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10/28/22

10/28/2022

4 Comments

 

THE VILLAINS OF ELECTION '22: THE CYNICS WHO CAN - BUT WON'T - VOTE

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THE VILLAINS OF THE ELECTION OF 2022 are not who we think they are.
   They are not mean.
   They’re not vicious.
   For the most part, they’re not  violent, rude and foul-mouthed closet racists, avowed conspiracists, election corrupters or polling place bullies, dressed in Halloween camo, but packing real heat.
   In other words, they aren't Republicans.
   To the contrary, they are nice, most likely soft-spoken, polite, even gentle, agreeable, fun to be around.   And they are everywhere. At the dinner table, sitting next to you at the football game, working at the opposite desk, raking the yard next door.
   So, who are the villains of Election 2022?
   They are the people who refuse to vote.

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 THEY COULD VOTE.
   But they are determined not to.
   They’re old enough. They’re citizens. Most don’t face the historic barriers to voting which reformers having been working so hard for years to knock down.
   Probably, they have smart phones, iPads, desktop computers, mail boxes – all of the standard equipment they need to learn the basics of elections and how to participate.
   They could register to vote. In fact, a lot of them already are registered to vote.
   When it comes to carrying out  the how of voting, they are perfectly capable of figuring out what would work best for them: early in-person voting; voting by mail; traditional voting on election day.
  It's easy for them to apply for mail ballots; find out when and where early voting is underway; and they certainly can locate their election day polling places.
   Most likely, they have raincoats and umbrellas, in case the weather turns rotten on election day.
   Like most Americans, most have cars to get where they need to go – to a polling place or a mail box. Or they have mastered the arts of alternative transportation. They have bicycles to get to the polls and chains to lock their bikes while they’re voting. They may know the bus routes. They have friends and family members who can taken them here and there – like to a ballot drop-box.
   But they won’t do it.
   They just won’t vote.
   And they’re killing us.

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 IT’S BECOME  a sad cliché that we are a divided, partisan nation, separated into two, nearly equal groups, the Red and the Blue, who no longer talk to each other, who consider each other to be un-American terrorists determined to end democracy as we know it, beginning Nov. 8, 2022.
   Actually, the two sides are equal only in numbers; only one of those two sides is a true danger to democracy, and it’s the  "Red" one - the Trumpist Republican Party.
   Some Republicans were among the criminals who overran the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, on a “bipartisan” mission to murder the Vice President of the United States (a Republican) and the Speaker of the House of Representatives (Democrat). And if they weren't part of the mob, they have becomes its apologists.
   Instead of celebrating the Republican office holders who carried out their duties as secretaries of state and other neutral vote-counters, the Trumpist Republicans are doing their best to run them out of town, seeking local, county and state offices that oversee elections so they can skew the results, and in the meantime, passing laws making it easier to overturn voting outcomes they don’t like,
   Democrats are many things, some of them not  particularly complimentary.
   The Blues seem not as interested as  the Reds are in the minutiae and mechanics of the election process; don’t seem to have quite the work ethic of the election spoilers; and they haven’t planned and worked as diligently to take over school boards and state houses. Worse, Democrats can be embarrassingly and bizarrely idiotic, as demonstrated recently by members of the House Progressive Caucus, who recently sent a letter to Biden, urging him to negotiate a Ukrainian peace deal with Putin, only to modify, then withdrew the letter after a wave of common sense swept across the country.
   But Democrats do have a few positive things going: a commitment to lawful elections, an interest in effective government and respect for law.

