Democracy will triumph against autocracy

 President Biden gave his first State of the Union speech last night and laid out his vision for America's future with a heartfelt sincerity and optimism that was very refreshing after enduring four years of narcissistic complaints, blame, whining, and attacks from the former guy.

His primary message, it seemed to me, was that America's democratic system is being challenged by autocrats around the world. He called out the autocratic nations of China and Russia in particular and noted that they are trying to prove to the world that democracy isn't strong enough, and cannot respond quickly enough to compete with the rule of autocracy in today's world.

Biden firmly disagrees, and he calls the nation to regain its footing and rise to the challenges of today.

He did not explicitly call out the greatest autocratic threat to America's democracy - Trump and the Trump Cult of authoritarian white supremacist and Evangelical extremists and terrorists here at home (although he did say he would respond to the white supremacist terrorists in America).  

It is clear to me that the threats from autocrats, from abroad and at home, are a real issue, and and I am very happy to know that this administration sees the issue and opposes the autocracies rather than embraces and emulates them as the former guy did.

A breath of fresh air, a breath of honor and decency and humanity, and a commitment to place America as a leader of the world as an ally, as a moral leader, as a champion of democracy, and as its proper role as the hope of the world.

Tyrants refuse to deal with the Coronavirus

Why do tyrants refuse to follow the science to stop the Coronavirus?  India's Modi is a left wing tyrant, Bolsonaro is a right wing tyrant, Trump tried to be a right wing tyrant, etc.  

I think it has to do with tyranny itself. The tyrant cannot allow anyone to think there are people in his government nor in his country that should be listened to at all. The tyrant sets himself up as the final authority on all matters. And, tragically, that includes pandemics.  So, Trump attacked Fauci, the top immunologist in America, and tells his cult followers to avoid masks and don't follow social distancing guidelines, and by the way they don't have to worry about vaccines.  So over half a million people died of the pandemic while he was telling people that everything was OK.

India and Brazil are in a nightmare now with not enough oxygen, ICU beds, etc and are overwhelmed by this deadly and terrible plague.  I haven't followed either tyrant closely but I do recall that India had millions of people crowded together during a holy celebration day, Kumb Mela.  I don't know what superspreader events happened or are happening in Brazil, but I believe that Bolzonaro himself makes it a point to appear without mask at political rallies with unmasked crowds.

So, why?

The tyrants seem to think that keeping people away from each other will harm their economies and I guess there is nothing worse to the tyrant than short term harm to their economies.  Somehow, they don't seem to understand that explosions of the pandemic shuts down their economies much worse than preventative cautions.

So, the tyrant frames the science precautions as some kind of attempt to steal people's freedoms. As if telling a drunk that he can't drive is robbing him of his freedom rather than protecting all the rest of us from being killed by him.  Or they play up the very tiny chances of abreactions to the vaccines, even though the harms and risks are very significantly less than the harms and risks of the disease itself.  

The reaction of tyrants to the pandemic makes no sense to me at all.

Why the Big Lie?

Trump lost the 2020 election by a big margin - Biden 51.33% (81,009,468) Trump 46.96% (74,111,419) - 306 to 203 Electoral College votes.  Most people would say that Biden won by 4.37% (51.33 - 46.96 = 4.37%), but a clearer picture is to say that 9.3% more people voted for Biden than Trump (51.33/46.96 = 1.093).

BUT, Trump put out the most ridiculous lie in American history, that he actually won the election and that he won it by a landslide.  And, Republican politicians are saying that his Big Lie is true, and the Trump Cult appears to, or simply pretends to, believe the Big Lie.

Why?

Why say that Trump lost because the Democrats cheated?  A couple of reasons.  There are enough dumb, or brainwashed, or hopelessly polarized Republicans to believe it enough to CONTRIBUTE millions of dollars to Trump and his Republican politicians.  And enough of them to SUPPORT Trump Cult media personalities and make them very wealthy indeed.

BUT, there is a bigger reason - THEY GET TO CHEAT IN 2022/2024/2026 etc.....

Trump thought he was going to lose in 2016 so he proclaimed ahead of time that he wouldn't accept the result - then to his shock he won.

