christoph – Our American Experiment

My Artwork

These first 4 are from my “Fractured Glass” Series

“The Color of Fractured Glass” / Watercolor on photograph

“Falling Light Through Fractured Glass / Photograph

“The Matrix of Fractured Glass” / Photograph

The Sky in Fractured Glass / Photograph

“Weird Geometry” / Photograph

“Which Direction?” / Photograph

“The View From the Dining Room” / Photograph

“Never Had That Dream Twice / Microsoft Word file

The Schoolyard / Existing vintage photograph with watercolor

Color Cups / Original Photograph / Framed

“She Stares / Photograph with Microsoft Word

“A Love Letter, Really?” / Existing image altered

21st Century Jan van Eyck / Altered Web image

Photographic Self-Portrait – 2016 / Photograph

Everything here is my intellectual property, folks, so please don’t steal it! Thanks!

How Long Will We Allow This To Be Our ‘Normal?’

Apalachee High School. I was going to list several others, but what would be the point? Seriously, what would be the point? The list would go on and on, and every school name you would read would bring back a momentary thought of how tragic it was, and then you would go on to the next one.

Then the next.

Until what? Until you finally finish the list as the feelings of tragic consequences quickly fade, and you then either read on, or stop? Yes, that’s exactly what would happen, and if you decided to read on, you might finish reading my comments and say to yourself, “This guy is right, we cannot let this continue unabated like this.”

But we will. We will, because it is now, as the saying goes, “the new normal” in the United States. The issue is no longer that we cannot allow this to become normal for our society, because it is. It’s expected…weekly. The issue now is, how deeply will we allow this normalcy to embed itself into our society.

It is expected so much that the republican party now takes the stand that people just need to get over it. When your eight year-old daughter is almost cut in half by an assault rifle in her classroom, get over it. Why do I say this? because Donald Trump said, after the first school shooting in America this year, at Perry High School in Iowa on January 3rd, that people should “move on,” and that the parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, and friends who survived the horror “have to get over it.”

Seriously, he said that.

How may people reading this piece know what a round shot from an AR-15 does to a human body? A lot of you, I’m sure, think that it’s like some old western in which the person shot, grabs themselves where they think the bullet might have entered them, sort of winces in pain, perhaps they’ll move their hand just a bit to see a bit of a blood stain on their shirt, and then fall to the side. If they’re a hero, they survive. If they’re a villain, they don’t.

No, I’m sorry, but nothing could be further from the truth. An assault rifle is a weapon of 21st century warfare, and is designed to deliver a bullet that will tear a full grown, adult human apart. It is designed to create a wound that will not heal. It is a weapon designed to kill soldiers dressed in full 21st century battle gear. Imagine, then, if you will, what and AR-15 will do to an eight year-old girl, especially if she’s hit twice. Believe me, it will be ‘closed casket.’

We also have to remember, that you cannot separate what Donald Trump says from official republican party policy, because his every utterance becomes that party’s policy. That’s what ownership is all about. So, if you’re a member of the republican party, and the remains of your daughter have to be mopped up off of the floor of her classroom after she was gunned down right after proudly showing off her finger painting to her best friend and then her teacher, remember what your lord and savior says, and get over it. Move on and GET OVER IT!

The rest of us are not required to “get over it,” but you are. As republican, MAGA parents, just hook up again and make another one that looks just like her, that’s all you have to do; right after you get over it and move on.

And then we have republican solutions to all of this: arm the teachers, chain the doors, stop and frisk every student, put more cops everywhere, and get over it. Soon, our children will be completely prepared for life in the fascist police state the republican party envisions for us. Chain the doors, stop and frisk, cops everywhere. Eventually, if we allow them, they will make this normal, too.

If all of that weren’t enough, we have JD Vance, Mr. Personality himself, saying the following: “I don’t like that this is a fact of life.” Which he prefaced with your basic republican lie, that Kamala Harris’ answer to this is to take away every law-abiding American citizen’s guns. I have almost no response to that. Almost. I’m not going to deal with the ‘take your guns’ lie, because that’s for Ms. Harris to address. What I will take issue with is the attempt, through JD Vance, to even further ingrain the normalcy of our children being murdered in their classrooms into American society.

Mr. Vance, I don’t think you actually care that death at school is now a fact of life. In the cult of selfishness and cruelty that has, under Trump’s dominion, become the character of the republican party of which you are a high priest, there is no room for caring about anyone outside of your personal circle. So, when you say that you “don’t like” our children being cut to pieces as they huddle behind furniture, crying and holding each other, as a single teacher does their best to shield twenty children from certain death, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you because you follow that half of your statement by immersing yourself in your dream of the inevitability of the scenario above: it’s a fact of life.

No, Mr. Vance, you sold your soul to Donald Trump, the NRA, and the Church of the Perpetual Lie, and now you have to bear the costs of that. You no longer have the right to try to tell people that you care. You no longer have the right to try to convince people that their suffering means anything to you, because we all know that it doesn’t. The ultimate cost, of course, for you, is that your massive mansion, on “Paved with Gold” Street in the Pearly Gates Country Club in the imaginary heaven you have created, and in which you only feign to believe, is forfeit.

Your heaven is sealed off to the MAGA movement. Nobody who tries to sell the idea that eight year-old girls in pretty dresses being ripped to shreds in their schools by assault rifles is a fact of life has any place there. Nobody who tries to tell the families of these girls and boys that they need to ‘move on,” and “get over it.” has any business even hoping for whatever salvation they imagine in this world.

Lastly, a brief word on Governor Kemp, who, in the face of more gun deaths in his state, (only twelve states have higher gun death rates per capita than Georgia) stated flatly on the afternoon of this tragedy, that people’s untethered right to bear any form of arms, and his sworn allegiance to the NRA, mean more to him than the lives of children and teachers. This should be obvious, though. Georgia, like all states run by republicans, ranks well into the bottom half of spending per child on education. Georgia is well into the bottom half of the states of this country in caring about the lives anyone, especially the born.

