Down the Memory Hole with “Big Brother” GOP

Down the Memory Hole with “Big Brother” GOP

By Charlie Barber, The LAST WORD, Filed to the High Plains Reader, Fargo, ND, February 5, 2023

“The United States on Thursday reached its borrowing limit…Republicans in the House say they will insist on deep spending cuts in exchange for their cooperation in again raising the debt ceiling. But Democrats…want a so-called clean hike without concessions on spending and they are publicly signaling they won’t negotiate on the matter…A full default has never happened but if one did occur, it would likely downgrade the nation’s credit rating, damage its ability to borrow and cause markets around the globe to roil.”
– ABC News, 01/19/23 

“A certain proportion of the human race believes that it is possible to steal and escape without being caught—from shoplifters to corporate CEOs…Sometimes contrition isn’t enough to turn off a storm surge of evil.”
– Father Andrew Greeley (aka. Bishop Blackie Ryan)                             

“An all-round increase in wealth…(meant) the destruction of a hierarchical society…only (made) possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance…Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed…In practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare…(the) destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor…In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population.”
– George Orwell, 1984                     

“(North Dakota is) short on job creation. To be honest, it is the federal government and outside developers that are providing the present prosperity.  It is an old myth that low taxes…attract new business. Minnesota is a high tax state – and higher quality services…The quality of life is better in Minnesota because it is a state in which the word ‘community’ is translated into caring for people. Anything that looks like compassion in North Dakota has been on the back burner since the beginning.”
– Prof. Lloyd Omdahl, former ND Dem. Lt. Gov. Bismarck Tribune, 1/20/23 

“Two bills seek to ban sexual content in public libraries in North Dakota, legislation opponents say is censorship.”
– Bismarck Tribune, 01/18/23

“The Florida State Board of Education unanimously approved an amendment in 2021, banning critical race theory, which they defined as “the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.”
– Axios, 01/18/23 

“Newspeak (Twitter? Face Book?) is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year…the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought…we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it…In the walls of (Winston Smith’s) cubicle there were three orifices…a small pneumatic tube for written messages…a larger one for newspapers…(one) for waste paper.  Similar slits existed in …tens of thousands throughout the (Ministry of Truth), not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor.  For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes.”
– Orwell, 1984/Chicago Dog 

“In a win for LGBTQ advocates, the North Dakota Senate defeated a bill that would have barred transgender residents from using pronouns that align with their gender identity at schools and other publicly funded entities. The chamber voted 39-8 on Friday to reject Senate Bill 2199 after a short debate.”
– Forum News Service, 01/21/23 

“You know (today’s GOP) cares; you just don’t know how little.”
– Helga Christianson/Chicago Dog 

America’s continuing class, race and gender wars have reached another crescendo, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Republicans trying to erase the 14th Amendment clause that protects the full faith and credit of the Republic which militarily won the Civil War of 1861-1865.   

This latest installment of all-out war against progressive values began in 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s GOP weaponized lies about government “as the problem” into tax breaks for the rich.   

Extortionate assaults on social welfare programs followed; in order to “balance the budget,” due to excesses of corporate and GOP greed, plus bi-partisan American Empire building.  Democratic President Clinton, at the expense of many who could least afford his economies, produced a surplus in 2000 to clean up the fiscal messes of Republicans Reagan/Bush I.  

Bush II then gave us a 2nd Iraq war and more rich guy giveaways.  The depression that followed in 2008 was being cleaned up by Democrat Barack Obama when juvenile delinquents, like Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC), Tea Party wackos, MAGA morons, and trumpeting Trumpists encouraged violent attacks on minorities in particular and Democrats in general.  Armed to the teeth with guns and gullibility, today’s “true believers” imbibe their daily doses of demented dreck from right wing airwaves, available since radio’s inception, and augmented by Rupert Murdoch’s FOX falsehood Empire, and rampant 21st Century social media paranoia. 

America struggles to keep its history straight.  While technological tools of organized and disorganized hatreds are new; scapegoating, slavery, planned poverty, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder are not.  They are well documented by those who stare into the abyss and dare to record evil’s excesses on paper, film and other media.  But there are those among the powerful who seek to ignore; even deny access to that information, lest our national sins be exposed to enough folks who might want to correct them. Things democracy does well are belittled and ignored. 

