THE McCONNELL-TRUMP TEAM, DICTATOR & ASSISTANT

by Ruth A. Sheets

Mitch McConnell has declared himself, through his actions, Assistant dictator of the United States.  That means anything the Senate, therefore Congress approves has to be cleared by himself.  This fool was elected only by a tiny fraction of the American people and should have no right to decide what the American people will get from Congress, but he has jumped into the role with enthusiasm and abundant cruelty.

I keep waiting for the Senate to rise up as one and declare they will vote on the issues that matter to the American people no matter what Mr. McConnell wants, but it has not happened yet and probably won’t.

In case they should rise and Mr. McConnell is not willing to share the nearly 300 pending bills he has from the House with them, they can get those bills directly from the House where some have been waiting for months, but they won’t.  Without McConnell, the risen Senate could put a next relief bill together with House members and pass it over any possible veto of Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell’s partner in crime, but they won’t.

Senate and House Republicans are not only cowards, but they have given up their souls so they could be Republicans.  That is sad because some Republicans in the past have had the needs of Americans at heart.  However, since Nixon, and his racist sexist xenophobic “Southern Strategy,” those Republicans are as rare as hen's teeth (cliché but apt).  And Mr. McConnell and Mr. Trump have joined forces to do as much as they can to make the rich richer and ignore the poor or blame the poor for the rich not becoming as rich as they could be.

Mr. McConnell and Mr. Trump are very much alike in many ways.  They are both obsessed with money and are in constant competition to acquire more, never able to give up the quest.  They are both nearly completely self-absorbed and have been, probably for their entire lives.  They do what is expedient in support of the self no matter who is hurt.  They have had minimal education and have not let that education get in the way of their self-promotion.

Their one political gift is the ability to identify those people who are easily manipulated  by money and promises, then proceed to determine which promises and for how much.  They both speak the language (albeit poorly) of caring and appreciation for the people they work with, but their affect is flat when those words are spoken.

Both Mr. McConnell and Mr. Trump love power and the trappings of power, the fact that everyone around them says “Sir” and wants/needs to bask in their light is almost orgasmic for them.  Neither believes he needs to be informed beyond some basic talking points that let him seem in charge to his followers and donors.  Those followers sit panting for the drippings from the huge quantities of bacon the McConnell-Trump Team is amassing.  The donors get some big chunks:  cuts in regulations, big money contracts, government positions with authority, and more, while The Team makes sure that if some of those drippings just happen to fall to the unworthy, those unintended recipients will pay through:  cutting SNAP, diminishing Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, ordering ICE to pick up and deport young people who are Americans in all but name, upon turning 18, bankrupting the post office and possibly the states, etc.

Someone looking at the COVID19 fiasco in the United States would see a president and Senate majority leader who are OK with the unnecessary deaths of American citizens,  especially since most of the deaths now are among people who would not be voting for Trump/McConnell anyway.  Even the media often find excuses for the Team’s bad behavior, their dismissal of the Constitution, the proposed destruction of our environment, the lack of equipment to properly protect first line workers of all kinds.

Since the Team members have not contracted the virus and are not at risk, they must be protected by God, thus deserving of laud from every American as well as re-election.

When the McConnell-Trump Team loses members, it is not their fault, not the fault of these two amazing leaders who just LOVE the American people and all the things the Constitution stands for.  It must be the fault of, well, let’s see, China, the Democrats, President Obama, the Democratic governors, the “fact” that “no one could have imagined COVID19 would get this bad.”  Blaming is what they do very well.  They probably have a group whose only job it is to come up with excuses and people other than the Trump-McConnell  Team to blame.  

So, where do we go from here.  The Trump-McConnell Team and Republicans in general claim to be channeling the founders, but there is no way the founders would have approved of Mr. McConnell, Mr. Trump, or the pathetic performance of Republicans across the country.  One can’t help but be surprised that Republicans are seen as the patriotic folks.  I guess that is because they wave the flag back and forth with more vigor.  Or, it could be because Republicans can say “Thank you for your service” more quickly and loudly to every service person they meet than anyone else while yelling for more war.  In reality, it is probably because Republicans as individuals and PACs (Political Action committees) have more money than anyone else and will do everything they can (lying, cheating, deception are not off the table), to keep what they have and get lots more.  A recent example is the “hidden” gift in the CARES Act that will allow the 1% to get away with paying billions less in taxes, snuck in around page 200, by guess who.