I saw a post on a social media platform on Thursday, the day after the shooting, by a woman who was completely distraught. She was walking home after escorting her seven year-old daughter to the school bus stop. She greeted the driver when the bus arrived then watched her daughter climb the tall stairs in a cloud of happiness and look for a seat among her friends.

As she walked home she was almost in tears. Because since she lives in the United States there is a chance (a small chance, I grant you, but still a much greater chance than in any other western democracy) that her daughter will be murdered at school that day and won’t come home. There’s that thought that lurks horribly in every parent’s mind that they will receive a call and then frantically rush to her little girl’s school, in tears and a panic, wondering if her little one survived.

The thought just occurred to me that maybe your refusal to not only ban assault weapons, but to then suggest arming teachers with guns, chaining all of the doors, and infesting our schools with limitless cops, like roaches in the cafeteria, is really just part of your greater plan to destroy public education in America.

Let me ask you, Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance, and Mr. Kemp, how can you sleep well at night, knowing that because of your efforts to flood our country with guns, and the influence you have over ignorant people who follow you and worship at the alter of the Second Amendment, that millions upon millions of parents in our country fear sending their children to school each day. Let me paraphrase that last part again. Because of you, millions upon millions of parents in this country are frightened to send their kids to school each day. Parents of elementary school children are scared enough, but that fear and panic is multiplied one hundredfold for parents of high school students.

Does that not sound somewhat ridiculous? It does to me, but it’s now normal life in America. Yes, finding yourself in tears because your happy and healthy eight year-old daughter, or sixteen year-old daughter might not come home from school because republican politicians refuse to take even the smallest steps to insure that their schools are safe places to be, without resembling concentration camps, is now normal.

Should I list statistics on support of gun safety measures in America? I don’t need to. If you’re reading this piece, then you already know the American population’s attitude on this issue; ban assault weapons, make background checks mandatory, enact effective red flag laws, and the list goes on, but none of this will happen any time soon. The murder of our children in their schools will continue to become an ever more accepted and normal occurrence as long as the republican party and the NRA hold sway in our government, allowing billions upon billions of private, dark money dollars to flow anonymously to elected and appointed officials.

As long as these people can persist in creating a more dangerous America for everyone but the ultra wealthy, then, well, just prepare yourselves for the new normal America. It is, after all, what you want, unless you, at the very least, use your right to vote to try to stop it. Unless you do this, then your silence gives consent.

Citizen X

J’Accuse!

This declaration, French for “I accuse” or “I accuse you,” became a familiar declaration in the days, weeks and months after France was liberated from Nazi occupation in 1945, and was directed at persons accused of collaboration with German occupation forces. Although many men were the subject of “J’accuse!,” most of the people at whom it was directed were women who were accused of such collaboration.

Many of them were guilty to varying degrees of this crime against the national pride of the temporarily conquered French, and most of them did so for the prospect of making their lives easier in a time of great peril. They took German lovers, or assisted the Germans in other ways, and for this, once the Gestapo was gone, their neighbors would brand them. Many of the women were placed in chairs and had their heads shaved in public as their fellow citizens hurled insults, accusations, and spittle at them. They then had to live as outcasts for a long time.

Many people thought that J’accuse dissolved into the dustbin of history, but it never did. In twenty-first century America, the act of “J’Accuse!” is used by the republican party to hide what they do. They accuse others; democrats, liberals, et cetera, of supporting the unAmerican policies they actually pursue as a means to somehow cover themselves. The list is pretty long, but I’m only going to write on a few subjects.

Education

First and most importantly, education. Republican politicians, party operatives, and especially the mass of slaves to fox news, newsmax, and infowars, all the way down to the crack-heads of Truth Social that make up their cadres, continually accuse the left (or the radical left, as they call anyone who disagrees with them) of using the public schools to indoctrinate our children.

NOTE: This act of labeling even moderate centrists in this country “the radical left” is yet another example of the right’s attempt to hide their position through accusation.

I suppose this is actually true, the left in this country seeks to indoctrinate our children into one of the most dangerous cults in the history of the world: knowledge born of intellectual curiosity. This indoctrination into knowledge includes, but is in no way limited to, the evils of a holistic and egalitarian view of the world and its peoples, and science as an actual ‘real thing’ that can actually explain various realities we see in the universe around us.

It’s a knowledge that places religion in its proper place, and that place is inside an individual’s heart, and not in our public schools, our statutory laws, nor any governmental policy. It’s a knowledge that honors every tradition of faith that the people of this world have ever produced. It’s a knowledge that speaks against bigotry in all its forms, especially religious bigotry. It’s a knowledge that speaks against racism and hatred, instead of embracing them within a grotesque bubble of nationalistic xenophobia born of hollow, venomous, false patriotism.

If those aspects of knowledge weren’t bad enough, this ‘knowledge’ which the radical left is trying to force upon our children also includes a healthy understanding of both the positive and negative aspects of American history. It’s a knowledge that, without even trying, destroys the republican fantasy shroud of “American Exceptionalism,” whatever that really is.

Their race to conceal uncomfortable truths about our own history from our children has become so all-encompassing that they have passed laws in the states that they control which actually make it illegal for our teachers to inform our children about the function of racism in our history. Remember always that 2 + 2 = 4, but only if both twos are white. If they’re not, then it should be illegal for them to be in the same equation.

