politics

We won’t go down without a fight—RIP Renee Good

It’s good to see the Resistance continuing to rise as the fascists find it’s not so easy to take over.

They killed one of our protestors and then labeled her a terrorist. We can all see the truth from multiple angles, yet they gaslight us, telling us not to believe our own eyes. RIP Renee Nicole Macklin Good. I expect you were welcomed into Heaven with crowds of angels. You sound like one of God’s true saints.

I was sick, or I would’ve been at the protest in my town on Sunday. But the group posted lots of pictures on Facebook. 🙂

These ICE agents are pieces of shit. And anybody who supports what they did to Good is also a piece of shit. It was murder and we all know it.

I was disturbed and saddened by the response of one of my sister church’s converts on Facebook this weekend. I shared an article—AP, I believe—about Renee and he argued with me, used all the right-wing troll responses, even horrible things said about her being LGBTQ. He’s woefully misguided about what Christianity is supposed to be. He’s gone down Youtube rabbit holes, and there is so much crap on there these days from wannabe Orthodox influencers who don’t know the first thing about Christ. I tried to pull him back from it, tried to pull the wool from his eyes, but instead he unfriended me.

When they tell us our protest group is left-wing radical terrorists, I donate and protest in defiance of them. They can’t take all of us.

I see the videos in fear, dread, but also joy because the People are fighting back. If the USA goes down behind an iron curtain, it won’t be without a fight.

Yes, I was at the No Kings 2 Rally

Last time we didn’t have a rally in town here, and I wasn’t able to go.  This time, we did–and our little conservative town had an estimated 400-500 people.  🙂  Still waiting for that Soros money.  And oh, how rowdy we antifa people were–haha, no we weren’t.  A lot of us probably protested Vietnam.  I will copy here what I wrote to a friend:

I get there around 9:30 and it’s already in progress, people going down the city block, both sides of the street. There were also people on both sides of the cross street.

We had some people in costume, including two little girls, one a pink bug and the other an alligator. Alligator girl had fun prancing around, but bug girl was shy and curled up in her mom’s arms. There was a witch, a guy who appeared to be dressed like either the Kaiser or a German officer circa WWI, a guy in a stormtrooper helmet….

There were the ones who revved their engines and the ones who yelled out ridicule, like the guy who said most of us were old. (Old guy near me said back, We’re saving democracy!)  Weekly protests see these same guys rage-revving past us and even blowing black smoke over us.

This guy near my house has a truck sitting out front with a sign that says “Democrats are a cancer on America.” I saw it on my way to the protest, and crossed myself as protection from its evil, something I often do when passing that house. Then I saw the truck pass by us during the protest. I saw it back in its usual place on my way home. Obviously he knew we’d be there and came by just for us!

People by me said there were counter protesters in the back, but I didn’t see what they were doing.

We did chants, we did the Pledge, America the Beautiful….It was fun. 🙂

But where was the press?

We started leaving around 10:30. I heard that we didn’t have to, because it’s public property, but a police car was patrolling, and their office is just down the street in view of us, so I didn’t want to give them any reason to get nervous. And there was the Oshkosh event soon, so people wanted to get to that.

It has been suggested that contacting our local rep is more effective.  But I have tried sending Grothman messages in the past and he just seems like a MAGA brick wall. Every time I do, he tells me why my position is wrong.  He’s so extremist that our previous rep, who served for many years and was a respected Republican, refused to endorse him, after Grothman attacked him verbally in the campaign.

He sends out these questionnaires with loaded questions. Like in the latest one, one question asks which 3 policy issues would you like Congress to do more to address; it gives a bunch of pre-written check-off answers; one is protecting 2nd Amendment rights (but no 1st Amendment anywhere), another is “eliminating racially discriminatory programs” which I just KNOW is referring to discrimination against white people. Question #3, “Do you believe individuals should get so many benefits that it incentivizes them not to get married?” He lists as benefits, getting food stamps and low-income housing, which he says go away if they get married. This is a yes-no question which means I fall into a trap. If I say “yes,” it means I want people to not get married. If I say “no,” it means I want the food stamps and low-income housing benefits to be reduced or go away. I don’t want that!!!!!

But these rallies are getting bigger, even in this conservative town, which has a little group of weekly protesters now.  And we got under Tr**p’s skin–He was so upset he put out a video of a tantruming toddler with poopy drawers.  Oh wait, that was him in a plane?  My mistake! 😉

There is still hope.  And remember–Of course he’s not a king NOW, but he wants to be and every day does more things to put that into place.  If we wait until he has everything in order to protest what he’s doing, it’ll be too late.

We are in a Fascist Regime

Our rights are being quickly stripped from us.  Kimmel just got canned for a comment that all of us believed over the weekend based on the best information we had available to us.  In “normal” times, Kimmel could simply give a retraction at his next monologue.

We’re losing our rights just to be able to get a freakin’ vaccine!

