YOU’RE GONNA HATE ME
But it’s time to say it, straight out.
Republicans are bad. Bad to the bone. They are heartless and soulless and enemies of our nation, our people and our democracy. Of civilization itself. They seem bereft of empathy and even decency.
There used to be good Republicans, even good Republican presidents. I know good people right here in Santa Monica who still identify with that party, because they have all their lives. But it’s time to face facts. Now, if you claim that affiliation, you are smeared with the awful agenda your elected representatives gleefully pursue or cowardly endorse. You can’t have it both ways anymore.
Reverse Robin Hoods on steroids, they are unabashedly engineering the biggest transfer of wealth in history, from those who have so little to those who have so much, looking to break their own records. Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan were amateurs, and lacked technology.
They go about destroying government because crooks fare much better when there are fewer cops. “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help,” Ronald Reagan famously quipped. Republicans have always loved that quote and he remains a Republican avatar, even though he had so many moderate policies and beliefs they wouldn’t let him into today’s GOP. Such transparently bankrupt slogans only try to excuse away unbridled greed. Trickle down, my backside.
DEMOCRATS NOT MUCH BETTER
But they are better. I’ve so had it up to here with false equivalencies. “They all do it.” “All politicians lie, they are all corrupt.” Okay, but the difference makes a huge difference.
There seem to be no limits now to what the GOP feels emboldened to inflict upon us from Washington and state capitols. They’re trying to take away your health coverage (tens of thousands will die), food (the old and impoverished and many veterans depend on Meals on Wheels, 2.5 million, and without the school lunch program 33 million kids benefit from, a lot of children won’t eat), vital medical facilities (only 3-12 percent of Planned Parenthood’s patients get abortions, the rest depend on it for other kinds of important women’s health care, often lifesaving), education (the voucher system will destroy public schools), privacy (your personal records, down to SS number, now can be sold), environmental protections (coal mines can now dump their toxic waste into nearby rivers, so look forward to 1,000 Flints), and they are seriously going after your Social Security and Medicare, defunding the arts, attacking women legislatively at every opportunity, and Muslims, immigrants and really anyone who looks “different,” and journalists (“don’t listen to these people who report exactly what we say”), and on and on and on and on. Any one of these horrible policies, now steaming like a runaway locomotive since only Jan. 20, would have been unthinkable coming from the Dems.
DON’T JUMP, DUMP
I suspect many elected Republicans secretly don’t like Trump, even despise him,
and would have no qualms about dumping him for Mike Pence at the right moment. But they have jumped on his wagon because he will pull them where they want to go. He got elected promising jobs, but GOP monsters drunk with power (yes, I’m done with nice), with control of all three branches of government, are prioritizing their draconian, Puritan social agenda, that the American people most certainly did not vote for. Even Roe v. Wade may not stand. All this of course becomes a footnote if the mango Mussolini starts a World War, which he is already recklessly, ignorantly, gleefully grabbing for by the tail. It’s what happens when you give a bully a bigger stick and drop all the rules.
Sorry, good-hearted Republicans, you can’t claim that party label anymore without all that goes with it. You can redeem yourself, by fighting to restore your party’s good name, but I don’t see much of that, especially among elected politicians.
Democrats, it takes two to tango. You’re making noise about resistance, but there
should not have been a single vote in committee for a single one of Trump’s
insanely horrid cabinet choices. You should be demanding facts about the Russian connection now, not six months from now, before this illegitimate President becomes completely entrenched, and before we on the West Coast look skyward to see North Korean nuclear missiles ruining our sunny beach day. As a party, with few exceptions, you lack moral courage and are spineless and feckless.
You can’t fight the enemy unless you know who it is. Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and their active and silent enablers are as much to blame as Donald Trump for our sinking democracy.
OPA
The Ocean Park (neighborhood) Association is not as bad as the Republican Party. Okay, not even close. They do a lot of good, and since I’ve been going to their monthly meetings lately, I would say they seem to have cleaned up, somewhat, longstanding loose parts of their act.
But at least a couple of board members don’t think there was any problem. And that’s a problem.
They were much better in allowing a back and forth between members and board at the last monthly meeting. But that may have been because they had an extra 20 minutes to kill because of a no-show guest speaker. And because no one was being contentious. The meeting before, a member who was critical of the upkeep of Main Street was summarily shut down. And that’s a reputation they have, whether they want to admit it or not.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Is there change in the wind? Do I detect a slight political shift, of the entrenched forces pushing build, build, build, starting to realize their overdevelopment agenda in Santa Monica could result in loss of power and elections? Or is that just my allergies? Do not accept half change. They will offer only as little as they perceive necessary. We who live here must determine the fate of our City.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "They lie to others because they first lie to themselves.” — Lewis B. Smedes (>>and happy birthday, Mom.<<)
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 31 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at
therealmrmusic@gmail.com
