How do we Save our Democratic-Republic? By being more forceful in our response to the haters
ere I am, early morning, Dec 31, 2023 on the internet. Yeah, I am a night owl, and anymore I am pretty much only moving around when everybody else is either asleep or thinking about winding down and going to sleep. There are personal reasons for this, in that I have had two bouts of skin cancer and in order to go in the sun, I need to wear long sleeve shirts, long pants, put on a hat and rub 50 spf sunscreen on any area that is going to be hit by the sun. I feel safer at night.
That is only part of the reason. In addition, I have always, even as a child been one of those people that hated going to bed at night. My mom always said that I seemed afraid I would miss something. So, naturally, even then I fought going to bed, which meant the next morning I wasn’t exactly ready to rise and shine either.
But in any case, it being the middle of the night, what do I do with this wide awake time? Well, what about reading articles on Daily Kos and follow some of those trains of thought to the source. Tonight while doing that, I came up with some interesting thoughts which I decided might be good to share with others. Not that a lot of you haven’t likely thought of these things already, but we can never have too many reminders.
So it was that I ended up reading an article called “Sitting on a Powder Keg: The US braces for a year, and an election, like no other”. In it, the reporter points out that this year, we are having a run up to a Presidential election that is pitting a Populist Authoritarian who is threatening to do away with all the norms that have kept our nations liberty and democratic republic in good standing for over 200 years up against the oldest president to even have the office.
In the article, several of people were quoted as saying, I think rightly that Biden has done more and gotten less credit than any president in recent history. Part of this is because the other guy, who lets face it is threatening the freedom of a lot of us on a daily basis, has a mob of support that believes everything that comes out of his mouth. They hate Biden because he tells them to hate Biden. That’s all they need. It harkens back, for me, to when he said that he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes. He has done what I consider worst than simply shoot somebody and his supporters STILL believe every word out of his mouth. They even followed his instructions to go fight at the Capitol to overturn the legally confirmed election that put Biden in the White House.
But a couple of points were made. We, as Democrats, are sloppy about going on the offensive. While the other side runs around the country, lying and misrepresenting facts, and in some cases just downright making crap up, we tend not to point out reality, and when we do, we don’t tie it to the accusations coming from the enemy. Yes, I consider the Trump minions to be the enemy of the American government and the rule of law and order. They are bullies who want everything their way….including how others live their personal lives.
Let’s take one example to drive that point home. The “disaster” of us pulling our troops out of Afghanistan was made much about, in the media. The Republicans were out in force with nasty rhetoric about “Biden’s misstep” and “horrible desertion of our Afghan allies”. What was not made clear enough in response was that Trump was the one that negotiated the troop downsizing to about 2500 people. So, when that withdrawal came across Biden’s desk, the only options he has was 1. to withdraw as many of those 2500 people as he could out, or 2. send more back in. I can tell right now, I for one had at that point lost all interest in continuing a conflict that started 20 years prior and had been ignored by the media for 18 of those because of the twist over to Iraq.
This shouldn’t all be on Biden, our other representatives that are in the Democratic conference needs to fight each point that Trump and his minions create, often out of their heads, with no real evidence to support it, by refuting it item by item, and without apology or “politeness”.
Bottom line: Some Democrats have allowed the republicans to get away with entirely too much and been silent or at least “reaching across the aisle” to try to work with people that have no intention of working with the Democrats. Cut it out!!
