Reenacting America’s Civil War with Rant, Cant, Sedition…& Civility/Spine, 1981-2021

“The results of (the elections of Sept. 14, 1930 in Weimar Germany) brought…107 brown-shirted Nazis, led by Wilhelm Frick…into the halls of the Reichstag (Congress)…a motley group of crude, ruthless demagogues…some of them wanted by the law for various breaches of the peace, but now representing over six million voters and constituting the second largest party in the peoples’ assembly…During the first nine months of 1931, 45 persons were killed in Prussia alone as a result of political street battles.” – Koppel Pinson, Modern Germany, 1966

“California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday pledged to empower private citizens to enforce a ban on the manufacture and sale of assault weapons in the state, citing the same authority claimed by conservative lawmakers in Texas to outlaw most abortions once a heartbeat is detected.” – Bismarck Tribune, 12/13/21

“A country that goes berserk over masks is about to debate guns and abortion.” – Windsor Mann “Still, we must try…The (Supreme Court) justices seem likely to hand the matter (abortion) back to the state legislatures and to the people. Whether we can handle it without tearing each other apart is another question entirely.” – Mona Charen, 12/14/21

“…however the (Supreme) Court acts, it will be a bad day for the United States if the mass of Americans come to lose their faith in it as their fair and final protector.” – Alistair Cooke, Alistair Cooke’s America, 1974

“(Chief Justice, SCOTUS) John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it” – attr. to President Andrew Jackson, 1832

“…crypto peers are…seeking residence on (Puerto Rico) to reap huge tax savings. High-earning investors in the U.S. pay up to 20% in capital gains tax and as much as 37% on short-term gains. In Puerto Rico, they pay nothing …companies…on the American mainland pay 21% in federal corporate tax plus an individual state tax, compared to…4% on the island. That makes the move a no-brainer for some investors,…as crypto market’s growth continues and Democrats push for higher taxes on the rich.” – Francesca Maglione, Bloomberg Wealth, 12/11/21

“I advocate statehood for Puerto Rico…(it) remains today a United States possession, the same status essentially as that in July, 1898, when General Miles took possession of the island from the Spanish. Possession of one territory by another indefinitely is not the American way of doing things.” – Senator William Langer (R-ND), 1947

“The city of St. Louis (MO) rose as the morning star of US imperialism.” – Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States, 2020

“In the case of Dickens (creator of Ebenezer Scrooge) I see a face of a man about forty, with a small beard and a high color. He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is generously angry—in other words, of a nineteenth century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.” – George Orwell, Charles Dickens, 1939

Ready, aim…sue, legislate, and “lets you and him fight.” Some New York Times pundits are proclaiming that the U.S. may be heading for a “civil war” over issues that divide us. It is fair to ask: “where the hell have these dudes been?” When Benjamin Franklin warned us in 1789 that we had constructed a “Republic” as long as we could “keep it,” he was looking back at wreckage of other experiments in representative democracy (rule in the name of all the people); which had been consistently fought and destroyed by “ogres of oligarchy” (rule in the name of a few people) as far back as The Old Oligarch of Sparta. Ogres of oligarchy are with us today in abundance among Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Another ogre of oligarchy who has “eaten” his share of humans is Rupert Murdoch, boss of FOX News. While some outlets highlight Murdoch’s media monstrosities, other media gurus lionize him in a series called “Succession,” just as they “humanize” ogres and trolls in movies or on Broadway. Since evil like Murdoch’s fascinates, as well as it sucks, I turned for explanations to old friends in North Dakota, The Fighting Trolls, experts in ogre baiting. They recently joined my KGB animal friends in Mandan.

High Plains Reader: Hello Troll friends! I’m sorry we lost our battle to make you mascots for UND’s Hockey Team to ND Attorney General Stenehjem’s “Fighting Suits.” Instead of watching trolls drive Zambonis, I must watch “Trump Toad,” Congressman Kelly Armstrong, and most Republicans, vote against all three of President Biden’s bills to promote the general welfare of the American people (The Covid Relief Bill; The Bi-Partisan Infrastructure Bill, and the pending Build Back Better Bill). Meanwhile, mainstream media take the GOP off the hook by picking on Senator Joe Manchin (D-WVA), who, like former ND Dem/NPL Senator Kent Conrad (1987-2013), dares to worry about the cost of responsible government; but not the need for it, which Republicans have rejected since 2010. The GOP’s willing sacrifice of their gullible unvaccinated voters for political power shows us the cost of irresponsible government in 2021.