God forbid that our children should know things other than the juiciest parts of the Old Testament; a set of documents that try to teach us that God made mistakes in creating certain people; that the people that god created as homosexuals, or who don’t identify their gender or sexuality within the narrow confines of ‘conservative’ social norms, are not actually children of god. It also teaches us that a warmongering, murdering, rapist drunkard was, as they say, “a man after god’s own heart.” Yeah, sure thing, Dave.

The bible, in the hands of republicans, has become no more than a collection of stories in which we are to believe that homosexuality is an abomination before this god, but that the practice of slavery, of holding another child of god as your personal property, of beating them without mercy or recourse on the slightest whim, of raping them whenever you wish without any accountability for your violence, and of actually working them to death in the name of your personal wealth is, for lack of a better term, the shit.

In their righteous opposition to this evil world of knowledge and intellectual curiosity into which the left is trying to indoctrinate our children, republicans have become the gleeful destroyers of knowledge. Their “anti-indoctrination” efforts, from history, to civics, to science and beyond, amount to a decades-long, coordinated effort to indoctrinate our children into the prison of white-centered history, and bible-centered science. After all, science must be taught with the caveat that god can do anything. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared only until god comes around and decides that it’s not, and then, well, it’s not, and so much for the treachery of your evil science.

Believe me, if the Pharisees of 4 A.D. didn’t know that there is a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, then there isn’t one. If the closet homosexuals who wrote Deuteronomy need to cover their tracks by telling you that homosexuality is frowned upon by god, believe it. Believe it without question, because we all know, first and foremost, that republicans have a direct line to the divine will that the godless libs, with their love of knowledge and intellectual curiosity, will never have. Remember this, too; Eve took a bite of an apple from the tree of knowledge, not stupidity. What does that tell you?

Weaponization of the Government

This particular republican ploy would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous to the very existence of our republic. As I write, the House Oversight Committee (HOC), under the ‘leadership’ of the troll-under-the-bridge in charge, Representative Roy Comer, is engaged in a bogus attempt to impeach President Biden.

The problem here, is that the entire ‘weaponization’ issue only exists because the vast majority of elected republican officials have the intellects of home-schooled twelve year-olds, and we have twelve year-olds in congress because the mass of racist, christian nationalist republican voters, who have the intellects of unschooled eight year olds are enraptured by the very concept of making America white again.

This weaponization practice really entered the public eye in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi in 2012. The republicans tore after Secretary of State Clinton for weeks, to no real end, except that that they were eventually able to assess that mistakes in reading the intelligence coming forward occurred. The United States Government made mistakes in interpreting intelligence? That’s a first. Oh, yeah, and Hillary’s emails.

It’s difficult to calculate exactly how much money the American taxpayer shelled out for that farcical aquatic ceremony, but I guarantee you that the republicans in Congress didn’t care how much it cost. All they cared about was dragging a high-ranking member of the Obama administration through the mud, which they did, ad nauseum.

Now, the republicans, in a blatant act of vengeance against democrats for having defended our republic from the vicious and unceasing onslaught on the very principles upon which this our country was founded by donald trump, have launched an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden. To this day, February of 2024, we still don’t know what the charges against Joe Biden are, or for what exactly, they think he should be removed from office. It’s like one of these trolls said on fox news in early 2023 (and I paraphrase): “There is no evidence out there. All we have are accusations, but we know that accusations are out there.” Really? Is that it? I think I’m safe in saying “Is this all you can muster, Saruman?” because believe me, the republicans have no bomb shoved into the only weak spot of the defenses of Helm’s Deep, and no methed-up orc with a torch willing to sacrifice his lame ass to set it off. In fact, they have nothing at all; nothing but hatred and the childishness with which their twelve year-old intellects have defiled the formerly hallowed halls of Congress.

Roy Comer, the republican chair of the HOC, is humiliating himself, his party, and to some extent, the entire United States of America with his dog and pony show. Earth to republican boot lickers: not a single witness called before HOC has divulged any evidence against Joe Biden for any wrongdoing, let alone the high crimes and misdemeanors of which his predecessor is accused, and, given the evidence known to date, for which he will hopefully go to prison. Every witness, when asked bluntly “Do you have any evidence, or any direct knowledge to support the claims of the republicans on this committee that President Biden acted in any manner contrary to the law,” has answered “no.”

The republicans scream that the Biden Administration is weaponizing our government, in a vain effort to try to erase from people’s minds the blatant attempts by donald trump to do so. trump, being the idiot that he is, not only bragged about this when he was president, but he continues to do so now. He has stated over and over throughout 2023 and into 2024 that he will use the government as a weapon against those he considers to be his enemies if elected president again. He has been quite clear that he holds the opinion that as president, he should be able to use the entire executive branch, especially the United States Department of Justice, to pursue and persecute his political enemies.

donald trump, from even before his first day in office, tried to turn this government of the people, by the people, and for the people into a weapon that he could place at his disposal. Now, the republican party, in its complete and total surrender to this threat to our republic, endorses this idea, while it points and shouts “J’accuse!” at others blindly in the dark to try to mask their rejection of democracy in favor of dictatorship. The worst part of this is that they don’t engage in these childish antics for the American people, they do it for trump, which means that they do it for Putin.

Like I said, it would be funny, if it wasn’t so dangerous. It’s dangerous for many reasons, but the worst is that this weaponization brings with it both a low level of violence and a general loss of faith in the integrity of our electoral processes. It is the goal of the republican party to insure that both of these dangers to our republic become normalized.

The War on Christianity

The republicans are right about this one. There is a war against Christianity in America, and the people waging it are the white christian nationalist evangelical republicans who try to claim the birthright of the Christ while serving darkness in all its forms. They claim that the left is promoting moral decay in this country because the left stands for letting people live the life they want to live, as long as they don’t actually hurt someone else.

