Yesterday, the Republicans got rid of their own Speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Plenty of people are pointing fingers at Democrats for not backing McCarthy up, but honestly why is it Democrats’ job to backstop Republican dysfunction and malfeasance? Sounds like a them problem and not a we problem, and if they have a small handful of ne’er-do-wells consisting of the most extreme and noxious political personalities in the nation, then it’s up to less-noxious Republicans to sort that out.
It bears mentioning that Nancy Pelosi got a lot done between 2021 – 2022 because she is competent and knew how to keep her caucus united and functioning.
I’ve been writing a blog of some sort since 2003 and throughout that time, I have observed and chronicled the slow-rolling decline of the Republican Party. Whether or not you agreed with its platforms and ideas, it was a competent participant in our federal system of government at least until 1994 when Newt Gingrich really launched its current descent into bellicose extremism. Then it morphed into a parochial religiousist party, and now it is nothing more than a nihilist cult, busily scaring its voters, reinforcing and feeding its least-informed and neediest base, and trying to out-do one-another in fealty to the cult of Donald Trump, the maximum rule. The Red Caesar. The emperor-king.
The Republicans had an amoral adulterer preside over the Clinton impeachment, all the while spouting moralistic claptrap. Then they stole the election from Al Gore, they destablized the Middle East by invading Iraq, then President Obama’s election completely fried their brains as the Tea Party and Sarah Palin ushered in a whole new era of know-nothing nihilist ignorance, culminating in the cult of Donald Trump – the most un-American and anti-American President ever to serve.
As the Republican Party implodes, the Democrats should let them have at it. If the country for whatever reason needs a functioning “conservative” political party, then someone really ought to found one because the Republican Party isn’t it, and never will be again.
Defenestrate the Republican Party just as they defenestrated Kevin McCarthy, and cast it into the ashbin of history, with the Whigs.
Silly season came early this year, just oozing from the town of Cheektowaga. A town supervisor’s race explains the silliness. The candidates are Brian Nowak (D) and Michael Jasinski (R). Jasinski is being supported by outgoing Supervisor, Diane Benczkowski.
Things must not be looking too great for the Jasinski campaign, because he and Benczkowski have manufactured out of thin air probably the most transparently idiotic nontroversy, calling for the censure – nay resignation – of Councilman Brian Nowak because he had the audacity to point out that a woman under Council consideration to serve on a volunteer Cheektowaga town ethics board has flown a Confederate battle flag outside her home. So, they’re accusing him of “bribery”.
Well, Benczkowski and Jasinski (and Benczkowski’s lawyer, Gary Borek), believe that they can propel Jasinski to victory by libeling Brian Nowak, accusing him of making a $400,000 bribe (!) and of being mean to the Confederate flag lady.
The bribery allegation is as absurd in its supposed facts as it is politically manufactured. Nowak doesn’t have $400,000 with which to bribe anyone, and the whole thing is ridiculous. It goes without saying, I suppose, that if Jasinski and Benczkowski and Borek think that bribery took place, they should call the cops. Or the DA. There should be an investigation and, if warranted, a prosecution. Maybe if Nowak is indicted for bribery, then the town board can take that up. What it is doing now, instead, is defaming him. Libeling him. Notwithstanding the transparent bullshittery and absence of proof, this silly little wannabe-junta put forth a censure resolution, and it lost 3-3. WNYMedia took some great snippets from that meeting.
In an election year, a month or so out from election day, Nowak, an astute, sincere, and honest politician, is being attacked in a nakedly political theatrical production where people pretend that it was somehow improper to point out that the lady applying for the ethics board admittedly flew a confederate flag outside her home.
I have to say, as an aside, I love the town commentariat wondering which flags Nowak approves. Good question. We should narrow that down. I’m willing to bet he’s not ok with Confederate flags or Nazi flags. I’d reckon that if you’re flying one of those outside your house on a busy road and you want to volunteer for the town ethics board, your feelings and opinions about race, religion, equality, genocide, and diversity are going to be called into question. It’s an ethics board.
At the town council meeting on the 26th, especially as to the “bribery” nonsense, Nowak correctly put the people defaming him on notice that he intends to pursue every legal avenue available to him in order to combat the defamatory accusations being made against him. Frankly, I hope he sues them all to Kingdom come.
Nowak’s supporters rallied behind him, and Benczkowski’s lawyer, Borek, takes to Facebook, (obvs), to attack Nowak and his supporters some more.