Fighting Trolls: Thanks. It’s never a fair fight with ogres of oligarchy like the North Dakota GOP, who care more about oil, coal and gas than the welfare of citizens they so poorly serve. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), for example, rants about democratic socialism, with a veiled reference to a Puerto Rican Congresswoman from New York, while hailing from the only State in the U.S. with progressive institutions inspired by democratic socialist equity available to organized citizens: The Bank of North Dakota, and a State-Owned Grain Mill and Elevator.

Brenda Bison: ND Republicans Cramer and Senator John Hoeven, cover for Armstrong by backing the “cement socialism” of the Infrastructure Bill, while sitting on money from the Manchin-supported Covid Relief Bill throughout 2021, lest Democrats get credit they deserve. Of all the fools who keep voting for a derelict Republican Party and its ogres of oligarchy, North Dakota fools suffer the least, economically, for their folly, due to past progressive achievements in a history they have allowed to be erased by smug self-satisfaction, propagandists willing to exploit amnesia; salacious slander, and rumors masquerading as hard news.

Putin: AG Stenehjem, of course, has gone on to greater notoriety with other Republican State Attorneys General: suing a federal government trying to keep Americans from committing suicide by ingesting Ivermectin instead of injecting vaccines; running around mask-less and defenseless, rather than armed with the applied common sense known as science. The National Republican Party endorses this reactionary and destructive strategy. Conservative and Moderate Republicans who thought their “game” was on the level, have kidded themselves for decades.

Rasputin: “The Public” and Public Health be damned, if they get in the way of political power for ogres of oligarchy! The old robber barons would be proud of today’s GOP scam artists. The addition of a permanent propaganda outfit like Murdoch’s FOX News, and its spinoffs (not further to right, really, just more rabid), is a logical addition to the arsenal of anti-democracy.

Schickelgruber: In his revealing book, The War That Hitler Won, Robert Herzstein points out that the lies pushed by Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, were as believable to Nazi Germany’s enemies, as they were to the German people, who were lambs led to slaughter with everyone else within reach of Hitler’s war machine. Relentless repetition of lies, big and small, did the trick, unless the listener had recourse to more objective information nearby.

HPR: One of my singing friends in the Rheinischer Gesang Verein of Chicago told me that he’d been drafted as a machine tool operator, captured by the Allies and was transferred by submarine to a prison farm in North Carolina to pick potatoes for the rest of the war, which he considered “a vacation.” As a part of the Nazi war machine, he and his workshop were hidden in a cave near his home town, where his wife was killed by Allied bombing, whose strategists were unaware of their real target’s safe haven until after WWII was over. While at sea, Nazi propaganda blared by radio waves that his fate at the hands of Americans would be worse than death; his duty was to throw himself into the sea. He had seen enough, however, and was content to be a physical prisoner of U.S. Armed Forces, and later U.S. citizen, rather than a mental prisoner of the Nazis.

Mr. Crying Wolf: Mental prisoners of FOX reactionary democracy haters (The Republican Suckers Caucus) are the vast majority of unvaccinated dying in disproportionate numbers; a permanently-pissed-off base wooed by demagogues like Donald Trump, and, on his demise, other, more clever tyrants-in-waiting like Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Josh Hawley (R-MO).

Ms. Recovering Republican Lap Dog: Then there is the GOP Tax Break and Spend Caucus. After years of attacking “Tax and Spend” Democrats for funding government that sustains ordinary Americans; they blow up the national debt with boons to billionaires. If the dollar is thus devalued; they’ll take their crypto currency asses to tax havens overseas. They’re joined by the War Monger Caucus, formerly a bi-partisan effort, but with diminished participation by Democrats since the Viet Nam War. Former VP Dick Cheney (R-WY) thrived there.

Lena: The GOP of 2021 is now just a perennial conspiracy of oligarchy against democracy for varying motives, leaving only a remnant of Constitutional Republicans to join with Democrats. The silent, GOP Coward’s Caucus, may sign on later, but not while the issue is in doubt. Of note, however, are Old School Republicans, content, perhaps, to abide dictatorship abroad, but not tolerating it at home. Their champion is Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), heir to her father’s political empire in Wyoming, but not his contempt for democratic processes.

Annabelle Anaconda: In joining with Chair Benny Thompson (D-MS), fellow Republican Adam Kinzinger (IL), and other Democrats on the January 6^th Investigating Committee, Liz Cheney is dedicated to squeezing the life out of Republican and FOX News ogres of oligarchy, before they succeed in squeezing the life out of American democracy. Her determination accompanies a shift in emphasis among Senate Democrats and President Biden from closure on a third Build Back Better Bill to adding Omicron to their plate, while finalizing legislation to reaffirm the U.S. Constitution’s “regular order:” free and fair elections. It’s also a nice touch that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will return to the “time of the GOP crime” to bring up both voting rights bills at the onset of the week of January 6^th, 2022.