The bare truth of the matter is this: someone privately living the life they want to live is not moral decay. Two consenting adults being in love, no matter who they are, is not moral decay. Practicing your faith in pursuit of salvation and inner peace, no matter what it is, as long as it doesn’t harm others, is not moral decay. Moral decay is trying to force your faith and your lifestyle onto someone else, because you think you are somehow morally superior to them. That is moral bigotry and decadence. Being who you really are, openly, with pride and no regrets is moral purity.

A man by the name of John Fugelsang wrote the following, and I think republicans need to digest the information, if only because it will make them puke.

“Jesus was a radical, non-violent revolutionary who hung around with lepers, hookers, and crooks: wasn’t American, never spoke english; was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer; but was never anti-gay, never mentioned abortion or birth control, never called the poor lazy, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarines, never asked a leper for a co-pay; and was a hong-haired, brown-skinned homeless community-organizing anti-slut-shaming Middle Eastern Jew.”

That being said, I have a few bullet points of my own for you christian republicans to digest after you’re finished puking your guts out from having just read Mr. Fugelsang’s short piece. Here you go:

Jesus was not a ripped action hero with a machine gun, and an American flag and bald eagle tattooed across his chest, as you like to portray him.
Jesus would destroy the offices of all evangelical “leaders” who support and lay their hands upon people like donald trump. He did this once before in the temple in Jerusalem, clearing the place of those who had turned it into a den of thieves.
- You have turned Christianity into a den of thieves.
  - Related to this, Abraham Lincoln would slap the shit out of each and every one of you for claiming that your cruel, racist cabal is “The party of Lincoln.”
God did not send donald trump as some savior of unchallenged white rule in America.
- In fact, god did not send donald trump at all, unless it did so as a warning to everyone as to what can happen if:
  - christians place their faith in antichrist preachers who are wealthier than Caesar, sit on golden thrones in TV studios, hire professional telemarketers to divest elderly people of deep and simple faith of as much of their fixed income as possible, and live the gospel of greed as they proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ!
  - It’s also a warning as to what can happen to your country if people don’t vote.
Listening to right-wing christians say “I’m not even allowed to practice my religion anymore” is an absolute joke. Seriously, the rest of us look around when we hear that from you and think; “Really? Because the last time I checked, there was one of your damned fire and brimstone churches on almost every street corner.”
- At least there used to be, before the marijuana dispensaries started taking over.
- No one in America is preventing you from practicing your faith. You’re just pissed off because when you run around telling everyone else how their lives are full of sin, most people rightfully tell you to take your bible and your religion and stick both of them straight up your ass.
  - You are, however, trying to prevent other religions from freely practicing their faith in America. Your bigoted goal is to rid what you see as your white, christian country of Islam and other religions.

While I’m here, let’s talk about your jewel of a free-market theocracy issue you like to tie to Jesus; limited government. After years of observation, I can put into words for you exactly what you want out of this. You want limited government when the subject is the wealthy and powerful of this world exploiting the poor and powerless. That’s when you want government to stay out. However, as soon as we start talking about what consenting adults do in their private lives, especially their bedrooms, then, what you want more than anything, is for government to rush in there like a bunch of storm troopers and control things based upon your own, narrow imperial religious dogma. Oh, yes, I almost forgot, you definitely want unlimited governmental intervention and control when the subject is women’s uteruses.

Christ! How bluntly does someone have to spell it out for you that you people are the ones attacking Christianity!? You’re the ones defiling the teachings of Jesus! It’s you, and each and every one of you needs to be careful that you don’t place the eternal fate of your soul in jeopardy. Seriously, take a big step back and unpack the bag of what is inside of your heart. I guarantee you that the actual teachings and example of Jesus are probably not going to be part of what you pull out, but the imperial bigotry of TBN will be. “The Lord put it on my heart to be a nazi jackass.” Probably not, actually, you did that yourself.

Election Integrity

This one is the biggest joke. For almost twenty-five years now, republicans have been screaming about election integrity. They have been making false allegation after false allegation that the American democratic process has been tainted and destroyed by the left. Their claim, if I have this correct (and I do), is that the radical left and its mindless minions who live off of the free money that democratic politicians hand out in exchange for votes, have devised a nationwide scheme in which millions upon millions of both living and dead people vote multiple times in every election.

Well, okay then. Never mind that our entire electoral system is so decentralized that it would not only be absolutely impossible to set up and coordinate such a system, but it would be even more impossible to actually operate such a scheme. These multiple impossibilities notwithstanding, the republican party claims that the left has figured it out, and is stealing elections through this impossible system.

Let me say this now, just so my opinion is completely transparent. This superhuman ability to do the impossible is proof that we intellectual elites on the left are so smart that we really do need to be running things. I mean, I’m sorry, but if we’re smart enough to figure out how to dupe a system that, by its very nature, is designed to defeat any large scale attempt to tamper with its results, then we need to hold every political office in this country, from the local dog catcher to the president, because we’re obviously the only ones smart enough to fix America’s most pressing problems. So, either we on the left are using our superhuman abilities to steal elections, or god is on our side and is doing it for us.

Earlier in this section I stated that the republicans’ claims that the left is stealing elections are “false allegations.” I say this because like the adults they have to emulate (no matter how painful it is), they know that this concerted effort by the godless libs about which they rant and rave does not exist. Either that, or the entire planet, especially the US judiciary system, is not only against them, but is trying to keep the truth hidden from us all.

Now, there are anecdotal examples in every election of mistakes being made by voters on both the left and the right, so I’m going to throw in a couple. Let us consider a couple of examples from the great states of Florida and Nevada. In 2018 a 79 year-old Florida woman, was arrested for voting illegally after she received a notice on how to register to vote from a private firm. She mistook the form for one coming from her county election board, because these companies do their best to create forms the look ‘official.’ So, she registered, and cast her ballot. However, Florida law states she was actually not allowed to vote while she was still on probation. Though she was initially arrested, the District Attorney recognized the “innocent mistake” and dropped the charges.

