Rob's Soapbox - Playground Politics

I’ll be candid…I’m exhausted; mentally and intellectually exhausted. No doubt the last 21 months have taken their toll on all of us, and I’m painfully aware of what they’ve taken out of me. But it isn’t just covid; it’s seemingly everything and everyone from the bottom up, and nowhere is more exhausting than the political playground and the children who are supposed to be our leaders.

Don’t even start with me about why your tribe isn’t the problem, for you are the problem for being tribal in the first place, as we’ve documented and discussed endlessly here. You’re a god damned lunatic for investing in one of these political parties and I take great joy in knowing that you will live an empty and hollow life as you watch all of your asinine dreams never come true as your party betrays you over and over again, and ultimately changes absolutely nothing about your miserable life.

We have literally reached the tit-for-tat, nana-boo-boo level of politics in America. Whatever one party does that the other doesn’t like, the aggrieved party takes to a whole other level as soon as they can.

It’s hard to tell where exactly it all started, but it was this century for sure. When the 22nd century begins and the days of America being a dominant super power are long behind us, history will record that somewhere around January 20, 2001 is when the beginning of the end of the nation occurred. Prior to the election of 2000, we were able to disagree while being polite. We were able to accept differing views. We even acknowledged aloud that ideas different than ours were a good and healthy thing. A mere legal drinking age later, we now seek to destroy anyone who doesn’t see the world the way we do, and we’ll stop at nothing to achieve our goals.

We’ll invent an entire fallacy that claims a sitting president colluded with Russia and we’ll spend 3 years in an attempt to destroy his presidency based on that lie. We’ll tell people that they aren’t actually black, Hispanic, or even women, unless they agree with our policies, despite the provable color of their skin, ethnic background, and gender. We’ll spend a year claiming that an election was a fraud despite leaders and judges from our own tribe telling us over and over again that it wasn’t. We’ll even storm our own capital in the greatest temper tantrum since the Boston Tea Party, and then stick by our actions.

Over the last two decades, the decay of America has been hastened by watching the other tribe make major mistakes and miscalculations and then repeating them in a far bigger fashion, with no regard for the law or the constitution.

In 2013, Democrats held a majority in the Senate while President Barack Obama occupied the White House.

For four decades, a 60-vote supermajority had been required to advance all federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments. Then, Senate Republicans attempted to filibuster multiple Obama nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, his pick for Defense secretary, and others. In response, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid orchestrated a move to lower the Senate vote threshold to 51 to confirm most presidential appointments.

By 2017, roles had reversed — Republicans held the majority in the Senate, and President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office. After Senate Democrats, now in the minority, filibustered the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch — Trump's first nominee to the Supreme Court — New Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell engineered his own "nuclear option." The Republican-controlled Senate voted 52-48 to reduce the vote threshold for confirming nominees to the Supreme Court from 60 to 51, upping the ante. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/01/fact-check-gop-ended-senate-filibuster-supreme-court-nominees/3573369001/

In 2019, Trump decided to become a king rather than a president and declared the situation at the southern border a national emergency, thus granting himself broad powers and setting the precedent for any high office holder to do exactly the same thing following. All of you Trump-lovers angry at how Democrats have handled Covid have your lovable orange man to thank for their widely sweeping and broad executive powers they have used to destroy our nation as best they can. And now that Trump has shown them the way, Democrats across the country are already using emergency declare things like “guns” a “disaster,” as was done in New York. On the national level, nut cases Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez are pleading with President Biden to declare Climate Change a national emergency, which would give him the ability to almost single-handedly order the coal industry to shut down. If his infrastructure bill known as “Build Back Better,” which is essentially just the groundwork for the Green New Deal, doesn’t pass, don’t be surprised if he does exactly that. https://www.businessinsider.com/cuomo-gun-control-new-laws-disaster-emergency-executive-order-2021-7

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/sanders-ocasio-cortez-seek-climate-emergency-declaration

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/15/695012728/trump-expected-to-declare-national-emergency-to-help-fund-southern-border-wall

The latest salvo in this childish back and forth came just this weekend on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to stop the new Texas law on abortion from continuing while lawsuits challenging it are heard. Republican lawmakers in Texas this year passed a law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which normally occurs at about six weeks into pregnancy. The Texas law allows private citizens to enforce the ban, empowering them to sue abortion clinics and anyone else who "aids and abets" with the procedure, a brilliant and disgustingly scary way around the Constitution and rule of law which also set yet another new precedent.

It didn’t take long to see how the Democrats, this time, would up the ante on this one as California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday pledged to empower private citizens to enforce a ban on the manufacture and sale of assault weapons in the state, citing the same authority claimed by conservative lawmakers in Texas to outlaw most abortions once a heartbeat is detected. Bravo, Texas Republicans for coming up with this idea! I’m not sure why (or if) Newsome will stop at “assault weapons,” why not go after all guns? Meanwhile, Oklahoma can empower private citizens to enforce a ban on pornography, Oregon can empower private citizens to enforce a ban on gas-powered vehicles, Tennessee can empower private citizens to enforce a ban on black people being outside, and Massachusetts can empower private citizens to enforce a ban on hiring anyone who voted for Trump. Why not? https://www.npr.org/2021/12/12/1063489922/california-governor-gavin-newsom-assault-weapons-ban-texas-abortion-law

This is the lunacy we have created, tolerated, and now cheer, as long as our tribe is winning. Republicans across America are already screaming about Newsome’s pledge, while ignoring entirely that he is right…their tribe did exactly the same thing in Texas, but because it’s their tribe, it’s ok.

Lots of people are aware that it’s a very scary time in America, but what most people aren’t aware of is that we’re still at the beginning. Like usual, we’re too stupid to comprehend the mechanics of anything and we just leap to the worst case scenario; A 2021 national survey by pollster John Zogby found a plurality of Americans (46%) believed a future civil war was likely, which is asinine for the sheer fact that we are too cowardly as a people to ever actually implement such a thing. Not to mention that the powerful protect the powerful and the one thing that will bring our political parties together is an attempt by us to rise up. It’s the 21st century, they don’t need cops or soldiers to keep us in check; they can and would use technology, drones, and if needed, bombs. A couple of heat-seeking missiles dropped on Texas and California (to make it fair to both tribes) would put a swift end to any uprising. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/09/16/is-the-us-headed-for-another-civil-war/

And that’s the point; our time to have done anything about this has long since passed. In the end, while the two parties childishly find new ways to get what they want, they’re really just playing games with each other and laughing at all of us that we continue to accept it…because we have to. That’s why I’m so exhausted and so done with pretty much everyone…you actually believe that this stuff matters and that you have some sort of control over it. You don’t, and it’s embarrassing to watch you think otherwise.

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