2021 Archives

The GOP’s Big Lie is tearing America apart, as Trump expanded it to assault American democracy. A 40-year Republican Big Lie brought us to this crisis point in America. When Ronald Reagan was running for president in 1980, one of his biggest boosters was the political heavy hitter Paul Weyrich, who was also a cofounder of the Heritage Foundation and multiple other rightwing think tanks and operations. Weyrich told a group of political activist in a church basement in Dallas that the GOP was changing their strategy to win elections.

While everybody is discussing how the FBI is trying to hold to account those who invaded the US Capitol building and several state capitols on January 6, very few national media outlets are supporting or even discussing the idea of holding the true perpetrators to serious account. The media narrative today is that “right wing crazies“ are the only people involved in this attempt to disrupt Congress and even kidnap or murder some of our elected representatives. But they’re missing, almost entirely, the big question: Why did so many people show up?

Covid has now killed nearly 1 in 900 Americans in less than a year. How is it that in Australia it’s 3 out of every 100,000 people, and in New Zealand it’s 1 out of every 200,000 people, but here in America we’re dropping like flies? Chalk it up to Republican racism.

Many people think we’ve hit peak fascism, but Wednesday was only a bump in the road. Trump, his neofascist followers, and over half the congressional Republican caucus were just pushing the limits to see what they could get away with. And in the US Capitol, and state capitols around the country that were similarly attacked, Trump’s fascist followers learned that the personal price they’d pay for sedition and treason is less than the penalty for drunk driving.