Former Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ) once said that China and the U.S. were exactly the same; we both considered our countries the center of the Earth.  It’s neither China’s, nor President Richard Nixon’s, fault that America’s CEOs, decided to attack the standard of living of decently paid American workers by shipping their jobs to Asia, with the blessings of a pliant Congress.  Democrats also might not wish to credit Nixon’s enlightened approach to Black small businesses and Native American empowerment, as well as a fulsome support of Social Security and other New Deal and Great Society advances, but it was so.  Tricky Dick may have played fast and loose with the U.S. Constitution, but he did not attack the welfare of American working people the way Reaganites, Bushites and Trumpsters have done for the past 43 years.  Nixon’s appointment of Warren Burger as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court also makes him the indirect enabler of Roe v. Wade in 1973; and he institutionalized environmentalism as no other President since Teddy Roosevelt.  When Ronald Reagan took down Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the White House roof, he was trashing Richard Nixon’s green energy vision as well; and one of our last chances to prevent the melting of the North and South Poles.   

The real “sin” of solar energy in reducing our carbon footprint, is that, with proper zoning laws, it could reduce everyone’s energy bills, bypassing “big bucks” solar/wind.  It is anti-monopoly by its very nature.  Just south of my “KGB Husky Hill,” are friendly neighbors of the Standing Rock Nation, erecting solar panels along the pathway of the oil pipeline they were protesting in 2016.  Back then, they were assaulted by “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men” (aka. hired “Oil Boy” thugs, “frightened white boy” local police, terrified State government minions, and confused Federales).  Having helped “smuggle” warm clothing and blankets to the Water Protectors without any real hassle, I realized that main stream reporting seldom reflected what was really going on.  If journalism really is “the first draft of history,” it is small wonder that many folks believe that history is “lies agreed upon.”   I asked my animal friends about this. 

High Plains Reader:  Dear friends;  If “the truth shall make us free,” why are Governors like Ron DeSantis (R-FL); Greg Abbott (TX), numerous Red State legislators and yahoo local school boards trying to lock up people who reveal inconvenient truths about American history? 

Putin:  There isn’t any easy money in telling truths that don’t flatter people.  This is especially problematic when those people have voting power.  If you are peddling “warts and all” narratives that challenge historical hang-ups and deep-set prejudice  you won’t achieve fame and fortune, except in certain sports and entertainments where the “proof of the pudding is in the eating”. 

Rasputin:  Lies, on the other hand, can make you a lot of money, especially in politics and journalism; although no profession is untainted by the temptation to lie rather than tell the truth.   

Schickelgruber:  In theory, lies are free speech, protected by the 1st Amendment; and in a democracy, everyone is assumed to be able to pursue them.  In practice, however, lies that cause real damage, like cancer from products of polluting corporations with contracts both foreign and domestic, are governed by the “divine right of money bags,” the driving anti-democratic force in the United States and the world over. 

Lena:  The filthy rich are terrified that filthy politics, which protects their filthy riches, is in danger from average, hard-working, competent, “unfilthy” Americans.   These folks are tired of being gunned down by assault weapons, enabled by a filthy NRA; Assault-slander of their color getting them killed by filthy, rogue cops; Assault-prejudice against their gender preference by filthy minded “polite society” which isolates them from legitimate private and public entities and intercourse; and Assault-ignorance by filthy politicians endangering their health and well-being.   

Becky Badger:  It’s bad news for the filthy of mind and spirit that “unfilthy” folks are electing more and more and more of “their own” in Red Congressional Districts and States as well as blue ones.  And as democratic and humanistic forces begin to gain control over the levers of police power, once monopolized by the filthy rich and powerful, only the levers of fraud remain.  Book banning and weaponizing of race, religious, and gender prejudice is as much a sign of desperation among U.S. filthy elites, as Vlad Putin’s genocidal attack on democratic Ukraine. 

HPR:  Is that why those “in the tank” for Vladimir Putin’s Russia wish to withhold U.S. military support for Ukraine, actions that enjoy overwhelming American moral and electoral support? 

Madame Inspector Chen:  For the most part, yes.  Some “tankies” are on the far left, who  object to historical American and western Imperialism, but not to other Imperialisms: (Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Saudi for example), all of them abundantly documented.  But the far left; “tankies” or otherwise, are not represented in Congress, despite what FOX News says.   

