Cicadas, Prison, and The New GOP
According to all the Arrows Pointing at It
Cicadas are in the news again. Soon, millions upon millions of them are scheduled to emerge from their underground bunkers after seventeen years of pupation.
In an act of sublime irony, Nature has timed this emergence perfectly: Ronald Reagan, the sperm donor of today’s Republican party, died seventeen years ago and now his spawn are emerging from their larval lairs, noisy and creepy to look at, some holding public office. They are here to tell the rest of us that our dreams of an America where everyone has equal rights to water, voting, and general decency shall not come to pass. They don’t like us. We suspected it. Now they have made it known.
That’s right. After years of living underground, these hate-filled broods are out in force, determined to keep white rights the right rights, and the only rights that matter. They feel it is safe now to fully emerge from their dankness to feast on the rotting corpse of the GOP. The Grand Old Party. RIP, GOP.
As a political party, the GOP has been many things. It began its life as the party in opposition to Andrew Jackson, author of the Trail of Tears and other acts of genocide against the indigenous people of this continent. Today’s GOP has nothing to do with that Republican party (formed in 1854 for the express purpose of opposing chattel slavery in the newly founded states of Missouri and Kansas). The party was a Progressive one, with progressive ideas. Today, the very word “progressive” sets the New GOP out onto the airwaves, screaming about communists.
The Republican Party we see today, the one engorged with hate, has in fact become the bonafide anti-democracy party.
The original GOP, the Party of Lincoln, is no more. It has been consumed from the inside out by Regan’s larval brood — the White Supremacist Wing. WSW.
Pointing Arrows
Where in the world is the GOP headed?
Let’s take a look at the planks being laid down by the New GOP of Karen, the Proud Boys, Q, and, well, those Capital rioters.
The GOP does not want the majority of Americans to vote. This is not an open secret. It’s not a secret at all. It is part of the party platform: to make voting as difficult as possible for the poor, the elderly, and people of color.
States like Georgia, with growing urban-rural divisions and changes in voter habits (v. non-white voters out in force), have rushed to gerrymander and legislate changes with the sole intent disenfranchising liberal voters and reducing the political power of non-whites. In front of the Supreme Court — THE SUPREME COURT — the one body in this land that we used to look to for wisdom and guidance and for the protection of our rights, the GOP did this:
Justice Amy Coney Barrett: What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?
Michael Carvin, GOP lawyer: Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game.
The once wise SCOTUS has now become a tool of the extreme right and continues to chip away at suffrage — all under the guise of states’ rights and originalism — encouraging the extremist (v. supremacists) to openly and unashamedly restrict voting rights, eliminate federal oversight of elections, and allow for endless recounts based on lies.
The GOP wants free speech, but not for everyone. The GOP is okay with giving certain people and institutions who support them free and unrestricted speech — even to the point of saying that lies are fine if the end justifies the means. However, they are against free speech for people who criticize them.
Florida. Oh, Florida, you crazy, vociferous state. Now, free assembly can be construed as an unauthorized protest, and thus a crime. Again, a spate of laws making protestors “domestic terrorists” is aimed at Black Lives Matter and the non-existent Antifa. These are the new Schedule A drug laws aimed at criminalizing people of color, the homeless, the opposition, and anyone deemed “other.”
Go to Prison, unless you’re driving the car
The Florida law, as it is written, allows for mass incarcerations of protestors, regardless of whether or not it is a peaceful protest. Freedom of assembly has never been more impinged.
In Iowa and Oklahoma, it is now legal to mow down protestors with your car. Motor-anti-voter laws. Killing protestors with cars is now legal.
So, freedom to protest is being restricted. There are no limits, however, on the hate speech, zip ties, and pepper spray that the far-right white supremacists use to intimidate and threaten lawmakers, poll workers, corporate CEOs, doctors, women, and people of color. If you have ever been the recipient of white supremacists “missives,” you know the kind of intimidation that they get up to on Sundays, after church. If you haven’t, wait for it. It’s coming.
The GOP wants to spend monies from foreign supporters but does not want the opposition to have the same rights. Anyone who watched the sad clown spectacle that was, is, and will continue to be Rudy Giuliani knows that the former mayor was being played by foreign operatives — on camera and without irony.
Meanwhile, the WSW of the New GOP can’t help but carry on about Biden’s sons — yes, sons. Aside from mocking Hunter Biden’s personal tragedies, they can’t even leave the dead son alone. It’s as if they want to dig up the poor man’s corpse and shoot it.
Seriously, one should keep an eye on the graves of people the GOP hates because sooner or later some idiot will attempt to dig up corpses and execute them. The GOP has reached unbelievable low points for a party that quite frankly no one thought could go lower. But they did — and they continue to do so.
The GOP wants women to shut up. Liz Cheney. Just look at how they talk to and about her. There is no way to watch any of this play out and not come away with the feeling that the GOP retrograded to 1834, but on the side of Andrew Jackson, the very man that the party formed against. The original Republican party was anti-Jacksonian. Now they are full-on Jacksonian. And they cannot see the irony, nor the immorality, in that.
The GOP has embraced and empowered the White Supremacist wing of the party. Not only has the GOP fully embraced the WSW of the party, they design their public stages around Nazi symbols. Just look at the reaction to the 1619 Project. They want to make it illegal to teach that curriculum — and eliminate all critical theory — from schools. Tucker Carlson has gone full on WSW. Just watch him. His is the face of the WSW.
RIP, GOP
The New GOP is now openly racist, misogynistic, sexist, and homophobic and is proud of that retrograde transformation. States controlled by the New GOP will continue to pass more and more laws restricting voting rights, rights to assemble, rights to protest, rights to free speech, and the right NOT TO BE religious. They will tell you what you can and can’t teach your children, what you can and can’t do with your body, and whom you can love. Expect despotism on the state level first.
This will continue for another seventeen years, when the next brood of larvae emerge. The next GOP will bear no resemblance at all to the GOP we have loved andd hated for the last 170 years. We need to be prepared for that because it will be ugly indeed. The next would-be dictator will have the stage set for eliminating the opposition with the sweep of a hand.