In the 2020 election in the state of Nevada, a ballot was received and votes thereon were registered in the name of Dorothy Hartle, who died in 2017 of breast cancer. Kirk Hartle, her grieving husband, contacted the local news outlets, screaming that this was proof of voter fraud by the left. Fox News picked up the story, and zoom, off it went. Kirk Hartle became the poster boy for the right’s claims that the left was steeling elections through voter fraud. Mr. Hartle claimed during his several featured interviews on Fox News that he never received the ballot, and that he was “sickened” by the possibility that someone would do such a thing. However, in October of 2021, Mr. Hartle, a registered republican, was arrested and charged with voting twice in an election, a class D felony. Mr. Hartle voted and also did so in the name of his dead wife…for donald trump.

The Attorney General of Nevada wrote the following when a plea agreement was announced on November 16, 2021: “Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system. This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of the fraud himself…” Fox News dropped the story. Whoops. J’accuse!

Of course, these are just simple examples of individuals making mistakes, whether the intent was innocent as with our 79 year-old woman who had found herself in trouble with the law some years earlier and was not yet eligible to vote, or, not so innocent, as in the case of Mr. Hartle. Certainly, there are examples of the godless libs trying to steal elections in the 21st century in which the scheme was much larger and more organized. Ah, I have some juicy tidbits for you! Let us look at the case of the 9th congressional district in North Carolina in both the 2016 and 2018 elections.

What happened here is that a long-time political operative in this district, and a high ranking member of the campaign staff of congressional candidate Mark Harris obtained a list of all of the absentee ballots mailed in the district. He and his army of zombie warriors went house to house, claiming to be officers of the election commission with orders to collect and mail all absentee ballots for the voters. They then took these ballots and fraudulently completed that ballot for their preferred candidate, forged the signature of the voter, and turned them in to the proper election board. Ten people were eventually indicted in this case, and the state ordered the entire election redone. As I’m sure you have surmised, all of the people indicted in this scheme to steal an election, as well as the candidate, Mr. Harris, for whom they cast these fraudulent ballots were republicans, and in 2016 they also cast fraudulent votes for trump.

Since they first started screaming about election integrity, republicans have not only refused to take steps to make the voting process more secure, but they have blocked efforts by the godless libs to do so. Instead, they have decided that effectively disenfranchising voters who they think will not vote for republican candidates is the best answer to a problem they dreamt up in order to cover their crimes in polluting or democratic processes. To wit, they have done the following in two different states; Georgia and Kansas.

The Georgia case is most famous, but only, I suppose, because Georgia’s minority populations are more numerous, and, of course, because Kansas is the very essence of ‘fly over’ country. The process for the republican-controlled government in Georgia was simple. First, you reduce the number of polling stations in heavily populated, urban areas where democrats seem to congregate. This causes immense lines and hours upon hours of waiting in line to engage in the most basic of constitutionally guaranteed rights: the right to vote. Second, you make it illegal to offer refreshment to anyone waiting in line to vote. The purpose is to make voting as difficult as possible.

Kansas, although less famous, is an even more extreme example of republicans’ attempt to steal elections through the effective, if not legal, disenfranchisement of large sections of the electorate. Take the case of Dodge City. Yes, the famous Dodge City from all of those westerns. Over the years, Dodge City became more and more populated by voters who were members of racial and ethnic minorities. Therefore, the republican controlled government; the legislature and the republican Secretary of State specifically, banded together and did the following.

First, the Secretary of State, the person who runs elections in each state, removed all poling stations from Dodge City. You read correctly, they removed ALL polling stations from Dodge City, which required any citizen living within Dodge City who wanted to cast a ballot to drive to a surrounding town to do so. The legislature then passed a law, which was signed by the republican governor, making illegal to give another person a ride to cast a vote. Yeah, J’accuse.

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Republicans…just stop! Your efforts to defile our political system so that you can establish some sort of christian untethered, unregulated, free-market theocracy dedicated to the proposition that donald trump should be able to reign over this country as some sort of white power dictator is a sham, and the rest of us won’t let it happen! The rest of us actually outnumber you by about 30-1, so your chances of doing this are just a little bit less than zero. Seriously, your horrendous and painful-to-watch existence of falsehood upon falsehood, screaming like banshees that the left is doing what you are actually doing is becoming old hat. You really do need a new schtick, but we all know that there isn’t one. You’re stuck with being the childish liars you are, and love being.

Actually, I have a great idea for a new schtick for you. It’s called honesty. You really should try it, but be very careful, because the second you start being honest with the rest of the world and, more importantly, with yourselves, you’re going have to come out of the closet. Now, we on the left know that a lot of you will come out of the closet as homosexuals, transgender men and women, or other variants of the LGBTQ+ community. That’s fine. It’s about time. We accept you and will help you adjust to your new life of pride in who you really are, who god made you to be. On the other hand, the vast majority of the rest of you, when you come out of the closet, are going to stand up proudly and declare that you are racists, neo-nazis, white supremacists, etcetera. I’m sorry, but we will not be so kind to, or accepting of you.

I read a wonderful science fiction series. years ago titled “The Lensman Series” by E. E. “Doc” Smith. In this tale, one of our heroes, who was, of course, fighting to save civilizations throughout multiple galaxies from enslavement, openly declared one of his tactics. It was to, as he said: “Conceal himself by his own obviousness.” This is the tactic the republican party is using today to undermine our democratic institutions, principles, and processes, and their success to date can largely be traced to the fact that they are doing it right out in the open, concealing themselves by their own obviousness, while accusing others of the same, or worse actions.

J’accuse.

