GOP Brags About Killing Democracy and Tucker C Horny for M&Ms
Racism Rampant in H.S. Basketball, Iowa Bans Meat for Poor, $1,500 Fine for Using Unapproved Pronouns, H.S. Football Coach's Brutality, More
How Man of La Mancha Reflects Republican Delusion
In the musical Man of La Mancha (based on Cervantes’ 17th century novel Don Quixote), Don Quixote comes upon a prostitute named Aldonza. Born from her mother’s rape and into a life in poverty, she sees herself as worthless and destined to always live this horrific life. But when Don Quixote sees her, he doesn’t see her past; he sees her as a beautiful and worthwhile lady and treats her as such. He calls her Dulcinea (“Dulcinea... Dulcinea.../I see heaven when I see thee, Dulcinea,/And thy name is like a prayer/An angel whispers...”).
Why did I tell you all that? Because I heard the song again recently and remembered how Aldonza/Dulcinea at first hates him for romanticizing her and for not seeing her the way she really was. But then she begins to evolve into the person he saw her as. And I was reminded of what Eliza Doolittle says in My Fair Lady: “The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.” Aldonza becomes Dulcinea because someone saw that she could be—and treated her accordingly. His art changed reality.
But that’s not where the song ends. It ends with a bunch of horny soldiers drunkenly and sarcastically singing the same song in order to further humiliate her. At first, it is their version of her she believes, taking money from one of them and having sex with him. It is only later, as she comes to accept Don Quixote’s beautiful vision of the world, that she transforms.
Of course, we all understand how treating people with compassion and understanding, especially those marginalized by society, uplifts not just them, but all of us. (It’s like the way Jainist monks who beg do so less for sustenance than to provide the opportunity for others to be charitable and lift them up spiritually.) Yet, the short-sighted, mean-spirited soldiers don’t realize that because they can only see her as one thing, they are forever trapped in the tiny, dull world of their limited vision.
That’s how I see those Republicans who chortle at the marginalized people, passing laws to further disenfranchise them from society so they can live in the familiar past where a pronoun was a pronoun and they never had to question anything or learn anything new.
Man of La Mancha is set in a prison in which Cervantes tells the story of Don Quixote in order to save himself from the other violent prisoners. At the end, his art has made their lives less inevitable because they have seen a glimpse of what else is possible. He has freed their minds from the prison of their bodies. Unfortunately, those Republicans who are unable to see past their own irrationality will forever be locked in that prison. Just don’t drag the rest of us in there with you.
Politics: How to End Democracy in America
A Georgia Republican Brags That Voter Suppression Helped Them in 2022 (The Nation)
SUMMARY: (Heather Cox Richardson’s excellent summary): “In The Nation yesterday, Joan Walsh pulled together some of the many stories of voter suppression that have come lately from Republican-dominated states. Former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler recently noted that her state’s 2021 law cutting way back on mail-in ballots helped elect Republicans: Walsh points out that mail-in ballots dropped by 81% between 2020 and 2022, and Black voter turnout dropped.
”Robert Spindell, an election commissioner in Wisconsin who was one of Trump’s fake electors in 2020, wrote an email to about 1700 people saying that Republicans ‘can be especially proud of the City of Milwaukee (80.2% Dem Vote) casting 37,000 less votes than cast in the 2018 election with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.’ Senator Ron Johnson won reelection in that race over Democratic candidate Mandela Barnes, who is from Milwaukee, by about 27,000 votes.
”In Florida, Missouri, and Ohio, Republican lawmakers are trying to make it harder for citizens to use ballot initiatives, as progressive policies like Medicaid expansion, the legalization of marijuana, hikes in the minimum wage, abortion rights, and redistricting by independent commissions have all turned out to be popular.”
MY TAKE: While we’re all standing on the shores looking for doomsday attacks from Russia, China, and North Korea, America is being disemboweled internally by the Republican Party’s sinister campaign to disenfranchise marginalized people from voting. Isn’t democracy what we’re all protecting when we get all sentimental on July Fourth, or salute the flag, or thank military personnel for their service in maintaining democracy? Yet, here we have a major political party openly replacing democracy with a corrupt oligarchy. The fix is in and we’re the suckers handing over power and wealth to our kidnappers.
Reading Walsh’s article was like a punch to the heart. Since given the right to vote in 1870, Black people have faced beatings, firebombs, and death as they tried to exercise this right. A hundred and fifty years later, the Republican Party is still doing the Klan’s dirty work.
What bothers me even more is that they do it openly, with everyone’s full knowledge and legal support. They congratulate each other on cheating democracy, on suppressing the poor and minorities. They are proud of what they’ve done. And they’re pretty confident nothing can stop them.
The best weapon we have against them is still voting them out of office. It’s so easy to say you love America, that you want it to be great. But what is that greatness? It’s living up to the principles of the U.S. Constitution. Supporting these people is like urinating on the flag.