You couldn’t carry Galileo’s jock strap

If you are Qanon, anti-vax, Trumpazoid, or Big Lie, don’t think you are brave Galileo contradicting the Church with astronomical truths about the movement of planets.  You are not Philip K. Dick with humanitarian visions of blade runners and electric sheep, nor Carl Sagan bringing back quantum stories from the Big Bang, nor Leonard Cohen searching for the divine in a magic chord. 

No, little worm, you are a steward of the false, an apostle of the dangerous hoax, and a groveling servant of a raging sociopath.  You seek only to destroy.  You are the embodiment of the lies of Joseph Goebbels, the arrogance of Benito Mussolini, and the blind ambition of Adolph Hitler.  You pander to patriotism, claiming that your traitorous mythology is for the good of the country.  You are the wretched failure of imagination.  Lusting after the ruin of democracy disqualifies you for the privilege of free speech, for your very purpose is to extinguish that American birthright.  Those of us who still remember right and wrong, and revere the kind of America that generations have died to protect—that’s the America of laws and norms and the Constitution, in case you don’t know—we will reject your pseudo-science, pseudo-spiritual gibberish.  The contest is not the free exchange of ideas in civilized debate.  You poisoned that well even before 1-6-21.  No, this is a fight against the tyranny of evil, with the chuckling of satan as a soundtrack.  Get out while you can, fascist wannabes.  Don’t look now, but history is wall-to-wall with the unlucky demises of tyrants.  You’re just waiting on the doorstep, and your ticket is already punched.  

mvd

Sirhan Sirhan Still Behind Bars

Denial of parole for Sirhan Sirhan today by California governor Gavin Newsom brought back a flood of memories.  Sirhan has served 53 years for the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.  At the time of his death, Robert Kennedy was riding a growing wave of popularity in that year’s presidential election.  He might very well have been elected president against Richard Nixon.  Think of that “what if!”  With Kennedy’s momentum as an anti-war candidate, the Vietnam war might have been significantly shortened, saving the lives of thousands of Americans.  We would never have had Watergate and the debacle of the Nixon scandal.  In what other ways would the bedrock of history shifted?  Would our course have been steady, or would we have spun out of control?  We will never know.  History does not allow mulligans.  But the author of that massive tragedy should stay behind bars.  Permanently.  Props to Gavin Newsom.  He made the right call.

mvd

January 6, 2021–The Witches’ Tale

“When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Fair is foul and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air.” 

The Witches, Macbeth, (act 1, scene 1)

When there is evil afoot, it is aways a temptation to fall back on Shakespeare.  Writers and pundits everywhere are eyeing “By the pricking of my thumbs/Something wicked this way comes,” from MacBeth.  I chose the witches from MacBeth too for the epigram above, foretelling the duplicity and upside-down morality of the Trump years, and the ass-backwards arguments of the new extremists on the right.

Here, on the anniversary of the January 6, 2021, insurrection, at a time when 40 percent of Americans believe the nonsense mythology of the stolen election, there is every reason to believe that a calamity is on our doorstep.  The author of the lie, the twice-impeached, disgraced, defeated, ex-president is rapidly becoming irrelevant.  You can practically see the rust accumulating on him.  Before long he’ll be little more than a rusted out hulk, abandoned in shallow water, waiting for the tide to wash him into obscurity.

The lies, however, live on.  Just a bunch of over-enthusiastic tourists?  Bullshit.  A false flag operation by the left?  Double bullshit.  Anyone who had the tv on during that monstrous January day knew that the horror unfolding before them was a violent attempt by Trump and his followers to overthrow a legitimate presidential election.  It was not a party; it was not spontaneous.  It was a deadly plot to crush the mainstay of our democracy: the vote, the will of the people.  If insurrectionists had succeeded, our democracy would have been dealt a savage and perhaps mortal blow. 

But we need to be on guard now more than ever.  The Capitol riot of 01-06-21 was not the end, it was the beginning.  The uneducated, the delusional, the anti-Semitic, and the already bigoted and racist crowds were given permission and legitimacy by Trump, made to think that they were somehow mainstream.  They continue to metastasize around the country, spreading hate, junk medical advice, and violence.  Representative Colin Allred, of the Texas 32nd District, spoke eloquently at today’s January 6th Memorial.  Of his sadness over the insurrection, he movingly said, “My sadness has become resolve.”  And that, folks, is what we all need right now.  Mold our sadness, depression, anger, and disbelief of the attack on democracy into solidity and steadfastness.  We must have the courage to guide it away from the babbling of witches and the approaching darkness.  Our democracy still represents the light of the world.  There is no substitute for our stewardship.

mvd