The Lure of Dictatorship

To be a citizen of a republic really is a hassle. Seriously, I’m not joking. So much is expected of you. I mean, think of it. First, you are expected to stay informed about various issues that affect you, your fellow citizens, and your country as a whole. Not only are you expected to do this, but you are expected to make time for it on your own, and unless you’re one of those people who ‘works well without direct supervision,’ then it’s not going to happen.

Most people would not only have to be led to the water of staying informed, but they’s also have to be made to drink it, and republics that function on a set of democratic processes aren’t really set up to force people drink information. Republics of this nature are set up to make the water available for people to drink, but the decision to either drink the water of information and knowledge, or to sit, thirsty, in the parched dryness of ignorance is theirs to make.

Second, not only are you expected to stay informed, but you’re also expected to stay informed with the truth. That means that you’re expected to pull your face out of your algorithm directed social media apps for a few seconds (yeah, good luck), and look something up. Never mind that the pervasive internet and the evolving G networks everywhere make that the easiest task, ever. Forget it. People don’t care about the truth, because the truth sucks. The truth means they have to be truly awake in some manner, other than just walking through life with a fake smile on their faces, and see the world as it really is. If people do that, then, well, there go all of the smiles, fake or not.

Third, and this is the worst part, ever. Not only are citizens of a republic expected to stay informed with the truth, but they’re also expected to vote. I know, I feel like screaming and crying when I thank about that, too. “Voting? Are you serious? Nah, that’s not happening. Vote? Are you crazy? Don’t you know that Jesus died on the cross so that we could just hand all that shit over to god? Damned atheists and your voting!”

“Look, can’t we just get somebody in office that’ll just take care of all of this, so that I don’t have to worry about it? I mean, I don’t want to use the term ‘benevolent dictator,’ but… Well, hell, let’s just call a spade a spade and go there; say it out loud. Can’t we just get some benevolent dictator in the White House who will make it all happen, so I don’t have to worry about it?”

That short monologue, unfortunately, is all too common within the American electorate, and it is that attitude which may pose the greatest threat to this republic. Humans have a love of republicanism that functions on the democratic process, but don’t want to accept responsibility for their own governance. They don’t want to stay informed with the truth. They don’t want to maintain anything even resembling a meaningful understanding of the issues confronting their country and the world. They don’t even want to vote.

In the short term, individuals like trump come and go and their influence on this republic rises, then fades. Over the long term, though, it is dictatorship itself that draws people into its web, where it waits, like the venomous spider it is. The lure of dictatorship lies in the apparent ease of existence it offers the individual. Yet we all know that this apparent ease is merely an illusion; it is the veil of lies that conceals the evil that lies within. Fortunately, this veil is not opaque, and in fact, its transparency is its greatest flaw. Dictatorships have this lure within them, and yet its transparency of what it really entails for the individual and the nation, even those within the dominant racial/ethnic/religious/sexually oriented, and gender identifying group (dominant group), is what makes it so abhorrent.

To be the minion of a dictatorship is easy, it really is, provided, of course, that you are a member of the dominant group in your country. If you are, then all you have to do is nothing. Consciously and actively do nothing, even when you see injustice meted out to people of minority or marginalized ethnic, racial, sexually oriented, or gender identifying groups, do nothing. The state will take care to insure that you are cared for and protected against what it sees as anything infringing on your quiet, non-political life. For many people, this ‘doing nothing’ is easy, but for the rest of us it is incredibly difficult, and this difficulty is one of the factors that first lead to the rise of republicanism as a form of government in the first place.

Over time, all governments develop institutions that help propel their existence. This is especially true of both monarchies and republics, much more so than civil and military dictatorships. Monarchies develop institutions based around the blood line of a particular set of people, and if it is what is known as a ‘constitutional monarchy,’ then two parallel sets of institutions develop; one protects the privileges of the noble class, and the other protects the rights of the monarchy’s subjects. Republics, on the other hand, develop institutions based upon their body of laws, their nation’s constitutional rights, and the liberties and responsibilities of the individual.

The self-propelling institutions developed by civil and military dictatorships are based upon and centered around a single, charismatic figure, and are designed to keep that person and their inner circle in power for as long as possible. Since these persons are rarely in power more than twenty years, thirty years at the most, the institutions designed to propel their rule find it difficult to take root in the national psyche. This is what makes North Korea such an anomaly; the institutionalization of the rule of the Kim family over the decades has come to resemble an absolute monarchy more than a dictatorship.

So there is this constant, dual, opposing, pull on the individual. There is the desire for republicanism and democracy, but a republic that functions on the democratic process requires constant attention of the citizens to maintain it in a healthy state. Dictatorship, on the other hand possesses its lure because of its myth of the easy life in which the individual doesn’t have to maintain the political system that governs them. The system, the myth says, is self sustaining. All the citizen has to do is nothing. Consciously, actively, and intentionally do nothing, because if any citizen attempts to intervene with the state on behalf of others, that person will find themselves to be a target of the state, and that will not end well for the individual.

The vast, vast, vast majority of those people who secretly long for the establishment of a dictatorship in the United States understand that such a dream neither can, nor should, ever become a reality, because they know that it would mean the destruction of everything they hold dear in this world in terms of their country and what it has tried to stand for in this world. They have these fleeting desires for the benevolent dictator when they see inefficiency and ineffectiveness in their government’s efforts to right wrongs. They dream, periodically, of the dictator because they see unintentional, yet unfixed, waste of the people’s tax revenue. They dream of the dictator because someone once told them that “Well, at least under Hitler, the trains ran on time,” and they believed it without trying to find out if it was true. They believed it and purposely hid from their own minds their internal knowledge of the suffering dictators bring with them wherever they go.

