Iris in Lana's garden
California poppy by a road side
I come bearing flowers hoping they have an ameliorative affect. I also violate every standard of story telling by beginning with an apology.
I am disappointed to have the need to return to the insanity that passes as our political reality. I am sorry. Sorry to intrude on spring, but even more sorry that we endure this democracy threatening episode.
So as we thread a few stitches of analysis, I hope the flowers from around here on the California central coast assuage your disgust. They have been a joy to this writer.
CS Lewis wrote, "Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things-ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption and stupidity."
Some degree of fear, therefore, is in order.
wild blooms on path to beach
the republican link to terrorism
Before writing this post I participated in a briefing with cyber security experts from the intelligence community, academia and cyber security companies. The primary thrust was the dark web and criminal and national security risks, especially in the light of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident that created gas shortages on the East coast.
Two of the experts noted that among the most active visitors to portals of the dark web, encryption services and marketplaces selling identities and credentials, are domestic terrorists involved in the insurrection. They are amongst those who propagate the lies and deceptions designed to undermine citizen belief in the credibility of our government and our electoral process.
When Republicans cared about national security, some of their more zealous would warn that leftists were sewing seeds of doubt in America. They saw it as a Soviet inspired attempt to undermine our beliefs, our system of government, and our faith in our Democracy.
The recent ex-president spent 4 years pleasing a former Soviet KGB officer by spreading poison about our election process, our media and anyone who dared to challenge his corrupt and complicit, though inept, regime.
Trumpism is a disease of the American spirit for which we must find a vaccine, or cure.
wild land in bloom
The Republican party has been recast in his image, thus a party now founded on deception and duplicitous to its core. The test of fealty is to lie.
With their vow to deceive and their moral bankruptcy it calls into question every legislative action and intent. Joe Biden, Democrats, and the US citizenry needs, and is better, with a loyal opposition that believes in a democratic republic. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy preside over a nest of vipers. They are men without courage or honor. They are enablers.
As Republicans in state legislatures change voting laws, a chilling truth emerges; If they were to win control of the House of Representatives there is the highest likelihood they would not certify a Democrat presidential win.
They want power at all costs. They refuse to respect American history and tradition. Liz Cheney speaks truth about Trump and what he is doing to America.
layers of texture of spring bloom
A video, leaked to the media, catches the director of Heritage Action for America, a right wing political action group, bragging about drafting the legislation that states have used in changing voting laws to their favor,
"...or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has 'that grassroots, from the bottom up' type of vibe," she said.
They will spend millions to change state laws to suppress votes, change election rules and election boards. It is a well funded, coordinated right wing effort to take away votes from those who oppose Trumpism, or who are not white. It is part of the authoritarian mindset, out to upend democracy.
"We literally give marching order for the week ahead," she says on the tape. "We're singing from the same song sheet of the goals for that week where the state bills are across the country."
The threat to our way of government comes from those who spread or believed the lies, mounted the insurrection, or who aided and encouraged it including most Republican House and Senate members. Republicans on the Hill are doing all they can to avoid an investigation into the worst attack on the Capitol since the British burned it in 1814.**
echium-pride of madera
You probably read of the New York Times investigation about how the right wing Project Veritas ran a scam to try to discredit Lt. General HR McMaster, a Silver Star combat Veteran. He was the National Security Advisor at the time. Why? The Republican dirty tricksters didn't think he was loyal enough to Trump. A Republican staff member of the Senate Judiciary Committee was involved.
The Trump anti democracy cancer is rampant. Liz Cheney is absolutely correct, Trump and his Republican supporters remain a threat. They diminish the standing of the US on a global measure.
I expect Trump will be ensnared in legal entanglements in the not too distant future. The brainwashed populism, white supremacist nationalism and deglobalization grievance culture he motivated is up for grabs. There is no shortage of poltroons who have been to pay supplication to the authoritarian would be king, while they hope he is not a bigfoot candidate in '24.
(ranchers hate the thistle but the Scots DNA in me gives it a cheer)
The use of news clips from the Trump years demonstrate the sheer ineptitude and doltishness. Still those who take their cues from right wing media are stuck in a deceit that has stolen their judgement.
That was the theft of the last election, along with the abandonment of honor, and democratic principle.
** In 1856 a pro slavery congressman beat an anti slavery Senator with a cane. Two years later 30 Congressmen got into a fist fight.
In 1860 pro slavery advocates threatened anti slavery congressmen with pistols.
Three sticks of dynamite exploded in 1915 in a protest to US help in WW I.
In 1954 four Puerto Rican independence supporters fired guns shooting five congressmen who survived.
A 1971 bomb did damage but no injury in what was claimed to be a Weather Underground protest of the bombing of Laos.
In 1983 a bomb damaged the Senate side in an action by a the Armed Resistance Unit protesting military incursions in Lebanon and Grenada.
The January 6, 2021 actions of the Trump mob of insurrectionists trying to stop the certification of the election and seeking the assassination of Vice President Pence was the deadliest Capitol assault in history. 138 police officers were injured.
Doesn't common sense demand an investigation?
A little more about the berries. They were harvested from a planter box patch that Lana labored to protect from birds, raccoons and a grandson. We cannot grow strawberries in our ridge gardens as we did in the loamy soil of our Indiana gardens. So those five are a bit of a trophy, though the real champs were those we raised in our truck farm patch in the glacial hills of Morgan County. We had a lot of berries, and that was a good thing because we had to protect them from the birds, raccoons, our daughter Kristin and her lab, Inkie.
Stay safe.
See you down the trail.
