Shall Not Perish? (American Revelation III, Part Five.)

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Today is primary day in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin, where the Republican Party was founded in a little white schoolhouse in the small town of Ripon on March 20th, 1854.

The state's Democratic governor issued an executive order to try to push the primary back to June over concerns about the spread of Coronavirus. Republicans had the Supreme Court overturn it. They want to go now, so they can try to limit the number of votes to try to save some pissant state supreme court judge that they have in their pocket...on a state supreme court that's constitutionally supposed to be nonpartisan. Also, the state is running this thing with an absurdly low number of polling places open to start with.
(Photon Credit: Patricia McKnight)
So, in effect, Republicans want to kill people, to try to hang onto a small slice of government power that they....Constitutionally, mind you....should not have in the first place?

Par for the course with these motherfuckers. Let's see, so far this week they've insulted the military, pissed off a majority of the public again and now they want to kill their own voters in addition to Democrats? I'm just sayin' these fucking people should be thanking their lucky stars that this is a democratic nation with experts and professional people in things like governments, health care and the military, because in one hell of a lot of places in the world these fuckers would be facing down an enraged population and probably a majority of their own armed forces and one hell of a lot of their political backers would be seeking exile in other countries as the crisis spun out of control and people shot each other in the streets.

Listen, assholes, there ain't no pension plan in the dictator business, one way or another that shit only ends when you're dead. The list of dictators who haven't come to a bad end is pretty short, historically and you don't want this to escalate to the point where people start solving their problems (i.e. YOU) with bullets rather than ballots.

That said, I'm not sure if I approve of Firing Squads, Guillotines, Tar and Feathers, or the Epuration Sauvage. I sure do understand the impulse, though.

One thing I can guarantee ya'll, though? When the reckoning comes, and it will come at this point, Karma assures it...these motherfuckers will scream like stuck pigs and whine like little bitches at the merest hint of consequences for actions they committed in broad daylight in front of everybody because they thought they were bulletproof.

As I've said before, if you've lost Tea Party Joe Walsh, it's time to hang it up and go home. You've failed at Republican.

You know, I've been to that Little White Schoolhouse in Ripon, it's not too far from where my late uncle's house was. I've walked through it and felt the echoes of history. I can't help but feel something like that again, in that I think we've hit the point where the Republican Party has officially gone beyond the pale all by it's own self, never mind Trump. This shit right here is the after-effects of people like Paul Ryan and Scott Walker.

And ya know, I'd like to say that I thought the Wisconsin GOP was better than this but, hell, these are the people who's ancestors gave us Joe McCarthy and I don't see how things have improved one goddamned bit.

Ya know, I could maybe see younger people having to go out in this crap, but some kind of exception should have been worked in for senior citizens and those otherwise more at risk from the virus, at the very least.

It's not just that Republicans don't want people to vote, because they generally do better when the voting pool is smaller...it's that what they're basically saying is that if you want to participate in Democracy, you should have to risk death to do so.

And here I thought the whole damned point of America was that we weren't...and did not want to ever be...that kind of country.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

How in the actual fuck are these greedy, power-hungry Un-American sons of bitches not being dragged from office and shot in the street by angry mobs for putting people through this bullshit? They'd rather kill off their own state's population than lose a judge on a court where they already have in effect a super-majority?

Fuck these people!

All things considered, the smart, politically-savvy thing to do would be to have moved the primary, run the risk, take the hit, and show the people that you give a damn. Why? Because basically even if you lose...when you already have a 7-2 majority you ain't losing much. This level of assholery risks them losing a lot more than a state supreme court seat. What, if anything, is the practical difference between a 7-2 majority and a 6-3 majority?! All you need is 5-4 and Republicans have wreaked uncountable mischief with just that on SCOTUS. Like, seriously, what is even the purpose of this bullshit?

What's so great about this judge that they need basically a national effort and to risk a new wave of infections to save him?

Or is it simply that these fucking people's hatred for democracy and their fellow human beings is just that baked into the cake at this point?

I was a Republican, I checked all the right boxes literally right up until September 1st of 2008 when the Republican Party left me behind by nominating Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. Before that, I'd been disgusted by the conspiracy theories, I was vehemently opposed to the racism...but those things could be fought, even from a conservative perspective, and you just might win.  McCain was not encouraging that crap, and he'd told somebody who talked that shit in a town hall meeting where to stick it live on national TV. But when Sarah Palin came along...and mind you Sarah Palin is the exact same kind of Christian as my ex-wife was...I knew that was strike three, and there was no hope. Why? Because every imaginable kind of evil could be excused in the name of dumb-ass ignorant holy-roller Fundamentalism and I'd dealt with that shit for years and knew from hard experience the only way to win was to get away.

And I know many, many more people who have made the same choice since. At this point, all that's left is the assholes, the cultists, the fascists and the racists...and some gullible old people and religious nuts. Both of those groups are trying with alacrity in this current crisis to kill themselves off by flouting social distancing and starting a needless confrontation with, well, basically everybody else.

This wasn't Trump, this was typical shitty Republican politics and if called out and/or prosecuted for it later, all Trump will be to these evil bastards is a rationalization.

This will not end well. Nor will it end the way they think it will, but there will be too much needless death anyway.

But we can't not put a stop to these people and their evil acts, either.

And it sure as hell didn't have to be this way. A little basic humanity could have gone a long way here, Republicans. Ya'll could have acted in good faith and grown your base and continued to be what you were years ago, but I guess that was too hard.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ~Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address

That the Party of Lincoln, the great emancipator who preserved our country, should come to this, to perpetrating these efforts to destroy it, is probably the sickest irony of all.

Fuck you, Wisconsin GOP, Fuck you.

Part Four.
Part Six/