The Gadfly: An Alternate State of the Union Address

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

The Only Solution to Clean the Washington, D.C. Cow Gutter: A 50/50 Power Split

The only way our democracy will survive attacks by the Republican Party is to make sure they keep investigating what the Democrats in power are doing “wrong” instead of doing “right.” We sure as hell don’t want them to actually start governing because they have no clue how to govern a democracy. The national socialism model of Hitler, Mussolini, and Trump is no way to run a country.

The Republican House, going nuts in their joy of gaining just a little power, passed House Concurrent Resolution 9 which denounced “the horrors of socialism” by reviewing most of the bastards who led and presently lead communist and authoritarian governments. They listed Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Un, Castro, and Ortega as examples. Vladimir Lenin was on the list—but not Vladimir Putin. What’s the difference between Stalin and Putin?

The Republicans state that socialist ideology “collapses into Communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships.”

Here are some of the “horrid” socialist ideas Congress has adopted for use in the United States of America: State Bank of North Dakota, Pelican Rapids Post Office, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Interstate 94, Veterans Administration, Medicaid, Public Broadcasting System, Highway 9 to Sabin, Obamacare, Highway 336 overpass, parental leave, 40-hour week, Glyndon Police Department, Minot Air Force base, maternity leave, Turtle Mountain Reservation, Social Security, Lindenwood Park, sick leave, the FBI, Minnesota Public Radio, right-to-work-for-less laws—and a thousand more “socialist” ideas that make a society work.

What countries always top the list of those best-governed—and where citizens are happiest? Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. They have succeeded because socialists and capitalists have agreed on a balance of power—a 50/50 power split.

While Republican representatives in Congress were voting to castigate and suppress anything socialistic, North Dakota Republican Governor Doug Burgum signed his first bill of 2023 providing a $68 million credit through the socialistic Bank of North Dakota to finance the construction of 13 socialistic career academies across the state that would help recruit workers for the socialistic trades, health care, technology and other sectors of the socialistic economy. The bill provides another $20 million for the socialist Bank of North Dakota for its PACE program which can assist primary businesses. Federal socialistic money might cover the $68 million because of a COVID project fund.

ND Republican Rep. Kelly Armstrong voted for Concurrent Resolution 9, denouncing the horrors of socialism, in a Brain-Weak moment.

The State of Disunion in the Divided States of America on February Seventh

Why not have a vote on “chaos” or “disaster” capitalism? Don’t waste time while the country is coming apart at the seams because of ignorance and greed.

I’m writing this section before President Biden gives his “State of the Union” speech. The State of the Union has turned out to be just another campaign speech interrupted by eye-rolling, whispers, or congressional idiots yelling idiocies at the podium while others are jumping up and interminably applauding inane statements.

It reminds me of the Soviet official who was the first one to stop applauding Stalin after a ten-minute clap. He was later sent to the gulag for leading an “insurrection.”

Here is my Alternate State of the Union Address. I don’t think we can survive a time when the Democrats want a democracy and the Republicans don’t. Greed and democracy are not compatible. It does fit with White nationalism, fascism, chaos capitalism, a theocracy, Putinism, and Nazi socialism. Republicans are now conducting hearings about what will emerge from the wreckage of a democracy in flight.

*** A USA TODAY poll indicates members of the two political parties disagree on almost everything. Slightly more than 80% disagree on the news media, on social media, between politicians, and between “ordinary” Americans. This enhances the political hostility and divisiveness in the Divided States.

*** Fifty years ago about 40% of Americans split their vote between the parties, often voting for both Republicans and Democrats. In the last congressional election, only 8% split tickets. This emphasizes strict party-line voting. Crossing party lines is no longer possible for many politicians, and compromise is impossible. However, 69% of voters “say” they want to vote for a person who is willing to set aside feelings to pass needed legislation. Only 29% “say” they want their candidate to stick to the party line.

*** Polling by the Pew Research Center finds that nearly half of Americans believe the U.S. should be a Christian nation, and over half believe the Bible should replace the Constitution and the will of the people in writing laws for all to follow. Slightly more than 50% disagree with the formulation of a theocracy.

*** On fighting the spread of COVID-19, 72% of Republicans and only 17% of Democrats believe the U.S. has spent enough time.

*** On social media, 64% of Americans say it’s been bad for democracy, while 34% say it’s been good. On the Internet, 79% say it has divided people and made them less civil toward one another. That’s because of all the crap on it in order to raise the advertising dollar. This reminds me of the Scottish cynic who pontificated: “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He’s a mile away, and you’ve got his shoes.” That’s the attitude of Facebook and Google.