We’re being told how we have to feel over someone we disagreed with, and accused of causing one sick person to commit murder, while conveniently ignoring the assassinations against Democrats a few months ago.

They had their Reichstag Fire moment and they’re taking advantage of it.  We’re being scapegoated.  We’re being threatened by the government.  People’s rights to free expression are being taken away at the command of the government.  They’re losing their jobs at the request of the government.  Joe Walsh just got booted from Tiktok because the government told them to do it.  That is the very definition of censorship.

Who knows how long any of us will keep up our modes of expression?  I just started attending peaceful protests in my community–Who knows how long before we become enemies of the state?

The truth was always there, easily available, but people refused to believe it.  Instead they chose to believe the great delusion being hypnotized into their brains by right-wing media, Fox News, etc.  They accused us of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”  And now our democracy is about to fall apart, to great applause.

I started to see it as far back as around 2015 or 2016, when I was researching my latest novel, which is partially based in Nazi Germany, and I saw many parallels already.  I wrote about it here on my blog.  Many of us saw it clearly, but were gaslit by others who said we were hyperbolic.  Now it’s here in front of our eyes and yet at the protest last week, there were–along with many honks–many people who wanted to harass and cuss at us.  Like we’re the deluded ones.

I hope that still we can come together and end this, because there are way more of us than there are of this administration.  Now we have organizations we didn’t have before, and we still have other means of expression if one is taken away.  But if we sleep, we won’t have any of those anymore.

The Resistance is Rising Again

Is this thing on?

I haven’t posted in so long that the compose box looks strange….I think they changed some things….

Anyway, two years ago, I went through a faith crisis, then resolved it, only to find myself in a situation–Something took over my brain and heart and hasn’t let go of it.  For the longest time, I couldn’t stomach anything political.  Just stopped reading blogs, watching Youtube videos, hanging out on Twitter or any social media besides Facebook.  And even then it’s limited.  Started spending time on Reddit.  But still, the thing that obsesses me was the only thing I could think of for much of the time.  And, well, with Biden in office, and Evers as governor, I had much less to worry about than when it was Trump or Walker….But MAGA was still there, with their insanity, trying to take over everything from the school boards to the state government, so I at least had to show up for every election to help stop them.  And we were making some progress, keeping some of the worst ones out of office in Wisconsin.

Then I got depressed after the November election, like so many of us did, just shutting down and stepping away from politics like we had collective PTSD.

Over on Reddit, we were horrified as popular priest influencers (like Trenham) and even Archbishop Elpidophorous sucked up to Trump.  (BTW, the kind of “Orthodoxy” Trenham pushes is NOTHING like I’ve ever experienced in my church.  If it were, I wouldn’t have lasted there two months!  His kind of church is indeed a cult.)

And our depression was justified: Trump’s fascist takeover of this country is moving at astounding speed.  Yet for so long, Dems acted like it was just business as usual, and they as well as businesses, schools, hospitals, etc. have just been giving in and saying yes sir may I have another.

Until Harvard and Columbia started fighting back.

This past week, all the pretenses are removed.  Everybody’s focusing on the abuse of Padilla today, but just moments before that happened, Noem said they were going to take LA away from the “socialist” governor and mayor.  In other words, Trump’s regime is sending in the military and threatening to topple the elected leaders in LA.

But Padilla was “detained” simply for exercising his right as a senator and as a citizen to say something and ask questions.  And Newsom is fighting back.  And Dems in Congress are speaking out.  So even the wussy Dems are finally getting some balls and standing up and starting to make Good Trouble.

No Kings and Indivisible–shout out to Joe Walsh and the Social Contract podcast for bringing these to my attention–are grassroots groups organizing and turning into Something.  Protests were already being planned for Saturday, but they’re gaining steam as Trump wants to show off his tanks (celebrating his birthday Hitler-style) and send the Marines into an American city.

I don’t know if my little town will have any protests on Saturday.  So far nothing shows up, even though there are protests at similar towns in the counties around us.  A few cities around here apparently are not doing it because they don’t want to detract from Juneteenth celebrations (this was posted on Reddit).  But I DO have protest stickers on my bike, so I “protest” every time I go out.  And we do have a local Indivisible group, which I hope to get more information on soon.  And No Kings is growing and promises to continue.

Goodbye Democracy….

…It was nice having you for so long.  I guess we just couldn’t keep the experiment going.  Too many people are willing to give up our rights.

Watch for the Red Pillers, incels, and Nazis to gloat and then take everything over.

People took it for granted for too long.  These things are too easily lost; history tells us this again and again.

Will there even be a COVID vaccine this time next year?  Will trans people be outlawed?  Will the IUD that saved my life be ripped out?

Years ago, while researching the rise of the Nazis, I saw startling parallels to what I’d seen in my own country over the past 40 years with the rise of the religious right.  I really hoped we’d turn things around in time.

After escaping for years, we’ve been forced back into a house with our abuser, and locked in.