Trump knew he would lose in 2020 so he proclaimed ahead of time that he wouldn't accept the result - why? SO HE COULD CHEAT IN 2024. 

And, the entire Republican Party is passing laws at the state level to keep blacks, browns, and reds away from the polls. They get to pretend that it is fitting to do so because, as their Cult Leader told them over and over and over again, he only lost because the Democrats cheated, so they get to cheat TOO.

And, of course, the Republicans have been on a decades long project to gerrymander the states so that they can lose state house popular votes yet still get more state house representatives and send more Reps to Washington and pass more Jim Crow voter suppression laws.

First principles of propaganda - Tell the Big Lie - Repeat Repeat Repeat Repeat - Accuse the other of doing exactly what you are actually doing - Instill as much fear into the populace as you can.

It is not just Trump.  The Cult was ready to mobilize behind him and are trying to dominate once again.

And they will fail, because of a couple of things.  First the Trump Show has grown old and the ratings are way down; Second there is no Trump Successor - one who is already a celebrity and dumb enough, unprincipled enough, and insane enough to be Trump 2.0.  He is a one off and the show is over.

The Republican Party is desperate to cheat because they have nothing else they can do.  It's all over except the shouting but there will be a lot of shouting.  

Oh well.

The Real War

I just finished one of the three most important books I've ever read - "This is How they Tell Me the World Ends" by Nicole Perlroth.  The other two were "Gulag Archepelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn which I read in the '80s and which revealed in terrifying detail the totalitarian control of lives under the Soviet Union (a tradition kept alive to some degree in Russia under Putin), and "The Fifth Risk" by Michael Lewis which demonstrated Trump's attack on the U.S. government by driving scientific and diplomatic expertise out of the government (the Fifth Risk was the risk we didn't know was coming - and the COVOD19 was just one of the unforeseen risks that came that our government was crippled in dealing with - Cyber Warfare is the one discussed in this book)

Nicole Perlroth's sobering book is revealing that we are in the middle of a war, and we are just hanging on by the skin of our teeth - the Cyber War.  

Our military is amazingly powerful - for fighting future WWIIs - planes, missiles, bombs, tanks, ships, automatic weapons, etc.   But why bother bombing a city of an enemy when all you have to do is shut down the power grid via Cyberwarfare.  No power, no gasoline, no money, no food.  Everyone turns on each other trying to survive and most of them die.  Why bother sending a missile to take out refineries of chemical plants if you can just take over the control systems remotely and blow them up?

Russia is in our power grids and can shut them down.  Are we in theirs?  Probably.

Russia is in our nuclear power plants and can take over the controls and force them to explode - a nuclear bomb but spewing almost infinitely endless radiation into the nation.  Are we in theirs?  Probably.

Russia is in our refineries and chemical plants and can open or close valves, shut down or overspeed to destruction pumps and compressors, and cause them to explode.  Are we in theirs?  Probably.

Russia is in our hydroelectric dams and can open them up to flood the areas downstream.  Are we in theirs?  Probably.

They are in the PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) that control all the valves, turbines, motors, safety devices etc etc.  If you control those you can destroy anything.

Someone is in hospitals and can shut them down, and someone already has shut down hundreds of them with Ransomware.  

It's not just Russia.  China, Iran, and North Korea are already inside much of the U.S. cyberworld. And they are not friendly visitors.  

I think that China is more interested in stealing technology so they can become the emerging economic and military power.  We know China has stolen billions of dollars of intellectual property.  

I think North Korea is more interested in stealing money that they desperately need.  We know North Korea has extorted many millions of dollars to keep its economy from collapsing.  The company I work for was hit with a ransomware attack and we could not use our computers for a couple of weeks.

I think Russia is most interested in destroying America and thereby destroying democracy around the world so as to cripple world wide opposition to its despotic rule.

Incredibly, the former president seems to have been doing his best to enable his "friend", Vladimir Putin, to attack our cyber world.  He astonishingly eliminated the role of Cybersecurity Coordinator, the job of stopping the attacks, in 2018.  All to please his master, Vladimir Putin and aid in Putin's attacks on America and the American elections.

