To Rag readers
I wanted to share with our many Rag readers the latest writing assignment I’ve given our writers and reporters.
This may be the most unusual writing assignment you’ve ever been given, but here it is —
It’s 2 weeks before election day. It appears that due to slow counts and other election day headaches, it’s likely we won’t know officially who won the Presidential election on the 5th of November.
But we do know that Trump will declare himself the victor and set in motion collaboration from state election boards, state reps and other highly-placed acolytes that will sow disinformation, confusion and outright sabotage to our election machinery.
This will be the outright rigging of a coup. And it will be a fascist coup — and it’s already begun. Please read up on all the ways this is happening right now and right before our eyes. So, bottom line, we have 2 weeks before the advent of a fascist coup attempt. Does not mean it will succeed but our lives will be thrown into a national turmoil while the effort proceeds.
So, I’d like you to write about the things and aspects of American democracy that you will miss once this begins. I am serious, deadly serious about this. The country, the government and the media are not prepared for this and this is my sorry-ass attempt to get you to think about it and perhaps try to express it to our readers and get them to think about it.
We have between 2000 to 3000 readers every day and this will be our effort to try to at least help prepare our readers for the upcoming violence.
I hope I’m wrong and this is all for naught, but don’t let yourself be guided by the national blindness to the upcoming violence.
If you can’t allow yourself to think or even write about this, so be it. Maybe perhaps read up on all the analysis about what will happen if Trump loses (or wins) — and if you need suggestions, let me know.
I told our writers that of course in the meantime, I’d accept other material to post but that they needed to know that this is what I’m expecting of them — and myself — as writers and reporters for San Diego’s most progressive online platform now that it’s only two weeks “before the most substantial election in our life times.”
I also said that “this may not be your forte or area of ‘expertise'” but that they are “someone who likes to communicate with others and are good at it. Otherwise you would not be here.” I asked them to “Please take this assignment to heart,” and that it was not easy for me to ask this of them, “but here we are.”
Now, dear reader, here’s where you come in.
Take the challenge I’ve given our writers. Share your thoughts with us and the other two to three thousand daily readers of the OB Rag on the issue. We have two weeks left of the American democracy we’ve grown accustomed to – what will you miss?
Rag readers: it’s only 2 weeks until election day and we know that it may take days until the winner is announced, and we know that Trump will declare himself winner that evening. Are we prepared for this? I don’t think we are and hopefully over the next days Rag writers will express their thoughts about all of this to help get all of us ready for this eventuality.
Six Corrupt Overseers Tactfully Usurping Society. Millions of voters being outFOXed for years. Billionaire libertarian media moguls controlling what you see, hear, & read. 1st Amendment free speech = free to lie. Unregulated capitalism. Jimmy Carter quote: The U.S. Is an ‘Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery’. What will I miss??? I don’t think I can answer, because I’m not sure what American Democracy is anymore. Has the plan to crush democracy been in place for 50 years beginning with Lewis Powell? Me thinks so. But I will remain optimistic that 100 million voters give American Democracy a chance!
Frank J, We have NEVER been a ‘democracy,’ ever, since this country’s politics was designed to be operated only by white male property owner/businessman/plantation slave owners.
I don’t think it is possible to get back what one never had, yes? Though I do admit that there have been people trying to make it more like a real democracy in its history. I will give these historical figures credit for trying.
And Jimmy Carter only walked away from the Empire after he was president and somehow grew a stronger conscience.
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editordude: I’m only an honorary member of your crew but here are links for the readership to ponder on:
I think Jon Stewart says it well:
Jon Stewart on Trump’s McDonald’s Shift & His “Enemy Within” Threat |The Daily Show 16 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5KWZL1blWc
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Then listen to his psychologist niece Mary Trump. And, as she said recently, believe EVERYTHING her uncle says he’s going to do if/when he gets back to being the dictator-in-chief. She was NOT kidding, she is deadly serious.
Trump’s MASSIVE MENTAL DECLINE and family history of ALZHEIMER’S| Mary Trump’s FIRST-HAND experience 12 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WnY_KnM0-g
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Personal thoughts on ‘preparation’ is that there isn’t any such thing. Unless you are very wealthy and have a passport with somewhere to go.
