Vote! It's the Right Thing to Do

 What have we become?  Has mass hysteria wiped every trace of common sense?  Fear mongering is coming at us from both sides of the political spectrum.  Each side blaming the other for destroying our democracy.  I have had enough, short of hiding under my covers for the duration, I am declaring my home a freedom of information zone.

Donald Trump, the master of divergence, has said he will not leave the office of the presidency if he feels the election is fraudulent, so what!  He has been saying that since before the election of 2016, sowing the seeds of doubt about the voting process.  We shrugged it off then, why are we so upset about it now?  Every columnist with even a slight liberal bent is screaming to high heaven that we are facing a constitutional crisis the likes of which has never been seen before.  At every gate to the city are a half a dozen Cassandras warning that behind them are the barbarians ready to sack the 'shinning city on the hill'.  Even the foreign press has jumped into the fray, newspapers such as the Canadian Globe and Mail, the UKs London Times, and the Australian Guardian,   have daily articles on Trumps rampages and reader polls on who will win the election.

Is it because the Republican Senators are so in lock-step behind Trump that they have put politics and party before country?  Is it because Trump has rid the government agencies of long serving people of honor and replaced them with sycophants?  Is it because he has an Attorney General who acts as his personal lawyer and hatchet man?  Is it because he will have packed the Supreme Court with his hand selected jurists?   Or is it something else?

Those who take Trump as a fool, do so at their peril, a fool he is not.  He was schooled to believe that he can do anything he thinks he can do; "The Power of Positive Thinking".  And if anyone still doubts that saying, they should look to Trump as a prime example.  Trump drives ahead, bumbling and stumbling, going forward by sheer will power.  It doesn't matter how many times he fails - five bankruptcies - no problem, look at the successes.  He trades on the name Trump, first his father's reputation and eventually his own.  He has defrauded banks of millions, banks who would rather write off the multi-million-dollar bad debts then admit to their stupidity in trusting him.  He steps in after the work is done and puts his name on the finished project, claiming supremacy.  He is more bluster than brains, more show than substance.

But he does know how to work a crowd.  He knows that once he gets a few people moving in one direction, more will follow and many more after that.  It doesn't take much to start a stampede.  One person in the crowd chanting 'lock her up', soon becomes a crescendo that shakes the walls.  There is a thin line between love and hate, they are two side of the same coin.  The chant of 'lock her up" morphs into 'vote him out'.

His faithful believe that the Corona Virus is a Democratic hoax, they believe Trump when he says masks are for sissies and he mocks his opponent for wearing them.  He flouts convention when he holds political rallies against advice from medical experts.  But he stays well above his maskless devotees.  Those closest to him are carefully screened, no sense tempting fate.  But those crowds move as one.  Trump knows that if he tells them to go to the polls and vote they will.  If he say mail-in ballots are bad they will eschews them for in person voting.

Trump also know that if he can rile up those who are against him by telling them their vote will not count, there will be enough people who believe that.  And if he can get enough journalists and reporters to repeat the message over and over, more people will forgo voting, believing their vote will not count.  I have heard from friends who are worried that their ballot will somehow not be counted.  They are afraid to vote in person and afraid to vote absentee.  That's how you work the crowd folks.  

L. Frank Baum wrote of the man behind the curtain who pushed and pulled the levers that influenced our lives.  Today it is a children's story much like Alice through the looking glass.  That was also a commentary on the politics of the day.  A queen who screams' Off with their heads' and who uses courtiers as play things to amuse herself.  Who will write the fairytale of Donald Trump?

Many of the columnists in the foreign press are claiming that Americas best days are behind her.  They say we have given up our supremacy  to China.  That nothing lasts forever and we are doomed.  One can look at the other great political experiments that have failed, Greece, Rome, and Great Britain.  All, at one time ruled the majority of the civilized world.  The saying went that the sun never set on the British Empire.  Britain is now confined to a tiny island in the north Atlantic, its influence made even smaller because of Brexit. 

Fortunes come and go, but I don't think it is Americas time to go yet.  We have been tried before, and we have come through to the other side stronger, if not more united. Donald Trump is still just one man, a very small man; his ideology is pervasive but erring.  Everyday more and more people are seeing him for what he is, and they are turning away from the philosophy of hatred and division.  I have to believe that the law will prevail, that our constitution will stand, and that our democracy is greater when men of good conscience go out and vote.  All that is needed for evil to flourish, is for good men to do nothing. You can do the one thing that will defeat this threat to our nation; VOTE!