Astonishingly, the Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell in 2020 refused to support any election security bill regardless of how bipartisan it would be - so Russia did its best to repeat its efforts to elect the Former Guy in 2020 - and failed, blessedly.

The cyber Rubicon was crossed by the U.S. and Israel with Stuxnet, a cyber attack on Iran's nuclear centrifuges destroying them and setting back their march toward The Bomb.  It was for a good cause.  But, that opened the door for international Cyber War by all parties.  

And all are having a real party, indeed.

Trump Cult crackpottery doesn't kill just Republicans

If Republican obdurate ignorance and stubbornness just hurt and killed Republicans, that would be a terrible tragedy for our country.  BUT, they hurt and kill all of us.

It is incomprehensible that a large percentage of Republicans refuse to wear masks and socially distance during a killer pandemic.  But, they do. They seem to think that it has something to do with manhood and freedom? 

It is incomprehensible that a large percentage of Republicans refuse to get vaccinated against a killer pandemic.  But they do.  They seem to think it has something to do with manhood and freedom?

If only their "tribe" died as a result, well, you can say they brought it on to themselves.  BUT, when they get infected, they infect us all.  

And they are just too damned ignorant/bullheaded/malicious to even feel remorse for their "politically incorrect" defiance.  

It was clear that way back in 2016 it was a badge of honor for the Trump Cult to be "politically incorrect" - which just meant they were proud to display their crudity and bigotry - anything to "own the libs", anything to offend the libs, anything to scare the libs.  In your face outraqe, what fun! how daring! how brave! how manly!

I guess the natural logical progression of their "political incorrectness" is to ignore safety precautions against the pandemic virus.  Hehehehehe  - I guess they are showing us ... hehehehehe ... they aren't going to be told what to do by "the libs".  

NOBODY IS GOING TO TELL THEM WHAT TO DO, by golly, by gum, nosireebob...nope...nope...nobody nohow noway....

Right Wing Media Outrage Bubble fools Republican lawmakers

The Right Wing Media Outrage Bubble is good for one thing - getting a devoted media audience.  It started with Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes, both dead now, and carried forward by screaming clones and dittoheads.  

The odd thing is that Republican Politicians don't understand that what gets a good sized audience on radio and TV does not get a majority of votes in elections.  If Hannity or Carlson get 3 - 4 million viewers, that's enough of an audience on cable TV to make them quite wealthy.  But Joe Biden got 81,000,000 votes in 2020.  That is a lot more than 4 million.  

So, Republicans are playing to the Right Wing Media Outrage Bubble rather than to real people.  The historian Heather Cox Richardson reveals the divide nicely:

"Americans as a whole do not like the policies of current-day Republican lawmakers. 

• Seventy-seven percent of us like the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, and yet not a single Republican voted for it. 
• Eighty-four percent of us like background checks for gun purchases, and yet that policy is anathema to Republicans.
• Seventy-nine percent of us want the government to fix our roads, bridges, railroads, and ports. 
• Seventy-one percent of us want the government to make sure we all have high-speed internet. 
• Sixty-eight percent of us want the government to replace our lead pipes, 
• the same percentage as people who want the government to support renewable energy with tax credits. 
• Sixty-four percent of us want to pay for these things by increasing taxes on corporations and big businesses.

Republican lawmakers oppose all of these popular measures." (Bullets added)

The Right Wing Media Outrage Bubble has no philosophy or policies, other than as brief lip service, but rather have only to prey upon the hatreds and fears of the more extreme elements of conservatives. Whip up the Base! Be proudly offensive and crude!  Own the Libs! And the politicians are ruled by the eye captivating propaganda circus rather than ideas or actual facts rather than disinformation and bullshit.

This is made confusing for Rep Lawmakers of course because the Former Guy only ever played to the Propaganda Circus and won in 2016 (kind of won, won the Electoral College, lost the popular).

There will not be a Trump successor runnning for office because the Former Guy is a one off - completely bat-shit crazy stupid loon.  WWF meets Godzilla.  You can't copy that.  And there is not really any Republican policy agenda that will get the MAGA crazies to the polls.

I think the Republican Party has had its last president.  The Former Guy will likely be in prison by 2024 as a result of a lifetime of corruption, fraud, and crime. And there will be no viable successor.