Borek is claiming that it is a First Amendment violation for a town board to reject an applicant for a volunteer post based on the fact that the applicant has literally, admittedlym, flown the flag of white supremacist secession, sedition, and slavery. He cites some legal cases to support his conclusion that “Dan Jones” is a “wannabe attorney.” Luckily, I am an actual attorney. So, I looked into it.
I should note that the applicant, whom I am not naming, blames her husband for his “act of rebellion” in flying that flag and she denies holding the views of genocide, slavery, white supremacy, and the subjugation of Black Americans for which that flag stands. I have no reason to doubt her protestations, but the fact remains that it was her house and that flag was flying there. If I flew that flag outside our house, I wouldn’t be married anymore. It’s not a joke, and she’s not a victim. If anyone should be apologizing, it’s the person who deliberately flew that flag or allowed it to be flown. The accusations, victimhood, and lack of contrition are absolutely glaring.
I also have to note the irony of this comment Borek left to his own other comment:
So, it’s ok for Gary Borek to threaten people exercising their First Amendment rights, just to be clear. A conspiracy implies criminality, and there is no criminality at issue here. If Borek thinks there is, he should immediately report this to the police or have someone swear out a complaint, because falsely accusing someone of a crime is libel per se. Also, it is protected and non-defamatory opinion to characterize as racist someone who has admittedly, knowingly, flown a Confederate flag outside their house, and I don’t care what sort of excuses or explanations you have to try and paint yourself as the victim. I mean, if you can’t maintain a basic level of intellectual consistency within the same thread, are you even Facebooking?
When we attorneys cite cases, we look to make sure the circumstances are substantially similar. The problem with Borek’s analysis is that the case he cites is factually distinguishable from the one at hand. In Gagliardi, the Plaintiffs alleged that the government officials had retaliated against their protected speech by doing something that had a direct adverse affect on a property right – something of value, which they owned. They alleged that the Village and its officials made improper decisions as to the zoning and zoning enforcement of an industrial property adjacent to the Gagliardis’ own, which resulted in harm to their property rights.
Generally, a person can bring a claim under 18 USC §1983 if they allege that their Constitutional right to something was violated in retribution for an expression of speech. It’s not an absolute right, though. Assuming that flying a Confederate flag of white supremacy, sedition, and slavery is an exercise of free speech, what did our applicant here lose? What right belonging to her was violated? She did not lose her job. She did not lose any property right. Nothing belonging to her was harmed in any way – real or imagined. She never had a property right to sit on that ethics board.
Look at the cases Mr. Borek cites in the quote above. “Wrongful discharge”; “denied permits”. Someone lost a job. Someone’s property rights were affected. In the case of this ethics board applicant, she lost nothing to which she had any pre-existing right. She did not lose employment or remuneration – the ethics board is a part-time volunteer position. Her house was not foreclosed upon nor was any sort of zoning decision implemented to the detriment of her property right.
In Christie BB v. Isaiah CC, 194 A.D.3d 1130 (3d Dept 2021), an appellate panel found that, although a Confederate flag emblem was protected speech, it is a “symbol inflaming the already strained relationship between the parties” and that the Family Court can factor in its continued presence in analyzing what may be in the best interests of a mixed-race child.
The right to free speech is not absolute or without consequence, and the government can definitely deprive someone of a right due to speech when that speech is especially repulsive. In Pappas v. Giuliani, 290 F3d 143 (2d Cir. 2002), that Court found that a police officer’s First Amendment rights were not violated when he was terminated from the NYPD after sending bigoted leaflet materials. (Note that in our case here, the ethics board applicant did not have a job that she lost – indeed, she has not been harmed at all as to any right to which she was previously entitled.)
When a government employee is terminated as a result of protected speech – of a “matter of public concern” – courts must “arrive at a balance between the interests of the citizen, in commenting on matters of public concern, and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.” (Pickering v. Board of Ed., 391 U.S.563, 568 (1968).) If the government entity believes that the speech would “potentially interfere with or disrupt the government’s activities, and can persuade the court that the potential disruptiveness was sufficient to outweigh the First Amendment value of that speech,” it has acted lawfully.
The Pappas court found that the right to speak one’s mind about matters of public concern, “is not absolute. At times, the right of free speech conflicts with other important governmental values, posing the problem which interest should prevail…For this reason, the employee’s right of free speech is sometimes subordinated to the interest of the effective functioning of the governmental employer.”