Jim Crow XV:  Right wing “tankies,” however, love American Imperialism at home and abroad, as long as it resembles the Confederacy and/or the wolves of Wall Street.  Their “Chaos Caucus” controls House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and thus the GOP agenda of 2023.  These nihilists are engaged in a total war against American democracy; using weapons of deceit, appeals to violence, and a blatant assault on history “as it actually was,” in order to reorient your society in the direction of tyranny rather than democracy. 

Winston Wallaby:  When Orwell wrote: “the great enemy of clear language is insincerity” (Politics and the English Language), he was describing the mind set of liars for power and profit,  who misuse language to “baffle people with bullshit, when they can’t dazzle them with brilliance.” When he wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past” (1984), he was describing methods of Ron DeSantis and MAGA minded media and demagogues who would deny that 2 + 2 = 4; in favor of a math that favors their monetary and political bottom line.  This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it has reached a crisis point with the GOP assault on America’s credit rating, and continuing contempt for the welfare of your citizens.  

Ms. Recovering Republican Lap Dog:  President Reagan wasn’t the first to bury your dark legacies, but his Hollywood skills promoted denial of demonstrable truths and modern science that now dominates the 2023 Orwellian GOP.  Moreover, “The Great Communicator” had help from “junk food journalism” and “4th of July History.”  NBC’s Tom Brokaw, in anointing WWII America as the “Greatest Generation,” bypassed all other American civilians and soldiers, who have offered their time, and lives to building the American dream for over 400 years.  

Brenda Bison:  This seductive lie, ignoring savage capitalism, racism, religious bigotry and sexism of the WWII cohort, has yet to be challenged.  Most men and women of that generation served their country with honor, of course, but the greatest in American history to ever do so?  You allow such canonization of your undemocratic past at the peril of your democratic future.   

Irena Raccoon: Ukrainians feel your pain.  Vlad Putin’s Big Lies about our past, like former Tsarist and Soviet lies, have been killing us and destroying our farms and cities since 2014. It’s a blessing that President Biden, Democrats, and even a few Republicans finally noticed.   

Omar Khayyam:  American and NATO arms for Ukraine, a real democracy, rather than the phony ones your soldiers and treasure were wasted on in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, is an investment in the future you can’t afford to refuse.  Professor Timothy Snyder makes the point that the relative costs of Abrams tanks, other vehicles and ammunition in support of a diverse and democratic Ukrainian nation, with little obligation to send American troops, is a real bargain. 

Chicago Dog:  Professor Snyder (On Tyranny) also makes the point that America is a battlefield as well.  No tanks yet, but war by other means against freedom, democracy and diversity is upon you: “free enterprise” serial murder, courtesy of the NRA and deranged cops; espionage and cyber-attacks from friends like Israel, rivals like China and foes like North Korea and Russia.   

Mr. Swamp Fox:  In 2023, attacks on a functioning, democratic Congress continue; aimlessly, but corrosively led by McCarthy and remnants of the 118 GOP supporters of an overthrow of Constitutional democracy on January 6th, 2021.  There are 212/213 Democrats in support of democratic means and ends. That leaves 104 Republicans who have serious thinking to do in the next few months about whether they want to destroy the economic underpinnings of democracy by defaulting on your National Debt in order to please McCarthy’s Tea Party MAGA heads – and Vladimir Putin’s Russia – or to preserve a democratic Republic. 

Prudence Possum:  Only a few Republicans need to vote for sanity from those who didn’t vote to overturn the 2020 election, or the 118 who did, but have buyer’s remorse.  Our swamp folks discovered a note from one of these “fearful fence sitters” in a bistro bathroom near K Street, where Wall Street purchasers of the “best Congress money can buy” come to let Kevin McCarthy know what he can and can’t do with his filthy minded faithful in service to the filthy rich: 

To Tank or Not to Tank; That is the Question……………………………Headless Horseman 

To go into the tank for Vlad is nuts. 

Although the cost of government is high; 

The cost of chaos is much more.  So I 

Must not appear a weak and spineless putz. 

My voter base is purple; not the hue 

That once was safely red, but MAGA prone; 

Until that moron, Trump, began to phone 

To steal some votes.  It could now yet turn blue. 

Joe Biden’s building bridges, left and right, 

Across the wide Ohio; and the aisle 

In Senate Chambers;  Why, oh why not ours? 

I know that answer lies in how we fight  

For fiscal sanity; Yet all the while, 

Resisting madness in these waning hours.