His fixer/lawyer Cohn who turned on him has a passport and has stated publicly he is leaving the country immediately if Trump wins, and that guy KNOWS this psychopath far better than any of us could possibly imagine. He doesn’t think the guy is fooling at all, does he? Who am I to argue with that?
Cohn 3 days ago: from 5:13 to 7:17.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN5rGF7hQt4
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As Cohn says, the Fascist SCOTUS clowns gave him immunity. Presidents are now KINGS in legal fact. And Trump says there will be a pogrom in the government getting rid of everyone that doesn’t suck his tiny…well, his Arnold Palmer fixation says a lot of what he ain’t.
But I’m guessing that cleansing will be right down to the local cop level which are mainly GOP and MAGA members anyway…that happened in Germany in the 1930s.
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As most here probably have figured out, my view is rather adjusted at seeing through a cynical pessimism lens. I think madness and stupidity is inherent in our species, perhaps a genetic defect, and that has been apparent throughout our written history (the un-whitewashed versions).
So I’m finishing up a new Will and will have it notarized, copied, and mailed to people before the election. Haven’t revised it for a decade and they tend to need revised every 5 or so years anyway…
As he will turn the government out ‘legally’ to attack and ‘arrest’ those who have challenged him, made fun of him, etc etc just as all dictators do to their detractors when they get in power no matter how small and insignificant they may be. The MAGA Blackshirts/brownshirts ‘armed militias’ like that Sheriff in Ohio having townspeople keep lists of who has Harris signs in their yard, this is already down to the local level.
Who may you ask, were the actual people that marched the 6 million Jews and 6 million college professors & students, newspaper editors & reporters, union members, gypsies, homosexuals, handicapped, political rivals, protesters, and all the rest into the trains back in the 1930s? Neighbors and local cops. Nobody seems to remember the others that disappeared.
Editor Frank, how can anybody ‘get ready’ for something like this?
Other prep in this heavily GOP/MAGA county where every single elected public official is a MAGATS or very conservative GOPer? The former have been replacing the latter for a decade, too. So I’m finishing my ballot tonight so I can mail it in the morning though I don’t actually know if it will be counted because I’m guessing that the majority-if not all, of the county ballot counters are…MAGATS anyway. How corrupt are they??
sealintheSelkirks
Well, Seal, thanks for trying. You ask, ‘how can anybody get ready for something like this?’ – Well, if we don’t think and talk about it, we never will.
Yep, I agree with your sentiments, Frank. We as a people definitely need to talk about it. But a large number of citizens can’t even agree on what books to ‘allow’ in schools, and they are still passing laws to ‘ban’ CRT in elementary & high schools WHEN IT HAS NEVER BEEN taught in those grades but only as a course offering in college and universities.
Here’s the problem laid out:
New Survey Proves That Trump Supporters Are Genuinely Stupid
8 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goo6oCMXmVo
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Like George Carlin said, look at how ignorant the average US citizen is, then one realizes that 50% of the population are worse. How does one talk with Trump’s “under-educated?” Facts don’t matter, they don’t/won’t read anything counter to what their god-chosen leader spouts, and I recently had a guitar player I’ve made music with these last twenty years refuse to play with me in a jam at a local tavern because my old 4runner parked out in the lot has a bumper sticker that says:
Jesus would never own a gun or vote republican.
Ten days left, and the polls are full of shit because the majority of them are owned & operated by Republicans….
sealintheSelkirks
I miss my naive self of 4 years ago that thought it was all just talk.
Paul Street will speak on “What’s Left of American Democracy? The 2024 Elections & the Threat of Fascism” at San Diego State University, Ochoa Pavilion 220, 7:00pm, Wednesday, October 23, 2024.
I once believed that the separation of powers would keep us from imploding. It was the Republicans in the Senate who convinced Nixon to resign. I believed (maybe it was only a dream) that the Supreme Court was above politics. I never thought that Congress could become so dysfunctional or the Supreme Court could be bought.
I will miss the freedom to travel. I will miss our public lands. I will miss the post office. I will miss private email. I will miss clean water. I will miss healthy foods. I will miss religious Holidays. I will miss the people taken away for DNA testing.
Thanks Larry for laying out what we’ll all miss if we no longer have a democracy.