Schickelgruber: An echo of the September 14, 1930 elections which doomed “regular democratic order” in Germany’s Weimar Democracy, occurred with the chaos in Congress produced in 2010/2011 by Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and the so-called Republican “Freedom Caucus;” an ungovernable group of nihilists bent upon destroying anything Democrats and President Obama were proposing to save the American economy from the wreckage of Wall Street and GOP excesses harking back to 1980. Constitutional checks and balances held on for a while until the Trump Presidency gave oligarchic ogres opportunity to end democracy on January 6^th, 2021. But their cowardly would-be Fuehrer botched the job. Democracy has been given a second chance in the U.S. due to performances of a few brave, ordinary Americans who stood in the way; on the steps of the Capitol, in the ranks of the Civil Service, local police and Military, Democrats, and enough Republicans at all levels and in all branches of government.

Prudence Possum: Mainstream media’s political lore posing as wisdom: “payback is a bitch,” is exposed as shallow when compared to the “good government is good politics” performance of the Biden Presidency. His statements and actions as President prove instead that “the best revenge is to live well.” His faith-based magnanimity is foreign to cynics in the press, pollsters, and interpreters of photos of a proud, but down and out people in Western Kentucky. They voted 4-1 for the phony Trump Presidency, yet are confronted by a genuine, fearless President, doing the right thing by them whether they like him or not. Such courage is infectious among action-oriented members of his Party, and even reporters who follow the Democrats closely nowadays, a mystery to those who sit on the sidelines and carp among the D.C., NYC media, and a matter of sheer terror for any rational manipulators of unreason left in Republican ranks.

Chicago Dog: Facts are the real “bitch,” and they are spilling out all over. Republicans running, hiding, suppressing truths revealed by facts into their chaotic 2022 primaries; see these facts as nails for their political coffins, with Liz Cheney wielding a hammer in a bipartisan relationship with Democrats that Benjamin Franklin could believe in. Oligarchic ogres are placing their bets on State sponsored voter suppression laws to render meaningless future general elections, where Democrats have a better than even chance of winning. Woe to a media, fixed on “winners and losers,” if they fail to heed Rev. Al Sharpton’s words that all Americans lose if Democrats fail! The Republican Party doesn’t care about democracy anymore. It comes down to Democrats; hammering out a carve out from the filibuster legacy for voter rights and voter protection. These federal laws must pass muster with a Supreme Court that may overturn Roe v. Wade, but will likely resist overturning a “regular order” that Constitutionally put them onto their lofty perches over 200 years ago; as happened to more short sighted anti-democratic judges under Nazi rule.

Schickelgruber: Despite bad actors on FOX News, Rupert Murdoch is the heir of Bismarck and Alfred Hugenberg, not Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels would never have tolerated Murdoch’s FOX Sports, accurately reflecting American diversity of all colors and creeds; nor other corporate media — advancing diversity in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and recognition of their “customers of color” as active citizens and voters in the marketplace.

Rasputin: Germany’s Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, 1871-1890, bought up newspapers whose editors reflected democratic points of view to make way for editors of arch-conservatism. Press Baron Hugenberg, a major force in the German Nationalist Party in the 1920s, was so blinded by his hatred for democratically minded parties in Weimar, that he failed to understand how Hitler was using him, as much as the future Fuehrer was using his adoring, sucker Nazi followers.

Agatha Alligator: The Fighting Trolls, in their new capacity as happy warriors, are content to terrorize ogres of oligarchy rather than ordinary folks. They are still inflicting misery on people, but only on those who have it coming. After their latest forays into the insane cyber world of Mark Meadows and his merry band of Congressional seditionists, they left a message to Americans still willing to fight for their democracy. It was found by one of our fellow swamp creatures under a newly constructed “troll bridge to nowhere”:

Decking the Halls of Democracy with Courage and Candor……….The Fighting Trolls

It’s Chuck’s and Nancy’s turn to “Deck the Halls;”
Of Congress with a President with Class;
To halt the ogres of oppression’s blast
Against democracy; midst Tyrant’s calls.

Your freedom is a pow’r; if you but dare
To use your laws for orderly advance;
And not ignore the threats; Reactions’s dance
Of Devil’s making; soon to be laid bare.

Republicans who seek the dark side – Still;
With stealth, bold lies, and violent attack;
Will soon be visited with pushback; Hard
And fast, from those who’ve had more than their fill
Of Rant and Cant; With newly stiffened back;
To troll these ogres from your blessed yard.