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 WHICH IS WHERE the non-voters come in.
   In close elections, every vote counts. The non-voters could make the difference between whether we have a Red or Blue government, whether we continue as a democracy or something else.
   The non-voters could care less.
   If they have a political motto, it’s something like this: “I don’t care for politics.”
   Their selfish, self-fulfilling cynicism follows a script like this: a) politics is a dirty business; b) politicians are going to do whatever they like, so why vote; c) the “system” is  corrupt, ineffective and unfair; d) there's an election?
    Whats more, I’m too nice, too busy, too smart, too agreeable.
   The non-voters are united in the illusion that elections have nothing to do with real life.
   Government has nothing to say about whether Social Security will adequately fund retirements ("It won't be there for me"). Government doesn't have anything to do with  health care (I’m feeling fine); pandemics can be controlled (I can’t stand masks); meat is properly inspected (like I said, I'm feeling fine); schools are  terrible (what's new?); potholes fill themselves (except the ones in front of my house); sometimes rogue countries invade other countries (so what?); climate change is  a) overwhelming, b) too far down the road to worry about; abortion is a "woman's problem"; 110 mph is a reasonable speed limit (except on my street); children should be able go to school without being blown to bits as long as the rights of gun owners are not infringed upon.
   Democracy is difficult, demanding and discouraging.
   It puts a terrible emotional burden on Americans who take it seriously. I'm guessing that  few of us are expecting a stress-free evening Nov. 8, or later, trying to figure out  what to do in its aftermath.
   I admit that I thought that after Trump was banished from the White House following four years of  turmoil and chaos, we could relax for many more years. I was wrong and foolish. We are condemned to living out the rest of our lives in a perpetual political emergency.

SO, IT’S EASY TO UNDERSTAND why millions of Americans opt out of politics and its logical requirement that everyone who can vote should vote.
   We all know someone, probably many people, who don't vote.
   The non-voters are, as I said, often likable, logical, affable folks, probably entertaining dinner companions and perhaps community-spirited – maybe they coach kids’ soccer and help out at a soup kitchen and contribute to Go-Fund-Me campaigns and have amazing vegetable gardens.
   But they are dangerous, and if this country goes down the tubes because of the way this election or subsequent ones turn out, it will be their fault.
   They’ll, of course, pay the price for their indifference.
     But so will the rest of us.

4 Comments

10/20/22

10/20/2022

1 Comment

 

DEMOCRATS, LISTEN TO
CHICKEN LITTLE:
THE SKY IS NOT FALLING

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 MEMO
(Urgent)

FROM:         Chicken Little
TO:               Democrats, Progressives, Liberals,
                     People of Goodwill & Fellow Patriots
SUBJECT:   The Sky
DATE:          19 Days To The Midterms


   I HAVE AN important announcement:
   THE SKY IS NOT  FALLING!
   You’ve heard and read otherwise.
   The Democrats in Congress are toast, and thus begins the long-predicted end of the American experiment.
   Polls say so. Pundits say so. The pits of your stomachs say so.
   Here’s a quick round-up of headlines I've plucked from various news sites on this very theme:

  •  A slate of races now lean Republican in our latest forecast update (Politico)
  • Democrats’ failure to make 2022 about the threat to democracy (Washington Post)
  • Facing tough midterms, Biden releasing oil from US reserve (Associated Press)
  • Bernie Sanders, Fearing Weak Democratic Turnout, Plans Midterms Blitz (New York Times)
  • Are Democrats messing up their midterm messaging? (The Guardian)
   And here’s Politco’s Dial-A-Despair graphic, showing the House as a lost cause.
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SO, NOTHING NEW HERE.
   The doomsayers, the negativists, the spoilers, the half-empty glassers, the pessimists are at it again, as they have been for months. Midterm elections are hard on the party in power, historically; and Joe Biden’s poll numbers are pathetic; lots of Democratic Congressmen and Women chickened out early and didn't even try to run again. Maybe it was looking a little brighter for the Dems earlier this summer, but the tide is turning. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
    Look, as a legendary prognosticator, I admit that I don’t have a good record as to warning of a falling sky.
    My record is worse even more than that of the boy who warned incessantly of  the arrival of my mortal enemy, The Wolf.
   But we pessimists do have this going for us: sooner or later, we ARE going to be right.
   We all die.
   Before that, we all lose, fail and collapse at some point in our lives.
   That center of our earthly existence, the sun, will run out of gas.
   And who can forget what came roaring out of the sky a while ago – it seems like yesterday –  when that mother of all asteroids struck the earth, wiping out the dinosaurs. What a classic bit of bad bad-sky news, about which we’re still learning new facts.
   Just yesterday, the Washington Post added this new information - talk about rough seas:
   Sixty-six million years ago, a nearly nine-mile-wide asteroid collided with Earth, sparking a mass extinction that wiped out most dinosaurs and three-quarters of the planet’s plant and animal species. Now we’re learning that the so-called Chicxulub asteroid also generated a massive “megatsunami” with waves more than a mile high.
    But here’s the thing.
    We also know that just recently NASA sent a spacecraft after a contemporary asteroid, crashing into it so as to slightly change its orbit, a successful experiment that suggests that monster rocks don’t have to strike Mother Earth twice.
   “All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. After all, it’s the only one we have,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, in in a self-serving, but on-target news release put out by his agency.
   My point: the sky is not falling, certainly not the way it used to, definitely not yet.
  