                                                                        I'm just sayin'     

They Are Coming for You Next

 It seems that everyday there is another crisis to be faced and for a lot of people, they have to face it alone.   It may seem overwhelming, exhausting, confusing, and depressing all at the same time.   We are fighting a virus that has killed over 200,000 Americans. And those that do recover, they may face serious health problems down the road.  The economy is in a deep recession and it may be years for it comes back to where it was in January of 2020.  The stock market rises and falls on whims that baffle ordinary Americans.  And any money that people do have, will earn a whopping .02% if they give it to the bank.

And if this isn't enough, the Supreme Court lost a loved and respected member, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  With her death, it makes three vacancies during the Trump administration. Well not quite, the first vacancy was a holdover from President Obama that the Senate refused to bring forward for a vote.  But not this time.  With 44 days until the Presidential election, Mitch McConnel vows to bring any Trump nominee to the floor for a vote.

As bad as this all seems, there is a growing menace, much worse than any of these problems that we are facing.  And it is called Q Anon.

Q showed it's ugly face for the first time on October 28, 2017.  An anonymous caller to an alternative radio station claimed to be working covertly to inform the public of President Trump's battle with the 'deep state'.

Q said the world is in danger from a group of pedophiles who are bent on world domination using child sacrifice.  He went on to say young children are being kidnapped, murdered, their blood is drunk, and their flesh is cannibalized as a way to preserve the youth of the ultra-left.  There is cabal of Hollywood moguls, Jewish bankers, and antifas bent on turning America into a socialistic society that will teach your children to hate you for your 'whiteness'.

Q offers wish fulfillment that at any moment Trump will liberate people from debt and unemployment.  Hate bankers and immigrants? Trump will revamp the banking system and ban all asylum seekers.  Trump is fighting a conspiracy against him and his believers fomented by George Soros. Q is sowing distrust in liberal democracies and putting forth the belief that liberals are Satanists planning the 'New World Order". 

Q has been spreading its ugly indoctrination across the world.  And the world is ripe for this type of cult promotion, eerily similar to the rise of the Nazi party; mass unemployment, a plague, not unlike the Spanish flu of the 20s, and people who are seeking a savior who will deliver them from society's disorder.  The difference between the the 1920s and today - the internet, and the speed with which such doctrine can spread across the globe.

The lockdown has exacerbated the growth of Q Anon, membership increased 120% in March alone, and Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all have experienced an increase in volume of Q conversations during the lockdown.  Converts spent hours augmenting their beliefs and expanding their grievances in concert with other who feel the world is spinning out of their control.

People who fall into Q and other conspiracy thinking are those who have deep insecurities about their place in the world, and in society.  They lack understanding of science, history, and politics.  they have  difficulty with 'critical thinking' instead lean toward 'magical thinking', such as Evangelical beliefs and other 'new-age' spirituality. How fast can the vulnerable be sucked in?  Experts say five days into believing, and buying into the mania, a week at most.

The top five countries espousing Q Anon are; the United States, the UK, Canada , and Australia.  Q is growing, driven by Trump's retweets, and the failure of the United States government to renounce it.  President Trump says he doesn't know much about it but - "they like me very much" and "I heard...these are people who love our country". This is just the acknowledgement that Q Anon needs to keep expanding its reach and spewing its poisonous rhetoric.

In 2019, the FBI labeled Q Anon a domestic terrorist group.  In fact, Q Anon is a cult, a cult by definition is:  1) A small group of persons with beliefs regarded by others as strange and sinister and       2) Misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person, i.e. Trump.

Q Anon is an opportunist ideology,.  Extremist ideologies are often dismissed until they take power as did the Nazis, the communists, and Isis did.  There have been hundreds of such cults though out the years but most do not achieve the prominence of Q Anon.  They come and go in just a few months when exposed to the light of reason.  The difference with Q is the acceptance by the Republican Party and its leader, Donald Trump.  In the 2020 election there are fifteen congressional candidates on the Republican ballot who support the Q Anon theory.  And many have garnered Trump's support. 

The well known cult expert, Steven Hassan has said: "Donald trump fits the stereotypical profile of all destructive cults.  These traits include malignant narcissism. Trump can easily be compared to Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon and other cult leaders."  However Trump is worse than any religious cult leader, because political cults are far more destructive.  And what makes him doubly dangerous is he knows there is no one left in the Republican party who will stand up against him.  Those who did, were forced out - to our shame.

The Republicans have one more chance to wrest control of their party from this megalomaniac.  They can stand up now, it is not too late, they can tell Trump and his evil cabal that they have had enough.  There once was a man who brought down a Republican who terrorized the party when he asked, "Sir, have you no sense of decency?"

                                                                        I'm just sayin'