The Court in Pappas found that the proper functioning of a police department is dependent on the respect and trust of the community and the perception that it enforces the law fairly and without bias. If the police treats one segment of the population with contempt, that population will see the police as an oppressor, and the work of the police is impaired.
The police officer in Pappas distributed leaflets hostile to Jewish and Black people, and the Court found that these statements damaged the effectiveness of the police department. They cause harm and strife. “The restrictions of the First Amendment do not require the [NYPD] to continue the employment of an officer whose dissemination of such racist messages so risks to harm the Departnment’s performance of its mission. “A policeman may have a constitutional right to [speak his mind], but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.” Pappas, 290 F.3d at 147, citing McAuliffe v. Mayor of New Bedford, 155 Mass. 215, 220 (1892), cited in Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 143-44 (1982).
Likewise, our prospective ethics board member has a constitutional right to fly all the Confederate flags she or her husband wants; she does not have a constitutional right to be a member of the town ethics board.
If the town feels that it would harm the reputation of the ethics board, or the board’s performance of its mission by appointing someone to it who arguably espouses Confederate viewpoints, then it is incumbent upon the Council, which appoints people to that board, to vet these prospective members and prevent the appointment of people who fly flags which stand for chattel slavery of Black people.
I think that the situation involving our Confederate-flag-waving ethics board applicant more closely follows the situation in Pappas, and the town’s hand is even stronger because there wasn’t a firing – there was a declination to appoint. The town didn’t take her flag, or her property, or any right belonging to her.
What would have happened had the board failed properly to vet this person and it came out later that this now-member of the ethics board had on a couple of occasions had a pro-slavery treason flag flying in front of her house? Would that have been better? Or would that have harmed the reputation and interests of the town and its ability efficiently and without disruption to carry out its activities?
The town of Cheektowaga has residents from myriad backgrounds, religions, and skin colors. It absolutely should not blindly or ignorantly be hiring someone to any town office – elected or not, paid or not, who has flown a flag of sedition and racial hatred outside their house. These three should be thanking Nowak for bringing this to their attention before the appointment so as to avoid a lot of bad press and embarrassment later.
The war is not going as planned. The sweltering August heat persists into these early days of September, and our window air conditioners can scarcely keep up. Our rations of cold quinoa are more frequently replaced by hot takes as we muster from time to time to do battle with the woke Yankees who would end our very way of life. Our crippling monotony is broken only by the occasional rush of excitement when the Yankees fly their flag, which would turn me into a woman at the slightest provocation. What, dear Mabel, will become of us if we are forced against Heaven to treat every person as a person?
Our general has taken our Bud Light, leaving us parched. We are entertained periodically with “Sound of Freedom” and “Try That in a Small Town”. One day we were ordered to show reverance to the ballad of “Rich Men North of Richmond” and the next day it was lost at the battle of Target Aisle. Our lifted pickups roll coal to own the libs, yet these are but fleeting successes. Oh, Mabel, how our leaders forsake us in these trying times. We do not know for how much longer we might sip from the cold brews of pumpkin cream, which soothe us in times of despair. If you could spare it, please Venmo me some Greybacks to sate my thirst.
In South Cheektowaga, though, the battle flag flies high, reminding all who see it for what we stand – seditious rebellion against the united States, the enslavement of Africans, the divine supremacy of the white race, and secession in order to secure for ourselves and our descendants these unending ideals for which we fight. Must not these voices of truth and feudal plantation honor be included within the “diversity” about which the woke Yankees cry incessantly? Woe be unto those who would impose on us the woke mind virus to infect us with ideations of “equality” and “liberty.”
It was actually a guy with a Hungarian surname who supplied drugs to a woman with an Irish surname who was about to testify as a witness in a trial involving alleged racketeering and bribery by members of the Italian mob.
To my knowledge, all the people involved are American citizens.
This is the text of a letter I wrote to the Casilio campaign and other listed candidates / electeds who are hosting what is being called a “Migrant Crisis Forum” tonight.
Will pitchforks and torches be provided, or should your anti-immigrant posse bring their own?
I am truly disappointed that I am unable to join your “migrant crisis forum” this evening. I would very much have appreciated the opportunity to tell all of the participants, to your faces, how ashamed and disgusted I am by your use of some of the most vulnerable people in our community as pieces in a political game of checkers. Your flyer for this event invites people to have their “voices heard” because Democrats have “blindly welcomed this crisis without any input from residents.” I wasn’t aware that asylum-seeking refugees, whose cases are being managed by a coalition of local resettlement agencies, needed to subject themselves and their housing and safety to your right-wing base.