Here’s another thing  to keep in mind: sports, particularly sports cliches.

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SOCCER FAN, after a what seemed a lost cause, turned around in the final minutes of a 2022 championship match. CREDIT: NBC Sports, via YouTube
RECENTLY, MRS. LITTLE AND I took an interest in world soccer, AKA, "football."
   By way of background, we Littles are not big, bruiser-type athletes or even sports fans. By definition, we are little, and we  definitely are chicken when it comes to contact sports. But thanks to streaming TV, we've become a wee bit knowledgeable about soccer/football, and developed some respect for sports' sayings, AKA "wisdom."
   Just this past May, the championship of the English Premier League was on the line as Manchester City played Aston Villa. Well into the 90-minute game (matches typically go longer, but that’s too esoteric for this discussion). At about the  75-minute mark, “Villa” was ahead of “City,” 2-to-nil. Hopeless, given that soccer/football is a low-scoring game. However, in the next five minutes, “City” scored three goals, two by the same player, a substitute. And Manchester City won the league championship.
   You see what I mean? 

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 IT'S NOT GUARANTEED that the Republicans are going to take control of the House. Or, even worse,that they’ll take back the Senate, too. Or that Red State legislators will get their way as election fixers, bullies of transgender kids and abortion lunatics.
   What I can tell you is this: today is no time for predictions.
   It’s time to vote.
   Early voting has begun in many places. Mail ballots are already on voters’ kitchen tables. Election day is Nov. 8.
   People, who just a few weeks ago didn’t know there was an election this year, are waking up to, eating dinner to, going to bed to a chorus of grotesque, misleading, ridiculous campaign ads. But those ads have one big positive: they alert all of us to the fact that there’s an election.
   So, it’s time  to persuade the two or three people left in the country who haven’t made up their minds about Donald Trump. Time to hector Democrats to do the right thing: get off the couch and go vote. Now is the time for the fanatics, the political junkies, the besotted volunteers to stop fretting about winners or losers, and, instead,  round up their friends, their families, the people next door and across the street, and start talking to total strangers, calling, texting, ringing, writing, mailing, pleading, begging.
   This is our long-shot, our come-from-behind chance. So, let’s stay in the game.
   Let’s be positive.
   Let’s hope.
   Let’s get out there, do the work
   And even have some fun in the closing weeks, days and minutes.
   Do not worry about the sky. I’ll take care of  that.
   The rest is up to you.

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1 Comment

10/12/22

10/12/2022

1 Comment

 

AN ISLAND VACATION:
WHERE SUMMER SEEMS ENDLESS; AND TRUMP'S CRUEL WINTER IS TOO EASILY FORGOTTEN

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A BLOCK ISLAND original, the North Light, one of the island's two great lighthouses
WE ARE ON BLOCK ISLAND, a speck of paradise in the Atlantic Ocean, 12 miles off the New England mainland.
   The weather is fantastic. Deep blue skies, gentle temperatures and a just trace of wind, making it hard to remember that Fall has been officially underway for a while now, with Winter inevitable as it will be savage. But today, you can still taste Summer.
   Block Island is always described in superlatives: One of the Last Best Places on Earth sort of thing; and truly, nearly half of its nine-plus square miles are preserved, conserved and protected against development, in part because long-ago landowners agreed to give up personal fortunes so the rest of us can be reminded of what a planet should be and could be.
      My wife and I almost didn’t make it here this year.
   The remnants of Hurricane Ian, having murdered scores of Floridians and devastated the lives of thousands of others, brushed past New England with towering seas and fierce winds, forcing cancellation on three successive days of the ferries that connect paradise with the rest of Rhode Island.
   Lucky for us, innkeepers moved our reservations to the following week, the first few days of which have been, as I said, breathtaking.

