Index

Reality versus Delusions

It is time to quit playing games. The so-called conservatives have gone off of the rails, and can no longer claim any sort of reality-based legitimacy. If the election of Trump didn’t prove it, the insanity around Roy Moore has.

The self-labeled conservatives have even dropped their pretenses of christianity and morality in their naked quest for power. They support a known pederast - Roy Moore - over his more liberal opponent in a special election for the United States Senate because Moore’s opponent is pro-abortion rights, and that is more important to them than obeying the law. Their “moral” stand against abortion - a medical matter between a woman and her doctor - is more important to them than the demonstrated illegal behavior of an adult sexually assaulting minors.

There was a time when “Liberal” and “Conservative” had meaning, because there were legitimately different views of how the country could be run within the limits of the real world. There was also a time when women couldn’t vote and black men were only worth 3/5 of a human being in terms of voting, but those times are gone and done.

Republicans and Conservatives

Ever since the Tea Party started its takeover of the Republican party, the idea of the Congress serving and even helping the voters has been on the way out. The Republicans demonstrated this unequivocally with their shutdowns of the government when the Democrats in Congress wouldn’t play along with their heavy-handed hijacking of the budget process. Now the Republicans in Congress are showing where their loyalties are by repeatedly trying to pass legislation that blatantly damages the voters in order to give more money to the rich and corporations. They are doing this, not because there is any economic reason to do so, but because those (already rich) beneficiaries are the ones that have made them successful in keeping their offices by spending unrecorded millions of dollars on their campaigns and on private attack ads against their opponents.

Anyone who runs against these republicans has to collect millions in campaign funds just to get their names in front of the voters, and then has to deflect more millions of dollars worth of attack ads, advertising which is at times completely false. The republicans know that without that huge and unregulated monetary support, they would have little to no chance of getting elected by a less misinformed populace.

The President and Congress

Now we have a President and accompanying power structure that act like they are only dedicated to turning the clock backward to a time when racism was the norm, and women were less than human. With the President’s support of open racism and his obvious, malignant misogyny, we have stepped back to almost World War II in terms of the societal conversation on race and sex, with open discrimination and abuse against women, non-whites, and LGBTQ people. Laws that allow these kinds of discrimination have now been passed at some levels, even overriding more local laws prohibiting these forms of discrimination in some cases.

The President is appointing and the Senate is approving blatantly “Conservative” federal judges that nobody in the legal world thinks are in any way qualified as judges, but are “conservative” enough to make the President’s shrinking voter base happy. The political calculus of keeping those living in the conservative bubble happy can be mind boggling to those of us on the outside who have to deal with the day-to-day reality of living.

The Orwellian Fascism of the Conservatives

The President lies, and is caught, almost on a daily basis. This has become so frequent that the American public is used to it, and it doesn’t even attract much comment any more other than “score keeping” - recording his demonstrable falsehoods - a seemingly pointless exercise now, but someone has to do it. At the same time, the populace subjected to this abuse is expected to forget the old lies and believe the new ones when he changes his story. This is “Doublethink,” straight out of George Orwell’s 1984. We live this Orwellian nightmare daily, to the point where we can no longer really feel each new pain inflicted on us.

In typical fascist fashion, the president has attacked civil rights and his first and biggest target has been the press. The founding fathers saw fit to enshrine a free press as the first of the rights of citizens and a necessity for the continued health of our democracy, and the president has decided it also is the first one that he wants to get rid of. Obviously, a fascist suffers from a free press pointing out his violations of civil rights and his constant lies, so it is hardly surprising that he would attack the press.

In addition to attacking the press, the conservatives have supplied their own narrative under that rubric of a free press. The blatant distortions and downright falsehoods spread by this alternate press, plus the intentional falsehoods from the Russians (under false identities) have resulted in an alternate reality that the conservatives live in, one that has diverged substantially from what most of us deal with daily, and continues to diverge further. The conservatives substitute this fantasy for reality in their daily lives, resulting in serious self-damage. One example from the election was one Kentucky woman, interviewed on television, who voted for a republican knowing that it would cost her family their health insurance, something that would be unthinkable to most of us.

Another way that society is becoming more fascist is in the brutality of its law “enforcement” - the kind of enforcement associated with classical fascism is on parade in this country. As the military gives bigger and meaner weapons to the police, the police in turn are happy to use them. They demonstrated this in Ferguson, forcefully suppressing protests with military gear far in excess of what was necessary to deal with small levels of unrest. Fortunately for the rest of us, the publicity that surrounded that police action has forced law enforcement in general to be more careful about using military equipment and tactics on civilians.

The fact that people of color are racially profiled, targeted for excessive enforcement action, and frequently physically abused or killed are all examples of classical fascist approaches, especially since in many cases the law enforcement actions could only be considered extra-judicial. The president has told the police that they have his permission to use excessive force in arrests, to the point where even the police had to draw the line and say it was too much, at least publicly.

The fact that police can still duck responsibility for killing unarmed civilians is drawing protests, and those protests have been used as an excuse for openly fascist groups to step in with violent and intimidating tactics. These groups were not subject to any enforcement action until one of their members killed a woman and injured several in Charlottesville after several violent incidents got them run out by the police. The fact that the KKK and Nazis feel empowered to openly threaten and intimidate others again is a clear indicator of how far things have gone.

Using the Correct Words is a First Step

There is no longer “Conservative” and “Liberal”, the divide now is “Real” versus “Deluded”. As the so-called conservatives and their media bubble move further away from the reality of day-to-day life, they become increasingly incapable of managing their affairs, and increasingly destructive of the rest of the country. As conservatives have controlled the vocabulary of the discussion - substituting pro-life for antiabortion and all of the other false labels they supply - it is time for the rest of us to take back the discussion, and use words that denote the reality of the situation.

“Antiabortion” means just that, and abortion rights are the law of the land, so that label is only an expression of preference. “Pro-life” means supportive of life - throughout the person’s lifespan, not just up to the moment of the child’s birth, and involves a lot more than just preventing abortion. Those that claim to be pro-life are lying when they do not support things like providing prenatal maternal care, food, medical care and educational programs for children, and all of those so-called “liberal” or “socialist” programs that give children a chance at not only being born healthy, but also living a healthy childhood and having an education that gives them a real future.

Lies are lies, not “alternate truths.” There is only one truth, and one set of facts, so there is nothing to discuss here.

It is time to contain the damage being done by these “conservatives” and their delusions. They are deluded, plain and simple, and need to be removed from the political process and educated out of their fantasy bubbles, or placed in appropriate mental health care situations, not left running around wrecking our democracy with their religion-fueled fascist craziness. They are not conservative adults, they are deluded children in adult bodies, and need to have their mental health looked after.