I say “ashamed” because western New York already has a reputation for being especially racist and xenophobic. Stoking hatred and politicizing Immigration is an easy play for craven politicians who wish to attain power through fear.
Here we have an invitation to a “migrant crisis forum” hosted by people with Italian surnames like “Casilio” and “Todaro” and Polish ones like “Zachowicz” and “Jasinski”, with Kracker and Ortt bringing up the Teutonic rear. Mr. Zachowicz’s campaign even hosted a recent “Party in Polonia” without a hint of irony.
How soon we forget. It was a short century or so ago that white Anglo-Saxon protestants were aghast over the influx of what they considered to be uncouth Catholic immigrants from places like Italy, Ireland, and Poland. These immigrants were derided as degenerate, disease-carrying ne’er-do-wells whose presence in the country was a negative development in all respects.
Now, people fleeing some of the worst violence and political oppression in the world from places like Venezuela, Cuba, and sub-Saharan Africa trek thousands of miles, with just a few belongings, making a perilous journey to come to America to find peace and asylum and a chance at the same prosperity that people like the Casilio family enjoy today. Venezuela is a post-Stalinist socialist failed state. It must have taken a lot for you all to opt for “hate immigrants” over “hate communism” but hey ho, it’s a new, edgier Republican Party than the one I remember.
The tell here is that you don’t refer to these people as refugees or asylum seekers – you rely instead on “migrants” and you know full well that a large swath of your supporters considers these legal refugees as “illegals”. You know they’re not illegal, but you’re not going to correct anyone if they say it. You know that given some help and a work permit, they’d be overwhelmingly good for this region and a net asset, but for some reason you’re not really looking for solutions to a problem – you’re looking for scapegoats. After all, it’s an election year and you have literally nothing else.
When you stoke fear and hatred against refugees, as you have, and as you are, and as you will continue to do (because of politics), you embarrass yourselves. You shame your families. You bring disgrace to your own ancestors who endured exactly the same kind of hatred, scorn, and defamation a century ago.
There’s a difference, though. The difference is that your ancestors weren’t fleeing persecution when they left Poland or Italy. They were just seeking a better economic situation. They came to a country where everyone was from somewhere else and the force of old-world prejudices was blunted. They came here for opportunity and freedom. Yet you would deny this to people who are no different from the Casilios and Todaros and Jasinskis and Zachowiczes of yesterday. Here you all stand, ready to pull the ladder of opportunity up behind you. Here you all are, taking a lazy focus-group-approved, push-poll fueled move to stoke fear, hatred, and division against people who left behind everything they had – and everyone they knew – to start fresh in a free country. Here you all are, making sure that the absolute worst people in our community have someone new to hate and to fear. As refugees from Burma, Sudan, and Somalia enrich our little region with their culture and labor, you insult them and anyone else whose path to this country came about due to war and oppression.
So, that is why I am ashamed. As for disgusted, all of this is disgusting. When my parents came to this country from an Eastern European dictatorship, my father was drafted only 3 years after his arrival, receiving expedited citizenship and he served this country during the Vietnam War. They encountered no problems in the melting pot of Queens, New York, but when stationed in the South Carolina of 1969, they were treated to exactly the kind of vile, hateful rhetoric and behavior that you all now gleefully heap on people from Congo and Ghana and Venezuela.
Someday, I hope and pray that your children or grandchildren will ask you about the history of each of your families and the unique and rich history they all brought to this country, and the difficulties they faced and sacrifices they made to succeed in the New World. And I hope you know and learn of those stories. And then I hope someday that you are confronted with the legacy of your lies, fear, ignorance, and hatred. Maybe someone you love will come under the care of a Venezuelan nurse who came here in 2022, or a Congolese physician. You should look that person in the eye and tell them the truth about how you talked about them when they were penniless, alone, afraid, and vulnerable.
Our region likes to tell people that we are a city of good neighbors. That we are kind and welcoming. That we are friendly and that we celebrate our diversity. Your cheap and lazy “migrant crisis” rhetoric really puts the lie to all of that.
Bills player Jordan Poyer and his wife, Rachel Bush, are very vocal pro-Trump conservatives, and they are completely free to be exactly that. Literally no one in the world is trying to take away from them their right to be as right-wing and pro-Trump as they wish.
