Year: 2018

Are you angry? I mean, really angry? Angry about Brett Kavanaugh? Angry about the administration’s refusal to consult science about…anything? Angry about the weather? NFL players kneeling? Liberals calling for impeaching the president? Conservatives actually taking the president seriously? The president?

This is not healthy for the country or for you. And heading into the midterm elections, it’s not helping the country have anything close to a reasoned debate about the issues.

Time to breathe.

I hate to say it, but it doesn’t look like the Democrats are going to win back the Senate, and the House is going to be closer that many political analysts thought in the summer. If you’re on the left, that means total GOP control of the Congress for two more years. More deregulation, more pollution, less health care, more tax cuts for the wealthy, and more men making decisions for women.

What to do?

I know. Vote. Register to vote if you haven’t done that, but if you have, vote. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to register and vote, especially if you want to back up your complaints with action. Don’t let older voters, who supported Donald Trump and vote in large numbers, outvote you.

Have you seen this video?

Yes? Then if you haven’t registered, what are you waiting for?

No? Then take it as a challenge and register and vote.

That’s the surefire strategy for effecting change. Otherwise, politicians will dismiss your concerns and see you as irrelevant. Because, in a sense, you are.

It bothers me greatly that many Americans will tip their hats to both active duty and veteran soldiers, thank them for their service and defense of this country, and then not follow-up with the one single best way to show your pride and commitment to their efforts.

Vote.

Make yourself relevant.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Yes, I’ve been reading Karl Marx while listening to Green Day.

Yes, I’ll explain.

You’ve heard the phrase: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Marx wrote that in an essay in 1852, comparing the rise to dictator of Napoleon’s nephew Louis Napoleon to a farce when compared to Napoleon’s rise in 1799, which occurred–you guessed it–on 18 Brumaire according to the French Revolutionary calendar.

Yes, I know, great way to ruin a pithy historical reference.

I digress.

The farce seems to be upon us, but this time it’s the second time around of the Reagan Revolution and it’s being perpetrated by a clownish president, the High Holiness of Hypocrisy, Mitch McConnell, and the tragic figure who smiles while having her reputation ripped off of her like a cheap bodice, Senator Susan Collins of Maine. There are, of course, other actors, including the nominee himself, Brett “Keg” Kavanaugh, Joe “DINO” Manchin, and Senator Lindsay Graham, the Frddie Blassie Award winner for his lack of decorum or of saying anything that someone should want to listen to, and the media machine that kept it in front of us for the past two weeks.

But farce it is, and my sense is that Ronald Reagan is spinning so fast in his grave we could tap him as a power source. Yes, the main ideas of smaller government, increased recognition of religious rights, tax cuts, and increased military spending are still in the GOP jukebox, but now they’ve added the overt racism that comes with opposing social programs and housing opportunity, a tax cut bill that punishes vast swaths of the middle class and will result in them paying more in April than what they received in their checks, anti-unionism, voter suppression, tolerance and, in some cases, acceptance, of white supremacist groups, unchecked sexism, and the vile, uncompromising, inappropriate, dangerous, misogynistic, insulting blather that comes from the president’s mouth and phone on a moment-by-moment basis.

And you know what? The GOP doesn’t care. The president doesn’t care. The right wing media doesn’t care. The Senate clearly doesn’t care, and the House hasn’t cared since 1994.

That’s the farce.

But we can rebuild this country. We have the technology. And the effort has to come from both left and right. We start by electing Democrats to the Congress, but more importantly, to the statehouses. If you have a state legislative or Gubernatorial election this November, it’s key that you keep or elect Democrats to office because they will have the responsibility to remap state districts in 2021, after the next census. It’s also important because state legislators become seasoned at that level and then become attractive candidates for federal office. The GOP has dome this masterfully for the past 30 years, and look at where they are now.

And when you consider that of the 7 presidential elections held since 1992, the GOP has one a popular majority…once–that’s right, once, in 2004–then  you can see the effects of a state strategy that pays off. You can also see how farcical the GOP claim is of being the majority party or of garnering support from the American people.

It’s crucial to come out and vote.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest