet burn up if they hold power. And people want to vote for that?

How did Republicans get this way? Well, starting in about 1870 or so, they were the party of big business; laissez-faire, and social darwinism, which argued that those who made the most money, were the evolutionary winners, and that everyone who struggled, or died on the streets from starvation, were the losers who were not meant to survive. Republicans have continued in this vein, though occasionally cloaked in pious phrases. Anything which attempts to equalize the tax code, to get corporations to pay more, they are vociferously against.

Republicans’ only economic “programs,” are to cut corporate taxes even further. That’s it. Oh, and of course to try to pay for it by taking away people’s Social Security and Medicare. That is not my partisan framing of it, that is exactly what they are going to do, if you give hem power. And people are not able to realize this, or they think that inflation, which has risen worldwide, is the fault of Biden and the Democrats? I guarantee you that inflation will subside next year. But would you prefer to give up your safety net, to be taken by a Republican Party which actually has no plan to fight inflation, other than cut taxes on the wealthy?

And I won’t even get into the cult of violence which has suffused the Republican Party, and which historians are now comparing to the days of the 1930’s, where fascism took over most of Europe, leading to incomprehensible suffering, death, torture, and a World War which killed millions trying to fight it.

Maybe it’s some kind of human quirk, that when presented with an overwhelmingly obvious choice, many people perversely choose the wrong one, to try to show that they are cleverer, that they never go for the obvious, it is too mundane. Maybe it is that far too many people now embrace the Nazi-type brutality, they want to destroy the people they think are their enemies. Maybe it is hatred of anyone who is not them, a different color or religion or ethnicity. Many humans have always had some part of the nature which is drawn to this, as if they feel so powerless and angry and fearful, that only by destroying their believed enemies, can they feel powerful.

The problem is that with technological advances, the ultra-wealthy now have the ability to use the media and the internet, to attempt to brainwash people into believing them, and being used by them to help them get even richer and more powerful. Guess what? The Musks and Thiels and the rest are not going to give you any of their money. You are not going to be any more of a part of their “team,” than the peasants in the Middle Ages were part of the “team” of kings and aristocrats who would send them out to be fodder for their wars of acquisition or spite.

And the new demigod of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, is a born-rich person, who got tens of millions from his father, and has spent his entire life taking money from the yokels whom he despises. He is the epitome of a demagogue, and yet so many people wanted to fall for it. The world he envisions is one where he and Un, and Putin, and MBS of Saudi Arabia, and Orban, and Bolsinaro, who will come back again, rule the world, through terror and force, just like Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin did. It’s really the same thing, but with the technology giving the fascists even more power to try to convince you to submit to them.

Part of this effort is to try to trick you into thinking that what they tell you the issues are, are the real issues. Oh, no, do not worry about losing your Social Security and Medicare. Do not notice that temperatures are rising each year, and the hurricanes are becoming more frequent and worse. Do not worry too much about the right to abortion being gone, and the books banned in libraries and schools, and your neighbors encouraged to spy on you and collect rewards if you had an abortion, or read the wrong book. Instead, you are told to concentrate on gas prices, crime, which is greater per capita in the red states, and then a bunch of silliness coming from the Far Left, about using multiple pronouns for themselves, and saying that they are “woke.”

The Republicans have tried this for 150 years, trying o find some hobgoblin to get the voters to vote against, while ignoring the fact that they are stealing your money to take for themselves. Anarchists, Bolsheviks, evolutionary theory, Socialism, Red Scares, rock music, hippies, flag-burning, drugs, welfare queens, unions, atheism, on and on. You are constantly being told to focus on those; to ignore the climate, and the banning of abortion, and the infusing of mandatory religion in public schools, and a consortium of billionaires attempting to rule the world, and every single aspect of your lives.

Again, I am not someone who loves all every single one of the Democratic candidates and officials. I am no fan of the Far Left, but that is a small group. But the comparison between Democrats and Republicans is so stark, so beyond obvious, and worse than ever in American history, that I cannot comprehend why anyone who is not a billionaire, or a racist or anti-semite or extreme misogynist, or a psychotic who craves violence and death and destruction, would ever vote for any Republican currently on the ballot. They want to take your right to vote away, too, does that matter to you?

I don’t know whom I am writing to, who might read it who was thinking of voting for Republicans, but might change their mind. Maybe nobody. But one tries, at least as much as one can. That was the idea behind this democracy, after all. It is not guaranteed, of course. “A republic if we can keep it.” Can we? It is up to the citizens, with all the uncertainty that this currently implies.