Then there are those people for whom dreams of a dictatorship in America are not fleeting, because creating a dictatorship in the United States of America is their dream. They are the people who actively seek ways to subvert our democratic institutions on a daily basis in an attempt to sweep our republic into the thrash can of history. They are the people who live within the realms of white supremacy, white nationalism, and white christian nationalism. They are the people who hoard assault rifles and study how to bring down large areas of our electrical power grid as they wait for the start of their “shootin’ war.” They have always been among us, but have decided, since the political rise of donald trump, that their time to come out of the shadows is now. They actively attempt to recruit our young people into their ranks through their right-wing media outlets, the algorithms of YouTube and other social media platforms, the right’s decades-long decimation of our educational system, and, yes, their sheer visibility.

These people are the greatest threat to our republic since King George III of England, and if you cannot see this, then you are purposefully blind. If you are purposefully blind to this threat of dictatorship, then you are, whether you realize it or not, within their ranks. You are, more than likely, a “Who, me?” racist, and an “I’m the one who’s going to heaven” bigot, and you represent an even greater threat to this republic than the people described in the paragraph above this one. You are the greater threat, because you will walk out of a republic and into a dictatorship secretly thinking that you will be the one who will benefit from it as you proclaim your innocence for its occurrence.

One day you will wake up to find this republic and its democratic processes gone and say “What? I didn’t do it!” Yes, you did, because you saw it happening and purposefully closed your eyes and looked the other way. Then again, it is not just you who will bear responsibility for the destruction of this beloved republic and its democratic institutions, but the rest of us as well, because really, we all see it coming, and if we all do nothing, we will all bear responsibility.

Peace to All

Niemand

Trump’s Further Reductionism: It Really Is Strange

One might think that having alienated the vast majority of the American electorate during his first term, Donald Trump would figure out the basic math of democracies: the person with the most votes wins. Unless you’re talking about the election of the President of the United States, and then it’s the person with the most electoral college votes wins. That’s very weird, and needs to end.

This essay is a revision and an evolution of a previous essay on this site titled “Reductionism, and the Strange Politics of Donald Trump.” It is updated from the original essay published in 2020 to account for events that have occurred since then. You know, indictments, insurrections, convictions and a host of strange actions and decisions made by a politician who wishes to succeed.

One of the most basic tenets of politics in the age of democracies is that politicians will generally try, as best they can, to appeal to as broad a base as possible. This is not to say that all politicians do this at the expense of the things in which they believe, but that they moderate their stance on these beliefs, realizing that compromise is the hallmark of a functioning democracy…and adulthood.

Donald Trump is evidently trying a different approach. Mr. Trump seems determined to reduce his constituency to the absolute smallest number possible, and hope that this will win him a victory in November, 2024. Over the space of his entire political existence, Donald Trump has sought to insult, degrade, and alienate every group of people in this country not solidly behind his political aspirations. It does not matter whether that group is identified by their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, political views, or any other characteristic. If they are not within his base, his hatred and complete contempt for them is proudly brandished every day.

Who are these people who make up Trump’s political base? They are primarily members of three basic groups: conservative christian evangelicals, white nationalists, and gun toters. Make no mistake, together, they make up a significant portion of the electorate, but they also overlap to a great extent, sharing several common characteristics which limits their percentage of the overall electorate. Many, if not most of them, are actually gun toting white nationalist christian evangelicals.

Specifically, they are politically unsophisticated, with little or no perception of what comprises a republic and its mechanisms of operation through the democratic process. They have little or no concept of the art of compromise, and how this purely adult form of conflict resolution serves to preserve and perpetuate any republic that functions on said democratic processes.

For the most part, they are poorly or under-educated and rarely have any college experience. Those who do lack a unified, holistic, and egalitarian view of the world outside of what is told to them by the governors of the Southern Baptist Convention (the religious teachings of which are essentially bigoted, exclusionary, nationalistic, and imperial), Fox News, Newsmax, and various other right wing mass media propaganda outlets.

They do not seek the truth. Rather, they are willing slaves to the algorithms that take them farther and farther down the rabbit hole of their racist comfort. If they sought truth, they would be in a different place altogether, and really, different people.

Encompassing the three groups mentioned above, Trump’s base consists almost solely of white people who live in a continuous cycle of fear, perpetuated by the propaganda outlets above, of non-white, non-heterosexual, non-conforming people. This fear cycle peaks when these groups demand equal justice under the law, and equal legal rights and treatment within society as a whole. When a member of the neoconservative right wing in this country argues against the ‘gay agenda,” remind them that this agenda consists of being treated with love, compassion, and basic respect afforded cis-gender, heterosexual white males in this country. Everybody should have this agenda…everybody.

The inherent problem with Trump’s strategy in 2020, and resumed unabated in 2024, is that people either on the fringes of this base, or who simply, for whatever reason, did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 are gone. They had four years of the carnival show that was the Trump presidency to completely alienate them from Trump and his personal brand of American fascism. Added to his time in the white house, they now see his flagrant threats to elected officials (“Mitch McConnell must have a death wish.”), multiple indictments for blatant criminal activity whether in office or out, vows to pardon insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow the will of the American people on January 6, 2021, and more to come.

His purposeful alienation of the portion of our electorate that looks critically at candidates for public office with little preference for party affiliation reflects the true manner in which Trump has decided to practice this strange reductionism. He has enthusiastically and horrifically driven from him every rational and truly patriotic American who does not worship him, as does his base, but who may have considered supporting him in previous elections.

What, then, could his overall strategy be? It must be this: Donald Trump previously banked on the chaos and destruction that his core base would bring upon America when he lost the election in 2020. He promised, and to some extent delivered on January 6, 2021, the chaos he promised when asked what his strategy for reelection would be earlier in the cycle. His candidacy in 2024 looks to be more of the same.

