The Daze Before Christmas
It was the daze before Christmas
And all through the nation
There was dismay and concern and great consternation
COVID was flying through the air with ease
And the unvaccinated would not get vaccinated
Even when Biden said “please”
The wishes, prayers and dreams of better times were all through the air
In hopes that the Divine would take time to care….
It should be clear to all who care to care that 2021 has turned out to be an infernal continuation of 2020, hands down the worst year in recent memory. When Amanda Gorman delivered her epic poem at the inauguration of Joe Biden as President and successor to the infernal reign of Donald J. Trump there was reasonable hope that this year would be different and that it would be better – if only because it wasn’t 2020.
With a little more than a week left in 2021, unless a series of miracles are unleashed over these next eight days, the hopes for a Happy New Year are already dim. And for very good reason.
We can begin by noting that the Democratic Party in Congress continues to revert to a circular firing squad whenever the opportunity to collaborate arises. As a result, even when something historic, epic actually, like the Infrastructure Bill passes after decades of every Congress and President kicking the can down the road, the Democrats, halfway through a victory, get into a battle over the Build Back Better Bill – also a righteous and historic initiative. But it would have been helpful to let the American people savor the good stuff before diving right back into the battle.
We can continue by resigning ourselves to the fact that unless Satan appears to reclaim his lost son, Donald Trump is with us and seemingly here to stay. The destruction of societal norms and the infrastructure of democracy are clearly his bastard children. And even though it is clear that his destructive mode is more a matter of tantrum than strategy, the damage that he is wreaking may have an existential impact on this country.
With his malign inspiration, Republicans all over the country have determined that the best way to preserve the limited guard rails preserving white male supremacy is to simply throw out the entire constitutional playbook and not even try to win elections (although that has worked out pretty well for them over the past few decades, especially when you consider the demographic deficit which they have been confronted).
Instead Republicans have determined that stealing elections by hyper aggressive and shameless gerrymandering and the grotesque altering of voting laws that tip the playing field in their favor. And Trump appointed judges all over the country and in the Supreme Court are prepared to throw legalistic holy water over this smoking, stinking pile of institutional sabotage.
We have seen the gradual acceptance of school shootings as part of Life in America. No matter how many girls and boys and teachers and coaches are shot dead in schools, the sclerotic approach to anything resembling gun law safety has gone the way of the Dodo bird. So now death in the schools, in the streets and anywhere and everywhere continues unabated as America remains the most well-armed nation in the world and the highest civilian murder by gun rate in the world.
And that madness does not seem that it will ever stop until there is nobody left to shoot.
And no reflection on 2021 (aka 2022) would be complete without the simple observation that, by packing the Supreme Court with right wing of the right wing conservatives, we are now look at decades of victories by the national right wing of the right wing in cities, towns and states throughout this nation. It should be clear to all who care to see, that Roe V. Wade is on Death Row, and it is only a matter of whether the execution will take place by lethal injection or slow and cruel strangulation.
But that, of course, is only the beginning…before this conservative majority ages out in about twenty to thirty years, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Brown v. Board of Education case will all be on the judicial trash heap. It should be pointed out that this is not a matter of mere surmise, Barrett, Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito and Kavanagh are clear proponents of this judicial lynching.
It has been said that hope springs eternal but the year of 2020-2021 is putting that saying to the test.
However, that as long as there are women and men of goodwill who are willing to stand up, to speak up, to be heard and to not give up hope. For, as we know, evil only triumphs when good people do nothing.
It is clearly time to do something.
Happy Holidays to all
To all who believe in righteousness
Let 2022 be a year of the triumph of justice!
*Special thanks to Negrodamus, my special muse, for the “Daze” concept.
Point of View 
Wallace: Happy holidays
Sent from my iPhone
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Thanks for sharing this, Wallace. Have you hope – and do you believe in righteousness – still? What should “women and men of goodwill who are willing to stand up, to speak up, to be heard…” do and say?
Just wondering – as I wander -personally..
Sorry I missed the live update after your recent travels. Will check out the recording.
Best wishes for a wonderfully healthy, joyous and prosperous holiday season and beyond!
Jesse
I do have hope…always
As a lover of the Constitution, justice and liberty, I advocate that we use all the tools we have—albeit those which push the envelope—to preserve our republic from the lawless thug bullies that have no qualms about using illegal tools, such as violence, gerrymandering and lying propaganda, to steal our rights and our Republic.
In the past, Supreme Court decisions expanded Constitutional rights—human rights—and paid homage to Supreme Court precedent. When such precedent was overturned, it was to expunge unequal treatment under the law such as”separate but equal,” in order to expand Constitutional rights to additional human beings, particularly if those human beings were female, black, gay, and other persons who were not White Anglo Saxon Protestant Men With Property (currently the members of the White Supremacist, violent, Neo-Nazi Fascist party, which has hijacked the name of the former Republican party).
My proposal is this- use the courts as the radical tool to fight the contraction of human rights being imposed by the previously legitimate Supreme Court.
First up is the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the Texas unconstitutional ban against abortion. I propose that the federal appellate court, which the Supreme Court’s decision overruled, be petitioned by the plaintiffs in those cases to demand an emergency temporary restraining order, and ultimately a permanent injunction against the Supreme Court’s lawless decision, so that the immutable LIBERTY of a woman’s right to control her own body, derived from both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, be preserved.
Test, head on, the power of the federal appellate court to enjoin the Supreme Court under extreme and renegade circumstances. After all, the Supreme Court has lost its way and has issued an unconstitutional, illegal and non-jurisprudential decision. Normally, a Supreme Court decision is the final word, but in this case that Court’s only claim to have that final word is that it is the Last Court in the judicial pecking order.
The plaintiffs must petition the appellate court, and the appellate court must have the power to enjoin an illegal order by the Supreme Court, issued by a procedurally illegally constituted Supreme Court. These are two separate and distinct grounds for the injunction:
The First Grounds:
the decision itself is contrary to law, as beautifully and extensively set forth in both the Appellate Court’s decision and by the decision of the District Court which it confirmed.
The Second Grounds:
Some court members were appointed illegitimately by violations of the balance of powers between the Executive branch and the Legislative branch. Obama nominated Merrick Garland eleven months before the end of his Presidential term, but Merrick Garland’s candidacy was never put to a vote before the Senate because the Senate leader Mitch McDonnell procedurally decreed that a sitting president did not have the right to a due process Senate vetting of his Supreme Court nominee if said president only had eleven months left in his presidency. In all likelihood, McConnell derived this rule from some suggestion written by the Sugar Plum Fairy on the back of a matchbook.
In addition, the subsequent Supreme Court nominees used chopped word salad to lie in their confirmation testimonies with respect to their positions on Stare Decisis .
Third Grounds:
During the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the FBI was prohibited from performing a full investigation of the allegations of sexual assault which had been made against him. (How reminiscent of the clown car show during the confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas, respecting allegations of sexual harassment made by now Professor Anita Hill of Brandeis University.)
THIS IS A CALL TO ARMS TO ALL ATTORNEYS: someone please forward this to Bob Bauer and his organization of attorneys who believe in the Constitution and the Rule of Law! The Texas law, confirmed by the Supreme Court, places a bounty hunt by dangerous stalkers with no standing concerning each Texas woman’s private vagina.
In the alternative, it is time to read or reread the tactics employed by women in classical play entitled The P. Wars (abbreviation intentional).
Thank you!