*** Because of ignorance and Trumplican anti-science rantings, half the counties in the U.S. still do not believe global climate change is real. Some are underwater or on fire.

*** Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has a quote about trickle-down economics proposed by the Republican Party: “This is a call for zombie Reaganomics. Why zombie? Because we now have four decades of experience showing that deregulations and tax cuts for the rich do not, in fact, produce higher wages and faster economic growth. So the idea that tax cuts are the secret of prosperity should be dead, yet it's still shambling along, eating Republican brains.” I believe it should be called “pissed-on” economics instead of “trickle-down” by the poor and what’s left of the middle-class.

*** The purpose of tenure at the university level is to make sure that artists, historians , humanists, scholars, and other people who spend their entire lives searching for truth are protected from rabid politicians who don’t recognize truth. You should know whenever politicians put tenure on the legislative agenda, they don’t like the truth.

*** A poll of White Protestant evangelicals by the Public Religion Research institute’s American Values survey reveals that 71% of them now believe the country has gone downhill since 1950 when Blacks couldn’t vote, 50 million American families used outhouses, women were excluded from all but a few professions, and only 5% of Americans were college educated. This is where the slogan “Make America Great Again” comes from – because 66% of Republicans want the thrill of the outhouse on their butt.

*** Half of White evangelical Protestants think God intended America to be the promised land. Two-thirds say immigrants are a threat to our democracy (particularly if they are Black and Brown). Only 19% agree that “the legacy of slavery and discrimination have limited Black Americans’ upward mobility.” (What would happen today if a vote were held endorsing slavery in the former Confederate states?) Six of ten believe Whites are the ones discriminated against! In this religious cult where men rule women, 61% say society “has become soft and feminine.” They are also the only religious group that polled to ban Roe. V. Wade.

*** While 58% of Americans believe White supremacy is a big problem, only 33%of White evangelicals think so. More than half of White evangelicals believe public school teachers and librarians are “indoctrinating students with inappropriate curricula and books that wrongly portray America as a racist country.” They also believe that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” (Remember the scenes from Charlottesville, VA when our young American Nazis were parading with torches and shouting “Jews will not replace us!” Most were White evangelicals also.) Sixty-five percent support Trump and 54% believe in King Donald’s “Big Lie” of the stolen election.

*** One in five Americans believes that political violence is justified in some cases according to a University of California poll. So many House representatives have received death threats, each will receive $10,000 to improve their own security. Pramila Jayapal, the chairperson of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, recently had a man arrested in front of her house for shouting racist obscenities and threatening to kill her. The U.S. Capitol Police investigated 3,939 threats against Congress members in 2017. In 2021 they investigated 9,625. All members of the January 6 insurrections committee have been specific targets and have had to hire personal security details. Women of color top the list of most threats on social media. Somali-American Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota receives the most, and Puerto Rican-American Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in second place at the moment.

*** A study of political violence conducted by the Anti-Defamation League indicates Trumplican and extreme rightwing groups have committed 75% of the 450 political murders that occurred in the last decade while leftwingers committed only 4%. Islamist terrorists committed the rest. Two White Republican representatives, Paul Cosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have threatened other reps with death, including former president Barack Obama and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. A Republican candidate running for the Senate posed in a campaign picture with a shotgun while threatening other Republicans who were too moderate.

*** In the richest country in the world, a Black baby born in Mississippi has a shorter life expectancy than a Brown baby born in Bangladesh. What does that say about us? Do we have too many billionaires buying $500 million superyachts complete with basketball courts, swimming pools, and helicopters? How about the billionaire who flew his private jet 13 miles to a meeting when he could have driven the distance in 20 minutes?

*** Why was a 15-year-old boy in Oregon with mental problems kept in a hospital emergency room for two months while doctors tried to find a treatment center for him? He was finally shipped to New Jersey where there was a vacancy. Why are we the only industrialized country without universal health care?

*** We are now killing about 300,000 Americans a year with drugs, alcohol, and suicides in “deaths of despair.” Every ten minutes a baby is born with a dependence on opioids and has to be placed in intensive care. One in eight American kids are growing up with a parent who is a drug addict.

*** A majority of Idahoans believe Democrats are part of a Satanic cult that “grooms” babies for pedophiles.

*** What kind of society has mass shootings every day, and creates a man who shoots at seven children who are throwing snowballs at his car, wounds three, and gets a 16-year-sentence and ten years of probation for the act? The leading cause of death for children? Firearms.

I believe this is a more realistic “State of the Union” than President Joe Biden will spin to the Congress and public tonight.

I think chances are slim to none that we will survive as a democracy.