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THE SOUTHEAST LIGHT, moved from eroding cliffs in the 1990s
 BLOCK ISLAND IS ITS own kind of world: soaring cliffs, lush glens laced with public walking trails, along with sparkling ponds, miles upon miles of stone walls, big and little beaches, Victorian buildings with cupolas, and two signature lighthouses, one of which is called the Southeast Light and was saved from falling into the ocean in the 1990s, thanks to twin miracles of engineering and fundraising, making it possible to lift up the massive brick structure and move it away from a constantly eroding coastline.
   Our forever summer, of course, is an illusion. Winter is on it’s way, and more immediately, a fresh assault of rotten weather is in this week’s forecast, so we’re starting to worry that the ferries could again stop running, stranding us on the wrong side of our mini-vacation, temporarily homeless.
   But on a day like this, the forecast seems like a word that old Joe Biden might use, malarkey.

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DOWNTOWN Block Island, with a cupola visible atop on of the large hotels
 IN A WAY, today’s mirage of perpetual summer is a metaphor for the dangerous politics from which the nation seems unable to free itself.
   Today, the election seems far off, which is silly, because it’s only weeks away.
   And surely we know what could be next: a political Winter that isn’t just harsh, but one that in actuality never ends; the beginning of a new Dark Ages, from which there is no rescue, no Spring, no Summer, and no Fall, a time in which the seasonal pendulum has frozen into permanent polarized Winter.
    What’s so frustrating is that most of us are like me, vacationers oblivious to the coming storm, and even if we acknowledge that Summer someday could pause, the promise of Spring and all the good stuff that follows, is inevitable.
   But we know, deep down, what’s really on its way, and that we should have learned our lesson. We barely survived the four-year political Winter of Donald Trump. We’ve seen the remarkable hold that Trump still has on an entire political party, which instead of rejecting Trump’s lawless, cruel, selfish and anti-democratic example, has embraced, and is still perfecting, the Trump Way.

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LAND AND SAND as seen from the North Light
 WE NEED need to wake up – and fast.
   Nuclear disaster is again up for discussion, long after the Cold War ended, along with its dire thoughts of an atomic holocaust. Wildfires and hurricanes are signs of a collapsing and unlivable climate. The economy remains unjust, unfair and irreparable as ever.
   But Republican fanatics are interested in preventing and fixing none of these real catastrophes, focused instead on deliberately, systemically wrecking an electoral process that is the core of the American political ecosystem.
   Too many Americans are here with us on Block Island, still on vacation, in denial of the coming political darkness, because Summer keeps on churning out warm, wonderful days. You know what season it is? Football season. And, heck, in the unlikely event of a chiller cycle, there are three other nicer ones right behind.
   So, why vote?
   And was Trump really that bad? Jan. 6 is history, folks. Gas prices were low beyond belief under Trump.
   What’s Joe Biden done for us lately? He’s really old; frankly, too old. Really.

TODAY, I'M HERE on Block Island to tell you that temperatures feel like they are in the 70s.
   The wind is gentle, and that on the long sandy, rocky walk to the other lighthouse, the North Light, you can see the seals frolicking in the calm, glassy ocean.
   It’s perfect, just as life is supposed to be.
   It's impossible to imagine that it could be any other way.

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THE LONG STAIRWAY, 141 steps down (or up), the cliffs at Mohegan Bluffs
1 Comment
    BRIAN C. JONES
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      I'VE BEEN a reporter and writer for 58 years, long  enough to have  learned that journalists don't know very much, although I've met some smart ones. 
      Mainly, what reporters know comes from asking other people questions and fretting about the answers.
       This blog is a successor to one inspired by our dog, Phoebe, who was smart, sweet and the antithesis of Donald Trump. She died Feb. 3, and I don't see getting over that very soon.
       Occasionally, I may try to reach her via cell phone.


     

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