Picture courtesy infinonymous.blogspot.com
Written by Dennis Rahkonen
Right-wing audiences at recent Republican presidential debates have obscenely cheered capital punishment and the awful idea that grievously ill patients without private insurance should be allowed to die rather than receive taxpayer funding for medical assistance.
Imagine the glee they must have exhibited upon hearing of Troy Davis’s unconscionable execution!
That such a horrendous outlook emanates from self-described Christians, who went into a frenzy over the ludicrously hyped “death panel” fraud used to try scuttling crucial healthcare reform, stands as one of the most egregious examples of hypocrisy in modern times.
Although definitely shocking, we shouldn’t really be surprised by the barbarism that lies in the American Right’s fascistic heart.
Like Mafia assassins conducting a hit (or Storm troopers terrorizing the night), Republicans are actually trying to kill the entire Democratic Party.
It’s being done through blatant union busting, which strengthens Big Business profiteers while eliminating a key source of campaign donations for progressive office seekers.
The Republicans also use dirty tricks to shut down groups like ACORN that register constituencies most likely to vote against them.
Then there’s the voter photo ID sham that requires the poor and others with likely liberal leanings to obtain very specific identification that’s often difficult or costly to acquire. Since evidence shows balloting fraud is negligible, this is plainly a contrived suppression ploy, now being actively pursued in 34 states.
Meanwhile, the abysmally misnamed Citizens United ruling allows corporations to fund conservative candidates without limits or disclosure, flooding the airwaves with despicable, plutocracy-serving propaganda.
Outrageously gerrymandered redistricting also effectively thwarts the opposition.
Finally, close elections can be stolen outright through hacked voting machines, many of which are manufactured by companies with Republican ties, such as Diebold.
It isn’t just Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public education, and organized labor that ultra conservatives seek to destroy. They clearly want to “rub out” their political opposition as well.
How any decent person could favor a party that kneels before the cross while constantly mouthing platitudes about morality — but aggressively does everything that’s evilly opposite — is beyond comprehension.
Although it’s certainly true that we have ample reason to be disappointed by Barack Obama’s chronic capitulation, plus a general Democratic failure to solidly rally around correct Progressive Caucus values, let’s not repeat our foolish error from a year ago.
Namely, the stay-at-home “disgust” that kept enough liberals away from the polls on election day 2010 to give the Scott Walkers of this country a free chance to start dismantling the whole New Deal legacy.
Working wickedly from within and without, Republicans are plainly demonstrating that they possess a deadly malice that belies the widespread view on the American left that there is absolutely “no difference” between our nation’s two mainstream political parties.
Please don’t even think of staying away from the voting booth come November of next year.
That’s exactly what the reactionary bastards want us to do!
A mass turnout by good people is key to foiling well-planned Republican sabotage and suppression strategies, thereby preventing a terrible societal outcome that would brutally decimate America’s wage-earning majority.
In the meantime, let’s turn up the heat on both atrocious Republicans and weak Democrats through a militant expansion of large protests like those already so inspiringly seen in Wisconsin and Ohio.
The current effort by activists to transform Wall Street into an American version of Cairo’s Tahrir Square should serve as a model.
Our voices must be heard.
Let’s not make the mistake of being complicit in what amounts to a monstrously immoral GOP plot to murder participatory democracy itself.
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About the author
Dennis Rahkonen, from Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing progressive commentary with a Heartland perspective for various outlets since the Sixties.