“What is the hell going with the United States?” asked California Governor Gavin Newsom as he stood at yet another mass shooting scene, this time in San Jose. The governor had been talking with the family and friends of those whose voice they yearned to hear, perhaps forever. That is America’s question.
The simple answer is greed. Greed for money and power. Republicans in both the nation’s House and Senate dance to the tune of wealthy lobbyists ignoring that which 95 percent of their constituents want. The situation has finally reached a tipping point, because Americans are waking up and asking ‘What kind of country do we want?”
The Maricopa County Arizona Recorder is in charge of administering the county’s elections. Stephen Richer has begun talking about an absurd but deadly situation. Monday he appeared on ABC News Live and said:
‘The Breakdown [was there was no] legitimate reason that would have prompted this audit.’
When President Ronald Reagan (R) came into office, he promoted a new idea, Trickle Down Economics. Give the money to the rich, and it will trickle down fairly to everyone else. That did not work then. It never worked. Why? The Republican party used to believe in small government, low taxes on the wealthy, a belief that poor people were lazy, and their people were oh-so White.
Nihilist and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) started a movement that has taken America to an extreme point where it has one democratic party and one quasi-fascist party, as defined by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Government leaders started exporting the country’s good, unionized jobs leaving a huge segment of society bereft of hope for a decent life. Democratic leaders were not innocents either in this.
Richer talked to ABC News Senior National Correspondent Terry Moran about the invasion of the deadly Cyber Ninjas, but not in a warrior way, more like a slow-motion coup. Richer said:
‘It’s happening, not because the evidence merits it. All the tests came back clean. The parties themselves oversaw the hand-count auditing of 47,000 plus votes.’
‘And the frustrating bit is that some professional, legitimate companies did make bids to the Arizona Senate to do this work and we would have welcomed that.’
Richer continued:
‘This is where this crossed the line for me. I wanted to stay out of this, but when the good workers of Maricopa County — who are my friends, my teammates, my staff — are accused of unlawfully destroying evidence under my watch, then I had to say something.’
Richer’s response fired directly back at the audit officials via Twitter May 14:
‘Enough with the defamation. Enough with the unfounded allegations. I came to this office to competently, fairly, and lawfully administer the duties of the office. Not to be accused by own party of shredding ballots and deleting files for an election I didn’t run. Enough.’
Election experts, including Arizona’s Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, were mowed under by ultra-conservative organizations weaponizing state Republicans in a dirty power play.
The U.S. Republican-dominated Senate under people like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has not passed real legislation other than naming post offices after dead people for three decades. Republican leaders continued to pack people deeply within the Judicial Branch. They now have a mega-conservative-dominated Supreme Court that declared corporations are people and will agree next year that women cannot have abortions and ultimately birth control, unless Americans, all Americans, take action. It starts with asking, is this the country we want?
This is what we have now:
- A delusional, irrational, permanently spoiled old man who screams that he only loses if people cheat. Heads-I-win-tails-you-lose politics as nearly 600,000 people died in a nationwide pandemic, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
- A Russian president who helped him win in 2016, tried in 2020, and continues to play chess with our off-balance democracy.
- A bloody failed coup, but only because police sacrificed their fingers, their eyes, their lives protecting senators and representatives of all parties.
- A police officer killed George Floyd, a Black man, but oh so much more, before the nation’s eyes, calling out for his “Mama.”
- A clown car of Cyber Ninjas doing a slow-motion, spreading coup starting with Arizona but setting up groundwork to spread.
- An entire outrageously propagandized network, owned by a manipulative, greedy billionaire. It casts a spell over our people as the greedy squeeze harder for more, more, ever more.
- Nearly-weekly mass shootings where bloodied mangled six-year-old innocents’ bodies were preferable to GOP leaders than to losing gun lobby dollars.
- International businesses sucked down people’s loyalty as they stole their wages, their benefits, and their livelihoods. Corporations ate up local newspapers.
- As Americans yearn for something to cling to, a place to belong, they find the internet a cold substitute.
- Conservative organizations further finance and dictate Republican Party winners and losers. All for greed. Power and money.
Of course, Americans are angry. How could they not be? The life they had and their hopes for a better future were stolen from them. Each of those wrongs feeds upon the other in a spiraling descent that leaves Americans poorer, even more isolated, and with less hope.
Fortunately, we elected President Joe Biden. Not a perfect man, but a man of character.
So to the greedy, go buy your yacht that has to have a smaller yacht to accommodate your helicopter. Americans are on to what has been done to them. Richer said:
‘If the auditors want to look for bamboo paper, fine if they want to use UV lights, fine. I don’t think that will convince anyone about the validity of their efforts. That’s one thing, it’s entirely a different thing to be accusing us of breaking the law, and not just accusing us, but the manner in which they did it. They did it from an anonymously run Twitter account.’
Americans do not choose the status quo. Do not underestimate them.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
