Apprehension as election nears

("minocqua" image)

How would the late Andy Papke be teaching civics today? How would this gentleman try to "sanitize" things? It really would be impossible in any manner that would be honest. We can ponder the many outrageous and dangerous things that Trump has said and done. We can ponder his absolute potty mouth. Many quotes from him could not be shared in the classroom for obvious reasons. Just watch a kid try to make statements like that. 

We are approaching a new Morris school board election. I offer my take on that on my companion blog of "Morris of Course." Here is the link:

https://morrisofcourse.blogspot.com/2024/10/school-board-candidates-their-pretense.html 

 

On the national level it looks as though people like me are whistling past the graveyard with our state of mind. We have been assuming that in the final analysis, America could not really truly elect someone like Trump. But this is our third time around with him. 

We allowed him and his facilitators like Russia to win the first time around. He won despite getting three million fewer votes than the Democrat. Our electoral college system allowed him to wrest such immense power for himself, this as the pandemic would be on the horizon. So he said he'd use the Defense Production Act not for the manufacture and distribution of masks, but rather to order meat processing plants to stay in operation. Remember that. 

I won't dispute those who said the masks might not have been all that helpful. But their distribution would be in line with the purpose of the Defense Production Act. His direction to meat processing concerns was absolutely not in line. Dan Abrams advised right away that this order "opens a bevy of legal questions." Questions? Is that all? 

DJT's nature is one of confounding people with decisions that are on the edge of proper law. I wish the media could have made a stronger point about this. There is so much legal wrangling connected to all things Trump. This very phenomenon needs to be put under the microscope more. 

Look at Ari Melber of MSNBC, a lawyer with the most keen intelligence you can imagine. I admire him but he has really made a cottage industry of interviewing a parade of lawyers all very classy in their suits and ties. And they file "motions." They launch "appeals." All of this slogs on until hell won't have it. 

A president is supposed to try to win approval with his policies. He has to fight Congress sometimes, sometimes not. But politics and national leadership is supposed to be a much cleaner process than this. Legislation gets pushed through that purports to help the American people. 

Our government mechanisms do not exist to prop up a mere cult of personality. It does not exist to grease the skids for a would-be Mussolini. You aren't going to argue with me on that point, are you? The dictatorial urges? The scheming to surround himself with total sycophants like Aileen Cannon who is being spoken of as DJT's attorney general? 

Cannon has already so blatantly bent a knee to the orange man. And my God, the media is so timid when it comes to revealing this for us in direct terms. Scared of the "bias" charge or scared of DJT's people actually doing "oppo" on you. Any one of us could be in trouble with "oppo research." We'd get slimed. 

As if DJT himself presents such a saintly image. He in fact presents the exact opposite as endless factual recitations would readily underscore. It's in front of us every day. It begins to seem rather like "Alice Through the Looking Glass." 

John Kenneth Galbraith

I am writing this in Stevens County MN. More specifically from Morris which is home to UMM which historically has been a nice little nest for political liberals. And those liberals definitely felt their oats in this town. I learned to resent them in some ways. 

I came to resent what I would call "paternalistic liberalism." Think of John Kenneth Galbraith who said the common folk need to be protected from too much advertising. 

Well that epoch has rather passed from the scene. Stevens County has no fear of what UMM might represent because the right wing is just so powerful now, like we're an extension of the Dakotas. Yes I fear that, even though I'm inclined to support "Measure 4" in North Dakota to eliminate property taxes. An effort led by GOPer Rick Becker. So it's cause for "conservative" flag-waving, right? Oh not so fast. 

Politics is all about power and this can trump ideology. The likes of Doug Burgum actually oppose Measure 4! Can you believe it? 

Someone's ox is always getting gored. Take away the property tax and the obscenely rich folks like Burgum might have to cough up more? Ahem. Welcome to the jungle I guess. People need to catch up to Trump to realize whose interests are really being served. That's politics in a nutshell: Certain people's needs are being served, other people are told "sorry." 

All the red state people need to wake up and realize their spokesmen cannot be assumed to be pure as the driven snow. Progressive thinking can come back but it does not need to take the form of what we saw in the John Kenneth Galbraith days, that's for sure. 

Just probe through all the rhetoric and get what really serves your own needs, and would this really be a dictatorship led by Mussolini I mean Trump? And the communists caught up to "El Duce," executed him and then had his body hung up on meat hooks for abuse. That's what happens when the public wakes up to how the elite leadership has really been treating them. 

Forget terms like "progressive" anyway. Many of these terms are just massaged and used by people like Mark Levin et al. to scare us. My, how well this has worked for certain interests. Tucker Carlson, he's feeling his oats. And why do we allow this? Plain as the nose on your face, Carlson is an empty opportunist. But he has been accepted into the "club" of national media. 

Please understand your own interests in the final analysis. Stop listening to those who choose to talk about Kamala Harris' "cackle" laugh. I think it's a wonderful laugh. And doesn't the world need more of that? Isn't this preferable to DJT "shitting in his pants" which he reportedly does. 

The morning gang of guys at DeToy's Restaurant in Morris needs to wake up to all of this. C'mon, let women have their full rights. Can you look me in the eye and say that they shouldn't? 

Kamala could well lose. But is there anything she could have done different?

 

Here's a comment I submitted to Yahoo! News yesterday:

I had a feeling John Kelly had thoughts and observations in his head a long time ago about Trump. But it's only bursting into the news now with days remaining before the election. As a public service, Kelly should have asserted himself sooner. You might say it's a matter of national defense.

 

"Katerina" responded:

He may have been scared. Trump demands to destroy anyone who does not fall down and worship him, much like the devil would do.

  

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com