WTF HAPPENED TO US.

I'm an old Boomer. I got a late start in making my parents grandparents, so now I'm looking at 2 sons who are in no hurry to make me a pa-pa. Consequently I have a lot of waking ours to think about inconsequential stuff. In addition there's a good bit of consequential stuff to engage my mind, sometimes my wits.

On November 4, or soon after, we will wake up to see the maga Republican con-game in its falling-down-the-basement-steps descent. No political party since Joseph McCarthy, and he was Republican in every sweaty pore,  deserves it more. There will be much that needs to be done that is "regular business" and there will be much to be done to unfuck what maga Republicans have fucked up since 2016. This will, by necessity, take many years to complete. Too many for most of us who don't understand such things, but have an enlivened sense of Republican injustice. 

There was a period of 40 years, from 1955 to 1995 when America, through Democratic majorities in the House of representatives, passed the most progressive, inclusive, legislation of our history. Those Democratic majorities, i hasten to add, were not accomplished by vote-rigging on our part. Except for Mayor Daly's Chicago and we had problems with that. Most of that legislation happened between the 60s and 70s. That beginning date, 1955, was when the stink of Tail-gunner Joe McCarthy finally settled over Congress like an old patchwork quilt made by grandma.  He would shortly do us the dignity of drinking himself into an alcoholic death. Given Trump's feelings about alcohol, we will not get the same courtesy from Donald James Trump. During that 40 years, we battled the dark forces of conservatism mostly to a draw but sometimes winning. Those winning periods gave us the Civil Rights Act, the voting rights Act, Medicare, squeezed the Vietnam War to an end, and watched with mixed feelings as the Dixiecrats become Republicans. As much as we needed them, we did not like being in the smoke-filled room with them. Additionally, we saw the end of smog in our major cities, stopped the enlarging hole in the ozone layer, and enacted the Environmental Protection Act. Good things did happen and bad things happened less often. 1980 saw the long slide to the end of that 4 decades-long period of near greatness. Reagan became president, a young Lt.Col named Oliver North became a war planner for the Grenada invasion and sent special Forces to leap out of a helicopter in a storm, the CIA was flying cocaine out of Columbia, and Newt Gingrich was beginning his subterranean quest to speakership. From that point to 1995 Democrats became the doormat to Republican dirty tricksters like Roger Stone, groups like the ironically-named Project Veritas and Swiftboat Veterans For Truth. They alway seem to find room for truth in the title, while they otherwise choke it out of the process. We became the subject of rightwing demagogues on talk radio. And mostly we accepted it as a cost of democracy. During all of this time, democracy was not pursued by the fascist party. Oligarchy, dictatorship, even theocracy were pursued by those people. Never democracy as practiced by those who allowed democratic principals to guide their legislation.

No More! We will no longer go high when they go low. Among the musts before the 120th Congress, will be trials and investigation of key leaders in the maga movement. Included in those musts must be a Supreme Court that needs to be reminded that they are Supreme Court jurists, not Supreme beings. Congressional rules of behavior need to be tightened so they are not misused like Mitch McConnell abused custom to hold up Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination. So they are not abused like Kevin McCarthy/Mike Johnson abused the speakers role constantly. Administrative appointments MUST go to people qualified to lead that agency (i can think of no one in this administration so qualified). Some, and I do not join them, want to throw off the whole Republican form of Constitutional democracy and start over. On this question I find myself taking the conservative position. What we recently had, worked for 200 years. The cost of the destruction of that administrative state over the last 50 years was tremendously expensive to those of us who make our money by labor, yet valuable to those wealthy enough to exert control over government. How would we do creating a new form of government with the present caliber of  political insider They can't even pronounce nuclear, properly.

Others want to do away with the bi-cameral legislature. Perhaps they would be more cautious if they were said to be proposing a trans-cameral legislature. That action would be even more dangerous, opening the Constitution to masive changes. Observe the Israeli Knesset. Since the 2000 election we have seen 2 presidential elections 16 years apart where the popular vote was won by the Democrat, but lost in the Electoral College to the Republican fascists. Both of those times there was a third-party who siphoned off key votes. In the 2016 presidential election, one third-party candidate, Jill Stein, was at a Decenber 2015 July luncheon in Moscow as a guest of Vladimir Putin. Also at that table was Michael Flynn and several Republican legislators. Nothing to worry about, huh? The Bush II elections saw John Roberts, and Sam Alito ascend to the Supreme Court. Thanks to them, Citizens United was passed. Gorsuch, Kavenaugh, and Amy Coney Bryan came into their comfortable leather chairs when Donald Trump was declared winner. Since then there are no longer speed bumps on the Constitutional highway; it's the Republican Autobahn. The 1992 Presidential election also went to the Electoral College. But that burned George H W Bush and it is rare enough to be an anomaly. Besides, I don't care that Republicans shot themselves in the foot, I care that they are shooting at our feet. 

Keep the two major parties. Pass laws that strengthen the Democratic process against attacks by people with no respect for democratic customs. End the Electoral College!  Each of the two parties should have competing caucuses. This would require agreement within the party before legislating for the nation. If one caucus of one party becomes too abusive, some group in the caucus can pick up and leave. Imagine how that would get under Kevin McCarthy's skin. Mike Johnson, John Boehner-Beaner-Bohner. Most important of all...take money out of politics. No corporate personhood, no dark money, no party-controlled Political Action Committees. And especially, no "gifts" to jurists from billionaires doing business before the court. If the chance exists that billionaires or despots can undermine democracy with targeted cash, we should not make it easy for them. Be they a billionaire boys club of the dork enlightenment, or an aged member of the the Bohemian Club which (again the irony) meets each summer along the Russian River.