Fighting Fire with Fire

Because trying to blow out a fire with a breath just won't do

We can, and we have complained about the actions being taken by this administration, but we have to do more. For many years I have promoted the ballot box and the need to get out the vote. I read an article earlier today that is almost as troubling as what the Felon has been up to with his efforts to destroy our democracy. What I learned is that Democratic voter registration is down significantly; this spells trouble. If we are unable to build back the party, how the hell can we turn around the fate of the Nation? This begs the question as to how to get more folks to sign up or re-register as Democrats, and the answer is clear: show that we have fight in us and we will stand and deliver!

As I have noted previously, the Democratic Party was too reactive for too long. Yes, Trump is a felon, a serial adulterer, a bad businessman, doesn’t own a dog, and wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the ass. So what! Democrats need to stop only saying things like “you can’t redistrict except every ten years after the census” and take bold steps like what Gavin Newsom has done and actually bring a gun to a gunfight. The Democrats have to stop being the party of pearl clutching, while crying “it’s not fair.” Yes, it is not fair, but the time has come to, dare I say, go low when they go low. I’m a high road guy to my core, but sometimes if the fight is in the dirt, you have to be willing to get dirty. Perhaps that is how we can reach the Bro Culture that went to Trump, but if that is the case, we can temper it with real facts and the consequences thereof, not the pie in the sky with no supporting facts that the Felon and his supporters have used.

Let’s just look at immigration. The Republicans have not raised any concern about ICE enforcement; nothing about due process denial, except maybe making the wholly disingenuous argument that it doesn’t apply. Due process is available to anyone that is in the US, and the denial by this administration is a clear violation of the Constitution. Given the recent decisions of the Corporate Supreme Court, it seems that the only claimants that have a shot to challenge these due process violations are the abductees, who are prevented from making the claim. Talk about a Catch 22! Democrats need to sound the alarm on this issue. Yes, making the claim that people have been denied due process is important, but making sure the public knows that the GOVERNMENT of the Felon refuses to allow this people the opportunity to be heard. is even more important.

There is nothing normal about men wearing masks, sunglasses, baseball caps, without name badges, nor badge numbers, jumping out of an unmarked vehicles, and throwing people to the ground because of their skin color or because of their accent. Evidence? Questions? No and no, just throwing people into a van and taking them to unknown locations and preventing the abducted from letting family know what happened.

Where this really goes off the rails can be seen in a video of an 18-year-old U.S. citizen being violently arrested in Florida by immigration agents back in May. Border Patrol and the Florida Highway Patrol were conducting immigration enforcement when they detained Kenny Laynez, a high school senior who was on his way to work as a landscaper with two other co-workers and his mother, who was driving. The video that Laynez recorded of the arrest shows an officer telling him, a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in the country, "You got no rights here. You're an amigo, brother." A recently arrested high school senior here in LA reported hearing his arresting ICE agents saying they would be getting a $1500 bonus (bounty?) for arresting him. My goodness, this sounds more like a bounty on wolf hides than it does about keeping murderers, rapists, and drug dealers off of the streets. Of course, this is another way of supporting the private prison industry, which also seems to exist outside of any governmental oversight.

The administration has invented an immigrant crime spree and diverted resources to fighting this fake threat at the expense of real crime in America. Rather than invest in more cops, a policy that has a proven track record of actually reducing crime, the Republicans are spending billions to harass, arrest, detain, and deport noncriminal aliens; in fact, the only crime more than 80 or 85% percent have committed is either overstaying a visa or good ole illegal entry! This ICE police force that will be larger than the FBI, and its mission is to deal with a completely bogus crisis. How much safer does anyone feel because ICE is tackling and arresting gardeners, nannies, and construction workers? More importantly, don’t for a second conflate what ICE does and policing! Policing offers local solutions to local problems all wrapped up in Constitutional protections and an awareness of community. What ICE does is NOT policing!!

The fight before us is more than saying that MAGA Republicans are trying to take the country back to the past, rewriting history by imposing the ideology of the Confederacy on the United States of America. It is more than when the Felon starts whistling Dixie and downplaying the realities of human enslavement. He is advocating a world in which Black people, people of color, poor people, and women should let elite white men lead, and be grateful for that paternalism. History is there to teach us how to avoid past traps and we must all call out these lies that MAGA world wants to be believed. The greatest weapon would be for more Republican legislators, at both the federal and state levels to put down the MAGA Kool Aid, to proclaim that our country is more important than one tiny man. Perhaps the furor at town halls across our country will push some of those folks in office to do the right thing and not throw away our country in exchange for the support of the Felon to keep their seats. Clearly, that voter furor must be voiced at the ballot box.

The administration has a clear view of the state of the nation 7 months into the Loser Felon’s presidency. They say that the economy is wonderful, with surging growth and no inflation, while big cities are crime-ridden dumps (yes, we know he wants to say “shitholes”, but that is reserved for Africa) where nobody dares to go out. While the data doesn’t support any of this, the reality shows that growth slowing, possibly to what some economists call “stall speed,” while inflation is accelerating. Again with the facts: urban crime has been in a steady decline and in general our cities are safer than they’ve been since the 1960s, at the very least. Did Republicans lead policing and crime reform that helped us get to this place? Fuck, no! Democrats need to say we lead the move to fix all of these problems, and the job is not done! Democrats need to trumpet the history of the last 60 years where every Republican administration has increased the deficit, while every Democratic administration has lowered, or even eliminated it!

Every single time that the Liar in Chief makes a bogus claim, we need a chorus of “BULLSHIT” followed by statistical facts. Now we know that his response has been to attack the data and the people who report it. But it is not only the Felon because king of all ass-hats, Stephen Miller, our very own Pee Wee German, has declared that “crime stats in big blue cities are fake,” that true crime levels are “orders of magnitude higher.” A better tactic might simply be to highlight just how much the administration has compromised actual crime-fighting. Diverting FBI agents that are not trained for ordinary police work to walk a beat is stupid and wasteful, as those professionals are trained for finding and arresting swindlers, terrorists, and child-porn sellers. The same can be said for DEA agents and the other federal officials pulled from their regular duties.

This coming battle matters. We cannot wait for some magical moment of a white knight riding in to save us (it would be nice, but metaphoric, at best). Every American, not the MAGA sheep, but those of us who find that making fact based decisions to keep us from making past mistakes and simply Making America Better. There is no “great again.” We have been great, but I am damn sure we can be better. Retreating to a past fantasy is not how we get there. We admit to mistakes, we take a corrective course, we respect all of all of our rights, and then and only then do we actually make America Better.

Get up. Stand up.