This being a free country, anyone has the right to adhere to just about any other political ideology or faction, and possesses a concomitant right to think that Donald Trump is a proto-fascist idiot buffoon who has done more to divide America and to stoke its most base and disgusting hatreds than any other contemporary mainstream political figure.
Poyer and Bush have the right to give Trump and his family as many of their dollars as they wish.
Others have the right to boycott Trump completely.
This isn’t hard stuff to grasp.
This means that anyone has the right to condemn and to not associate with Trump any more than a Trumper can be compelled to love Hunter Biden. The woke are also free.
Yet Trumpers like Poyer and Bush demand to foist their adherence to that cult on others. When they are confronted with the fact that not everyone thinks in lockstep with them, they throw a predictable tantrum on social media. Like your aunt, who thinks that she has taken away Facebook’s right to use her images by posting some spam she found.
Poyer was set to host at a Trump country club a celebrity golf tournament to benefit the ECMC Foundation – a charity set up to raise funds that benefit the hospital and enable donors to offset some of their tax burden by taking a deduction against their donation.
If the intent was purely charitable – to raise money for an ECMC charitable initiative – then Poyer could have had the self-awareness to recognize (or react to the fact) that many people do not want to in any way be associated with the Trump name – directly or otherwise. For the uninitiated, Trump is currently under arrest and indictment in New York and the federal courts for various and sundry crimes.
Poyer and Bush demand to hurl their Trump support in your face, whether you like it or not, and then to complain wildly when you do not. Poyer took to Instagram to take his ball and go home, and then make-believe he doesn’t get it.
“Am I stressed about it? Not even the slightest bit,” he said. “Am I upset about it? A little, but I’m not even upset about the tournament being canceled. I’m upset about this is where we are in America.”
You’re not upset that you canceled the tournament? Then why the hell are you holding the tournament? Is it about ECMC or about your ego, or your ideology, or your obeisance to Trump? His wife, Rachel Bush, famously maintains an especially aggressively hostile pro-Trump Twitter feed so this feigned ignorance about “where we are in America” is a bit rich.
If raising money for ECMC was the primacy concern, Poyer could have – and certainly would have – been more thoughtful about where he chose to host his tournament. If the aim was purely charitable in nature, then he’d have chosen a course that does not come with obvious political baggage.
People have a right to object to participating in something involving the Trump name. A more cynical person might suggest that the whole point of this being scheduled at a Trump course was specifically to bring about the sort of poor me victimhood we’re seeing. “See, the woke Soros libs did it again.” Yeah, well, the libs detest Trump and don’t want to give him any money or anything else. It’s especially ridiculous, given the ECMC mission, vision, and values, many of which are in complete opposition to everything for which Trump and Trumpism stand. How do Poyer and Bush reconcile their devotion to Trump with their support for a hospital that is a “top performer in LGBTQ health equity“? Geez, who knew these two were so woke?
Poyer complains, seemingly without irony,
“I believe in the universal law that the energy you put out is the energy you get back and we’re not doing that right now. All we do is fight with each other all day. Fight with each other about politics, about religion, about race. The issues that come up are the issues we create. … It blows my mind that we sit here in America today with these issues.”
Yes, Mr. Poyer – it blows my mind, too.
The issues that come up are the issues we create.
The energy you put out is the energy you get back.
It’s helping others. It’s sharing those experiences and about being open about we’re not perfect. Nobody is perfect…. The thing is we need each other. We are we arguing over (stuff) that does not matter?
“It seems like our egos get in the way of being a good human being. (Not) sharing love, sharing conversations, sharing laughter with people who may not believe in the same things that you do, it’s a huge problem in America right now.
Our egos taking over the majority of our lives. A lot of us don’t even know who we are anymore. We’re run by that ego self, run by the materialistic side, run by the things that don’t really matter.
Are Poyer and Bush ignorant, or do they know exactly what they’re doing? Do they really think it is ridiculous that people would object to participating in something involving Trump? Do they think that they are the only people who are permitted publicly to have political beliefs? A charitable person would want to maximize participation and go out of his way to avoid controversy.
But ego and arrogance win. It’s not about the right to love Trump or be a conservative – you have to, too. It’s now a matter of principle for them that next year they will try to do the same thing, having not learned anything from this or listened to anyone about it. For just one second if Poyer and Bush could set their colossal egos aside and consider for just a nanosecond why people object to Trump, maybe their “can’t we all just get along” wouldn’t ring so hollow. Maybe they could learn something and choose a less obviously controversial venue. That is, if they really care about being uniters rather than dividers.