The McConnell-Trump Team knows how to tap into an amazing money stream, truly a gift that keeps on giving, but only if the McConnell-Trump Team and their followers will keep working for the moneybags who periodically open the dam to let a little of the “water” to flow downstream.  Of course, they will.

And the American people?  We will need to get help elsewhere.

COVID19 AND A POSSIBLE LEGACY

by Ruth A. Sheets

Sitting at home nearly all day gives one time to listen, read, and think.  A deadly virus has struck every part of the world, yet warmongering governments and other militarized groups had to be begged to stop fighting, and as one might expect, many have chosen to keep up the fight.  I suppose the hope is they can make some ground while the virus is causing harm and distracting folks.  Alas, they might be right.

Perhaps, at this moment, we all should use this pause in normality to begin to take a good look at war and conflict in general.  Disagreement among people is probably endemic, so the chance that interpersonal conflict will end any time soon is not great.  But that does not mean we can’t use the time out during this pandemic to rethink what we are doing related to war and why.

First of all, war is a stupid, wasteful, disgusting, hateful, expensive practice.  One can’t help but notice that it is clearly a male activity.  Of course some women participate, usually as the victims, but we all can name women who have served in some capacity, usually honorably, but war is predominantly male and males often shape their lives by war.  Why do so many men depend on, even crave war?

Let’s face it, a lot of males need to prove their manhood.  It does not seem enough that male voices deepen, they develop facial hair and have other physical changes as they enter adulthood.  They must prove they are bigger, stronger, smarter, more clever than other men, and of course they must be better than women in all categories.  It is indeed a reminder that human beings are mammals and experience the impulses that other animals have.  On the other hand, we humans can do things other mammals can’t do, like thinking through things, making personal decisions, and more.

It seems in this time of COVID19, when we are in a kind of pause, we can come up with ways to cut the need for men to prove their manhood by destroying others.  We can dial down the ridiculous nationalism that also promotes male quest for manhood, while dragging whole societies down with them.

The whole concept of having to prove one's manhood is outrageous and sad.  Can't being human be enough, whether male or female or whatever one chooses to identify oneself as?  Parents, both mothers AND fathers need to raise their boys and girls to believe in gender equality rather than that boys are superior to girls and that being male is the highest achievement of humanity.  It isn't, but our cultures drip with testosterone.  Most major sports are male.  Most people in authority are male, even in professions like teaching where more women than men are employed.  Male voices are louder, so are seen as having more weight.  Most first responders in the field are men.  The military  has respect in communities far beyond other professions and the military (as mentioned above) is seen as male.  Men run the banks, the corporations, the economy at all levels.  Men run most religious institutions which of course, proclaim male as God and female as inferior, in need of male guidance at every level.

The COVID19 is raging and it is women who are on the front lines this time.  They are the nurses and doctors in the hospitals.  They are the family members who now minister to the entire family while everyone is shut in.  They are the outspoken politicians who are working hard to alleviate the suffering and develop plans of action.  It is the male leaders who are often incompetent, fearmongering, and unworthy of the positions they hold.

My concern is that when the virus has run its course, men will jump right back into war as though there had never been a break.  This should not be acceptable to anyone.

We need a plan to move quickly away from war, all over the world.  To begin, we all must elect more peace-loving women and men at every level of government.  Corporations that promote maleness as a prime virtue need to be either eliminated or made smaller and less powerful.  The military industrial complex (as Dwight Eisenhower called it) should be dismantled, redirecting weapons manufacturers into other production.  For example, we need no more tanks, no more battleships, no more bombs.   We have plenty of these.

Movement here will take a lot of effort, but with the COVID19 stalking, we could make some major changes immediately.

Such change will be especially hard with so many authoritarian governments led by men who just keep needing to prove how wonderful they are and how much better and stronger they are than anyone else.  We as a society need to stop trading with them, selling weapons to them, and start communicating peace with them and the need to work together on halting global warming, ending poverty, managing population growth, providing meaningful work for everyone, using as much creativity and commitment as we can muster.

Women and men who want something different need to stop encouraging manhood proving and participation in the war machine, the machine that manufactures weapons and hate, sends our children to fight and possibly die, allows our tax dollars to be siphoned off to rich warmongering manhood provers.

COVID19 is horrific and has taken many people around the world as its victims.  We could make a legacy of this pandemic, a worldwide commitment to ending war and learning to grow peace.