As SCOTUS in particular and Repug leaders in general continue to promulgate hateful, backsliding, white supremacist policies and programs, Democrats and the media continually express their amazement at how out of step with the opinions of most Americans the right-wingers are. I’m so tired of this b.s. disingenuousness.
They’ve been showing us who they are at least since Reagan’s time. And like smug, patriarchal, rich white supremacists throughout U.S. history, they don’t give a flying f**k what the majority of Americans think or want. They don’t give a sh*t if their policies kill millions of people. As long as it’s not them or their loved ones, the lives of us peons are completely expendable to them.
Their arrogant assumption is that their fake version of Christianity and their ridiculous “trickledown” economics theory provide the right rules and regulations for the rest of us and that they, the smart and favored-by-god wealthy class are the ones who should dictate what the rest of us can and can’t do.
They don’t care that every study ever done on trickledown economics proved it doesn’t work. As long as the money is flowing upward and they’ve forced everyone to live by their rules they could care less about the impact on the rest of the populace.
Many of the policies they’ve implemented and are planning to implement will cause large swaths of the population to die. Their assumption is the ones most affected will be POC/Democrats and killing people to stop them from voting is A-OK with them. Don’t kid yourself about the level of malevolence these people have toward the majority of people.
It’s way beyond time to stop with the pretense of surprise and shock that there are people who would do such things and start doing the level of plotting and planning they have done for years. Their plots have brought us to the brink of the end of democracy and “go vote” is NOT A PLAN FOR STOPPING THEM.
I’ve been saying for several years that we need to figure out both an effective campaign of counterpropaganda and, most important, how to deliver it with maximum impact. The military does it in war zones and brainwashed people in other places have been re-educated; it needs to happen here.
I’ve also been saying for decades that our real votes are with our dollars. The real power in our country is wielded by corporations and their owners. Too many politicians on both sides are owned by various corporate interests to assume that major change can ever be implemented just by changing some elected officials.
They get their power by using money to buy politicians and judges and they get that money because we buy their stuff. It’s beyond time to organize major boycotts of all the global corporations. And before you start screaming that it’s not possible for everyone to boycott everything: it only takes 5% participation to start influencing a corporation to change some policies.
Clearly it would take more than that to really break their power but not anywhere close to all. But we need to organize so as many people as possible are boycotting every company they can; that also means all of us will be buying some stuff from bad actor companies because we currently have no other choices.
Which leads to another of my suggestions. A co-op movement has been quietly growing around the world. (see post for many links to info on co-ops) They’ve been active long enough for studies to have been done and they’ve been shown to be profitable, to pay employees better, offer better benefits, etc. But we need a lot more of them to provide alternative goods. In the meantime, if you can afford to buy local, in every instance where you can, purchase from small local businesses.
Activists in the environmental arena have figured out how to create an activist hedgefund and use shareholder votes to put activists on the boards of major corporations. See Exxon and Chevron. So far it hasn’t been enough to move the needle on climate change-related policies but infiltrating boards is a strong idea for trying to create change.
Many are also finally noting it’s beyond time to organize the same way the right has to get people elected at all the local levels, from school and water boards to city councils to state legislature reps. Running for a local seat or helping with local election campaign are ways to help. If, like me, you can’t get out readily, find organizations like the Poor People’s Campaign who offer phone banking and text banking opportunities. PPC’s text banking to get out the vote is SO well organized and easy to do.
Seriously, stop with the “can you believe it” commentary and figure out how to do something. These people are soulless, hateful despots and there are no depths to which they will not go to get what they want, which is an authoritarian theocracy. And it’s up to us to stop them.