Oh to be 9 again

 

I was just reading through my newsletters, most of which were downers.  Later this morning, I’ll get newsletters from groups that focus more on positives.  I need to read about those things to counterbalance the despair I feel when I read the more mainstream stories.  Like this one in particular: Heather Cox Richardson wrote a piece yesterday that I didn’t have time to read until today: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGpGddkngNTkZlGLvjKXgZvtNvc

She began by recalling that on June 20, 1964, a young civil rights volunteer named Andrew Goodman arrived in Mississippi to work with two other volunteers, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney.  They were there to help register black people to vote.  Jim Crow laws were still pervasive in the South and this was the beginning of the civil rights movement.  The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was angered and threatened by the movement because they were white supremacists and didn’t want blacks voting.

The three young men visited a church that had been burned by the KKK because they dared open their doors to help register people of color to vote.  After they left, they were stopped by the sheriff of the town.  He was a member of the same KKK that terrorized and abused black people.  After spending a night in jail, the sheriff then took them to a secluded area where two carloads of supremacists were waiting.  That group of domestic terrorists killed those three young men and buried their bodies.  Justice was very late in coming.

In June, 1964, I was a carefree 9-year-old, completely unaware of what was going on in the country.  I was shielded from the news.  My Deaf parents didn’t watch TV unless there was a favorite show on.  In 1964, there was no close captioning and lipreading someone on TV was next to impossible.  So, we didn’t watch the news.  When we visited hearing relatives, national current events weren’t discussed, at least not when I was in earshot.  All us grandchildren just played joyfully outside in our grandparents’ yard.

Today, though, I am very much aware of what’s going on.  On top of that, I’ve been learning all the true history of our country that was never taught to me in school.  Sometimes I miss the days when I was blissfully unaware of national shenanigans.

Now, there is a disgraced former governor named Eric Greitens running for the Missouri State Senate.  I’d seen the name on Twitter the last day or so but didn’t have the time to look him up on Google.  I got an eyeful from Heather Cox Richardson, who reported that Greitens posted an ad advocating hunting down RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) with guns.  Richardson wrote: “In the ad, Greitens is armed with a shotgun and flanked with military personnel as they burst into a house. “Today, we’re going RINO hunting,” he says. “The RINO feeds on corruption and is marked with the stripes of cowardice,” he continues. “Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.””

There’s a new breed of KKK mentality that’s become open and pervasive in this country.  There are people like Greitens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, Lauren Boehbert and too many others who support white supremacy, tRumpism and violence.  There are no consequences for the things they say and do, and so they are becoming more hateful and inflammatory day by day. 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, is one of two on the January 6^th investigation committee.  Long ostracized by his own family and GQP party, he is going to retire at the end of his term.  It will be a shame to lose him to another trumper but who can blame him for quitting politics when his wife receives a hateful letter threatening not only his life but hers as well and their 6-m0nth-old baby.

Just last week, Judge Luttig warned the country that tRump and his gang present a “clear and present danger” to our democracy.  The efforts to dismantle democracy from within is well under way.  There were no consequences for the plotters of the coup attempt on January 6^th so the GQP has become quite vocal about their plans to take over.  National Memo ran these two articles on GQP interference in Otero County, New Mexico’s election: https://www.nationalmemo.com/gop-sabotage-of-new-mexico-elections-is-a-warning-to-america/particle-1 and an opinion piece from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/20/opinions/election-disinformation-republicans-trump-tribe-aftergut/index. It was the latest attempt by the GQP to interfere in an election and it surely will not be the last.

Today the January 6^th committee will have it’s fourth hearing.  Today, they will focus on the phony electors tRump’s people submitted to screw up the election count.  One of the witnesses is supposed to be Brad Raffensberger, who was Georgia’s secretary of state during the 2020 election.  I remember him well and all the stories about how tRump kept calling Raffensberger to find more votes to help tRump win Georgia.  Raffensberger refused and then had to put up with more harassment and threats from the GQP. 

The same was true for another witness from Georgia, Gabriel Sterling, who was the voting implementation manager.  I don’t remember him but apparently, he had a press conference in December 2020 and reported he’d gotten death threats and other harassment from his own party.  He felt that tRump and his gang put the Georgia GQP up to that loathsome behavior and complained that no one was speaking out against it.

A Georgia election employee named Wandrea ArShaye "Shaye" Moss received death threats too.

Rusty Bowers, who was Arizona’s House Speaker, is supposed to testify about tRump/Guiliani’s plot to ignore the election results and appoint their own fake electors to throw the election to TFG.

It continues to boggle my mind that with all these shenanigans being made public, there are no charges coming from the Department of Justice.  I really hope that once the hearings are concluded, Attorney General Merrick Garland does something before the midterm election in November.

Some days I wish I was 9 again.