When he rightfully lost the 2020 presidential election he issued his call to arms, claiming that the liberals had stolen the election, that they are out to destroy America, and that he would save them if only they would go out and kill, maim, and burn America to the ground in his name and for his sole benefit. He has said many times: “I am the only person who can save America,” and I will tell you this right now; when someone says something like that, and you don’t immediately flush your support for them straight down the toilet, you have no business living outside of a facility for the criminally insane, let alone voting. If you continue to support them, you have no business calling yourself an American.

The bloody and murderous insurrection of January 6, 2021 — which, if you’ll pardon the colloquial speech, really was some pathetic punk-ass bullshit. I mean, if you pin your hopes for revolution on a couple of thousand stupid, hillbilly jackasses with some pepper spray and no plan, you’re just an amateur, stupid jerk-off — is testament to what a person like Donald Trump can do to people who are intellectually akin to rudderless vessels drifting through space and heading for a black hole. As he said in an interview in the 1990s “If I ever go into politics, I’ll probably do so as a republican. Those people will believe anything you tell them.” He was right. Those people who make up his ever shrinking base will believe anything he tells them. But that’s okay, he had a television show.

If he somehow wins the republican nomination, and afterwards, of course, loses the general election in November, 2024, I think he will be surprised at how few people will actually be willing to go out and destroy America on his behalf. It will happen in small, sporadic events, make no mistake, but we must be willing to absorb this spasm of violence of his core base and continue, as one nation, dedicated to the propositions laid out in our Declaration of Independence, and codified in our ever evolving Constitution.

Eventually, Donald Trump will fade into history as a sickening footnote of what can happen to any nation when the people do not actively participate in its democratic procedures and allow religious fanatics to gut their education system.

When asked what type of government he and the other framers of the Constitution had designed, Benjamin Franklin is rumored to have said the following: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Today, Donald Trump is the greatest testament since Adolf Hitler, that we must rededicate ourselves to keeping it.

Related to Mr. Franklin’s attributed statement above is the following: “All it takes for evil to prevail, is for good people to do nothing.” We must, as a nation, in every peaceful and constitutionally protected manner possible, repudiate in the strongest possible terms, the toxic, racist politics of Donald Trump and make certain that his political aspirations die in 2024. We must then rededicate ourselves to keeping the republic that Franklin warned us would be constantly under attack from enemies both outside and within our own country. If we do not, then believe me, evil people like Donald Trump and his white nationalist, gun toting evangelical followers will prevail.

Peace and Love to All

Christoph Niemand, Citizen X

The Rendezvous

There is a place

A place far, far from us, but closer than our fears would ever want

In this place there walks a creature indistinguishable from any human man

But he is distinguished from us, for he lives an immortal life

Our time, in our place, from birth to old age and death, is but a breath for him.

He walks through this place; so far, but too close, never knowing what we call love

And he loves

Or he wishes to, but knows not how

He longs, but knows that his longing is in vain

Time passed not for this immortal creature, and as our time passed he became more and more that which we all fear

He became fear itself

Then

Then he saw her

And he knew he was slain

She looked frail, and yet he saw through her veil of frailty to the strength that slept within her

The shrouded giant that would crush his world

And in that moment he knew love for the first time in all of his centuries upon centuries of existence

He fell to his knees and wept uncontrollably as this unknown feeling swept through his very essence

Like a tsunami sweeping over a lonely atoll

Her voice: “Mister, are you okay?”

A song never before heard in his universe of darkness

He hid his face, shrank from her and managed only a timid “Yes, now please go away”

She did not move

She did not speak

As time did not pass, he eventually looked up at her. When he did so, she smiled at him

And extended her delicate hand to help him to his feet

He accepted her hand

And he rose

And for the first time in his immortal life, he did not know what to say, or do

He looked away and down, and spied a single flower

He reached away and down and robbed it from the plant that gave it life

When he did so, he assured it of its rapid death

And, in a way, his own

He presented it to her

The smile that beset her face at this simple gift was so pure and so beautiful that his face, struggling as it was to resist, bore a smile too

He accidentally spoke aloud: “I cannot recall that I have ever smiled before.”

He thought of his centuries without love, torn to shreds by her simple smile, and began to cry again

But gently this time

He stood before her, wishing with everything he had ever known, that she would leave

And yet his entire life was begging her to stay with him forever

Forever

She could never know the forever in which he lives

This immortal existence, which he had cherished for so long, now became a burden unbearable

As he gently wept, she placed her free hand which held her flower and his death upon his cheek

For she was still holding his hand with her other

This was too much

He needed to flee

Flee to the caressing safety of the fear and darkness he had become

But he couldn’t

He couldn’t

He didn’t want to

His life was no longer his, but hers

He had just not formally presented it to her yet

She looked at him and said

“There’s something strange about you. Can you tell me what it is?”

“Over time. Over time, my beautiful flower, if you will allow me”

“Yes, I think I will. I want to”

He gently removed her hand from his face and placed a gentle kiss upon it

She smiled ever more

He smiled

“I am Heinrich. I am at you service. Whatever you wish in this world I shall be honored to make it happen”

“I am Alexandra. I am honored to make your acquaintance, Heinrich, but for now I must go. May I meet you here tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow at this same time? I shall be here”

“I, too. Until then.”

She gently placed one finger over his lips, took a deep breath of her flower, and gazed deeply into his eyes

After a few moments of love and curiosity growing between them, she slowly turned from him

He stood there, unable to speak or even move as she walked away

As she walked away, she turned once and smiled at him

Then she turned away and continued walking, leaving him standing there, in love

As she walked, she gave an almost inaudible hiss, opened her mouth and grew two long, razor sharp fangs

She ran her tongue gently and sensually over them as if in anticipation of a feast yet to come, then retracted them

She strode purposefully away from him. She would wait until tomorrow