They will frame this as an issue about their rights rather than an issue about public relations, respect, and inclusivity, (lol). Maybe they get a few seconds of airtime on Jesse Watters’ show. Or the Five. Or Gateway Pundit.
But ECMC – whom they misidentify as a sponsor, rather than a grantee – is really only an afterthought, in the end.
I have been around a long time, and I can remember the vile hatred and parade of lies that followed Hillary Clinton everywhere she went, with respect to everything she did when her husband was President. Then she became a Senator and then Secretary of State, and she was an accomplished, well-respected public servant in her own right. The cavalcade of libels and slanders abated only slightly. She ran for President in 2008, and again in 2016. Suddenly at that point, the noise and hatred grew to levels not seen before. The right has always had it in for her, because she embodied that which they hated most – a successful, professional, independent woman. She was haled before Congress to testify for 11 hours under oath about the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, as if she had personally ordered it. She was all but called a witch.
But in 2016, it became a little different, as the parade marched not just down Clinton’s right flank, but the left, as well. Bernie Sanders die-hards went in on Clinton as hard as any Jim Jordan or Trent Lott or Tom DeLay ever could. They could not countenance the fact that Sanders lost to Clinton, so the libels and slanders grew louder and more ominous. After all, here were nominal leftists pledging to stay home or vote third party rather than select a Hillary Clinton over a Donald Trump.
As if Hillary Clinton would have separated refugee children from their parents at the border.
As if Hillary Clinton would have led a six-year-long pogrom against each and every possible socioeconomic or ethnic minority or marginalized community.
As if Hillary Clinton would have legitimized the North Korean regime by engaging in summit-level talks with it.
As if Hillary Clinton would have threatened nuclear war via twitter on any and all enemies – real and perceived.
As if Hillary Clinton would have banned an entire faith from entering the country.
As if Hillary Clinton would have denounced entire classes of immigrants as criminals and rapists.
As if Hillary Clinton would have downplayed the severity and threat of the Covid epidemic or praised China’s handling of it.
As if Hillary Clinton would have suggested you inject bleach into your body to fight a virus.
As if Hillary Clinton would have likened herself to be a tinpot wannabe dictator.
As if Hillary Clinton would have sided with George Floyd’s murderers.
As if Hillary Clinton would have sicced an army of cultists and idiots to end democracy and thwart the Constitution had she lost an election.
The list goes on, but capped off with Trump’s alleged illegality in New York, in Georgia, in Florida, the corrupt and malevolent acts that underlie his two impeachments, and his anti-American, anti-democratic, and faux-Christian nationalist tendencies, I think the country would have been much better served by a somewhat dull, technocratic, “neoliberal shill” like Hillary Clinton at the helm than some failed ex-reality-show host who was a disliked joke in his own hometown.
From about 1990 – 2016, the biggest political lie was that Hillary Clinton was some evil menace. The most damaging political lie ever told in my lifetime was that Hillary Clinton would have not been a substantively (or stylistically) different Chief Executive than Donald Trump. Like Brexit is doing to Britain, these pernicious waterfalls of libels and lies continues now to curse us with the shadow of the Trump cult, lurching and whining about score-settling. Who needs Hungary’s Orban or Russia’s Putin or Brazil’s Bolsonaro when we have our own anti-democratic authoritarian populist crook to whom fully a third of the electorate is in thrall.
The 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore and the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, Democrats keep plugging away and working hard within the context of the system we have. We don’t storm the Capitol or threaten elected officials with nooses or demand that these same officials ignore law, precedent, and the Constitution. We don’t marshal little armies of sycophantic brownshirt wannabes.
If Al Gore had won in 2000 we never would have invaded Iraq – a catastrophic blunder that continues to haunt us and the Middle East to this day.
If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, we could have avoided all of the hate-filled, ignorant, reactionary sturm und drang of Trumpism and he would have been an afterthought by now.
From about 1990 – 2016, the biggest political lie was that Hillary Clinton was some evil menace. The most damaging political lie ever told in my lifetime was that Hillary Clinton would have not been a substantively (or stylistically) different Chief Executive than Donald Trump. Like Brexit is doing to Britain, these pernicious waterfalls of libels and lies continues now to curse us with the shadow of the Trump cult, lurching and whining about score-settling. Who needs Hungary’s Orban or Russia’s Putin or Brazil’s Bolsonaro when we have our own anti-democratic authoritarian populist crook to whom fully a third of the electorate is in thrall.