Babbling At Planet Earth

More than ever we poor earthlings are being bombarded with the irrational, hateful, and fearful babbling of the right wing. No place or person is spared from this onslaught. Even in deep blue California there are little dumb assistans that serve as sound boxes shouting out the disinformation with all the fanatical fervor one expects of deranged, true believers. To be a Republican today you must slavishly repeat the absurdities promoting and/or reflecting the fear and loathing base Republicans so desperately crave. “All your problems are caused by those other people, those brown or black people, those foreign people,” the Republican demagogues say. “Furthermore, getting vaccinated against the Covid virus will do terrible things to you, and mandating the vaccinations and/or masks will destroy your freedom and our democracy” (even though some vaccines, such as the one for small pox, have been around since the seventeen hundreds). Those demagogues falsely claim that compulsory vaccinations are unconstitutional, but the legal precedents could not be clearer.  As early as 1905, in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, the United States Supreme Court ruled that laws mandating compulsory vaccinations are constitutional, and this decision has been upheld in numerous cases over the decades. Ah, but in the right wing alternate universe laws and logic do not matter. It would never dawn on someone afflicted with the right wing mental disability to ask why the Covid vaccine would be so dangerously different than all the vaccines that have been required by schools and other institutions for decades.

Unfortunately, it is not just the rejection of science that makes the Republicans so dangerously, and viciously stupid. What makes them so dangerously stupid is their rejection of any fact or reality that contradicts what they want to believe. One of the factors that allows the right wingers to shut out all inconvenient truth is the fact that they tend to live in clusters we rational beings refer to as dumb assistans. This clustering is important because one of the most prominent features of the right wing mental disability is the inability to process information or evidence that seems abstract or remote. For instance, right wingers will believe that any election they lose in California cannot be a legitimate election even though 46.5% of registered voters in California are Democrats, 24.1% are Republicans, and 24.1% state no part preference,. They will believe the election is fraudulent even though surveys show that 52% of voters stating no party preference lean Democratic, and the last time a Republican was elected governor was in 2006. The right wing Republicans refuse to believe that California is a deep blue state because all of their friends and probably their family members are Republicans, and if you have the right wing mental disability your anecdotal evidence always beats any empirical data.

One of the more remarkable consequences of these Republican delusions is the inability to understand that merely smearing Gavin Newsom in their effort to recall him is not enough. Rather than offering a viable alternative to Newsom, the Republicans are voting for an extreme right wing idiot who denies climate change, is an anti-vaxxer, dumps on immigrants, and thinks white people should be compensated for losing their slaves after the civil war. As an old white guy, it is not my place to tell anyone how to be black, but I do not think anyone, and particularly a person of color, should advocate compensating former slave owners for losing the “property” taken from them. Gavin Newsom could not be given a greater advantage than the one that now allows him to run against Elder.

Voter Fraud! The Republican demagogues obviously know how unlikely it is that Californians will recall their Democratic governor. I say this because several days before the election the Republicans began their assault on democracy by screaming voter fraud! Everyone who has a triple digit IQ and is not suffering from the Right Wing Stupid disability is saying no, it is the Republicans who are trying to commit the fraud! Their unconscionable cry of voter fraud is an incitement evoking images of the attempted coup de'tat of January 6. It is a tactic right out of the fascist playbook, and it is as un-American as you can get. The Republicans are dying of stupid, and they are trying to take democracy and Democrats with them!  They would rather meet us all in hell than to share power with the emerging minorities!

I watched the election returns with great anticipation last night. California is a blue state, and I was sure that it would do the right thing. I was not disappointed. Congratulations California! Kudos to my fellow citizens! The shrieking and babbling from the alternate universe still assault our ears and the danger posed by irrational and paranoid people is still too real, but our feet are firmly grounded on planet earth as we chart a course based on reality.

MAGA-LAMANIA!

The democratic club I belong to has had a voter registration booth at the local farmer's market for years. We see that as a public service and the duty of an organization committed to our democratic form of government. We do not try to hide the fact that we are partisan.  Our sign clearly states that we are a Democratic club. We also display the signs of local Democratic candidates, but, for the most part, we try to be inviting to people of all views. We also help people register regardless of their party preference - not just in compliance with the law, but also in the spirit of the law. In compliance of the law is easy, in the spirit of the law can be a challenge.

As I am sure most Californians know, the Republicans are now abusing California's recall provision by using it to unseat Governor Newsom for committing the unpardonable sin of being a legitimately elected Democratic Governor in a blue state. Last week we displayed a sign at our booth asking people to defeat the “Republican Recall!” This sign soon became a powerful magnet drawing to us a plethora of outraged Magalamaniacs who were intent on inflicting their insanity on us! I made the mistake of asking one of the Magalamaniacs why he wanted to recall the Governor.

The magalamaniac said he blamed Governor Newsom for the forest fires because Newsom did not heed President Trump's advise to clean and rake the [33 million acres] of California forest land. I almost asked him how he would like to pay the taxes needed to finance such an enormous task, but I knew he was not bright enough to grasp how expensive and time consuming that task would be. I usually avoid arguing with such dullards. I probably should have done so in this instance, but I could not resist the temptation to rub his nose in the hypocrisy by saying: “You know many of the large fires during the last ten years have been in the National Forest, and that's on Trump!”

The delusional twit responded by saying that the state was responsible for the National Forest! I was tempted to ask him if the many green trucks sporting the logo of the National Forest Service were just a figment of the imagination of we poor earthlings, but I knew it would not have any impact on him. Let's face it, there is no trebuchet of logic nor cannon of facts powerful enough to breech the vast, dense wall of willful ignorance and self deception guarding the alternate universe of the right wing. Unfortunately this dullard is not the exception; he is now the Republican norm. No election is final if the Republicans lose it, and they define liberal as being anyone with a triple digit IQ!