My highest ground

NGL—we are in for it. Faced with the choice between a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, racist, misogynist, lying, unhinged thief of classified documents, who’s cheated at everything from golf to his three wives, and a dedicated public servant with a clear record of advocating for the people—a majority of American voters went with the criminal.

Which means we will have 12 years of rule by Republicans so radical they’d make Edwin M. Stanton blush, handing out goodies to the oligarchs while they clamp down on any non-White, non-cis, non-Christian non-rich, non-native (except for the First People; they don’t count; they never counted) folks in the country and cause chaos throughout the globe.

I’m talking: three SCOTUS picks in the next term; they’ll be ideologues vetted by the Federalist Society, and young. They’ll be ruling for decades. Additionally, scores of judges on federal benches, which will soon look in total like the Fifth Circuit.

Pulling the US out of NATO. Bugger Article 5, we’ll just leave. Which will give Putin and his lackeys permission to do whatever the fuck they want to do.

Tanking the economy. Not just tariffs, not just tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, not just whatever crackbrained idea the Kleptocrat comes up with—it’s all of them together. Plus putting Elon Musk in charge of “eliminating government waste”. He promises he can trim $2T off a $6T budget, although he allows there will be “some hardship” involved in that. Not for him or his ilk; for us.

Destroying the environment. Between handing over whatever they want to big oil, there’ll be lifting of EPA regulations on corporations all over the place. Like hellscapes? Great—one coming right up.

The death of Ukraine.

Utter calamity for women’s lives. It’s not only the death of Roe v Wade, as horrifying as the results have been just in the past few months. It’s the intrusion of state governments into all of a woman’s decisions—if and where she should work outside the house, how many children she should produce, what redress she has in an abusive relationship, what control (if any) she has over money and property. We’re headed back at least one century, maybe more.

Oh—and ditto for people of color: they’ll be put back in “their place”, which will not be anywhere you or I would like to be.

And let’s talk about deporting immigrants. That’s a big promise, and it always got big cheers; no doubt it played a big part in electing the Kleptocrat and the alleged couch-shtuper. Millions and millions of Americans voted to have law enforcement and the goddamned United States military round up “millions” of immigrants (who may or may not be here legally), park them in purpose-built “camps” and then ship them like lettuce or bags of rice to “where they came from”. Millions upon millions of Americans are looking forward to watching that—spitting on the “others” if in person, or toasting the aktion with their cans of Coors if viewing on TV.

They'll start with immigrants and then move on to anyone who dissents. Not deportation; just imprisoning and possibly killing.

Oh—and all you morons who voted for the Kleptocrat because "the price of eggs": what are you going to do when all those people who harvest the crops and work in the meat packing plants are gone and the price of everything shoots through the roof? Yeah, I know—loosening up child labor laws will take care of that, eh?

BTW—let me point out that millions of these people claim to be Christians, and they are looking forward to building out a theocracy that has never been a pillar of our democracy. Right up until the point where they start killing each other over which is the only Jesus-approved form of baptism—foot dipping or full immersion—they’ll enact laws that make fundamental Protestantism the paradigm for behavior. Look—we currently have a Speaker of the House who considers himself Moses; this isn’t such a stretch.

Also BTW—these are the people who are rooting for a cataclysmic war in the Middle East to usher in the End Times. They care deeply about Israel; not at all about Jews.

And I do not forget national security. There will be none—everything discussed in the halls of our government will be blabbed immediately to the Kremlin. Because that’s how these people roll. After four years (with the Kleptocrat’s toadies heading up intelligence and military branches), we’ll be devastated. By year 12 we won’t exist as a power.

Because there’s also a plan to eliminate career civil servants in the federal system—the backbone of government—and replace them with suits whose only expertise is sucking up to Cadet Bonespurs. They wrote this down, that’s how confident they are.

As for the nation’s health—well, RFK Jr. is going to tackle that. He’ll balance removing fluoride from the water with eliminating the FDA (and probably the NIH and CDC) as well as the Department of Health and Human Services.

Finally—let me remind you that, in addition to the absence of guardrails that come with him bringing in only the ideologues who’ve pledged loyalty exclusively to him (not the Constitution), we also have a situation where SCOTUS has declared that anyone whose ass is parked behind the Resolute Desk has absolute immunity for any criminal acts committed in the course of conducting business. We are well and truly fucked.

And that’s what my fellow Americans voted for—a Christofascist autocracy. Because the price of eggs is up and they didn’t want another non-White person in the White House.

So what do I choose for today’s earworm? Stevie Wonder singing “Higher Ground” at this year's DNC. That's what we need to be thinking about. 

©2024 Bas Bleu