The GOP: The Worst Monopoly Players Ever.

There has long been a wildly misplaced perception, held by many

Americans and ingrained in the DNA of the US body-politic, that the

country occupies the gold standard of democracy. That is wildly

wrong on any number of accounts. Consider any of the following.

The Revolution and subsequent Constitutional Republic founded on

discrimination, had a life-blood of wide-scale disenfranchisement

also. Blacks, women and the non-propertied were deprived of the

vote. It took centuries to put that straight and it still isn’t as it

should be.

American democracy has morphed into an oscillating two-party

system, Democrat and Republican, that serves the few, not the

many. A choice between food poisoning or dysentery is really no

choice at all.

The 2010 ruling in Citizens United vs the Federal Election

Commission further rigged the democratic playing field by increasing

the political influence of corporations, donors and the super-rich.

Just those three factors alone point to a democracy that is far

from healthy. And then along comes the Trump-infested GOP of the

twenty-first century, determined to do even more democratic

damage. Knowing that their policies and political well-being are

increasingly exposed and on the line, three months into 2021 and any

number of state Republican parties have proposed electoral

legislation that disenfranchises non-white Americans further still.

Now that the GOP has lost the White House and Congress, their

nefarious plans to skew democracy to their benefit are now in full

flow. In 2020, more Americans than ever before voted by absentee

ballot. So, surprise-surprise, Republican state legislators are

targeting that very means of legitimate democratic expression.

Again, if you can’t hit the goal, move thee goal-posts.

Of course, it’s not just an assault on absentee voting. Republican

machinations also include presenting comprehensive ID to vote not

once, but twice (Georgia).

In New York state, GOP wannabe electoral fixers are now putting

especial emphasis on voters having citizenship, targeting entirely

legitimate non-citizen voters.

Pennsylvania Republicans are brewing up plans to have ballots thrown

out if there is a signature mismatch. That is despite the state’s

supreme court categorically striking down that tactic.

And so it goes on. Of course, post-Biden victory, Trump spewed

forth a torrent of falsehoods, baselessly claiming that the election

has been stolen from him as a result of wide-spread voter fraud.

Yet it absolutely was not. A joint statement from The Elections

Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and The Election

Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees declared

that the 2020 elections were the securest in American history.

Actual voter fraud was so small as to be virtually negligible. Hell,

even some of Trump’s own inner circle, including human door-mat Bill

Barr, said the same.

There is a desperation in these GOP voting tactics that belies the

fear that they have been exposed for the craven authority craving

boot-lickers that they really are. They genuinely have nothing more

to offer other than the cult of Trump, faux patriotism and

monstrous socio-economic inequality, all shabbily dressed up as

“freedom.”

While it always was arguable that the US claim to being the

premiere model of democracy was dubious, now that we have had

Trump, his lackeys and minions, an actual seditious storming of the

Capitol to overturn a democratic result, and the GOP etching out all

and any plan to restrict voting, we know for sure that that claim is

utterly bankrupt. There are failed states around the world that

right now can claim to have better democratic credentials than the

United States. That shining city on the hill? That’s nothing more

than the GOP trying its very best to torch the democratic principles

that this country was supposedly founded upon.

As we’ve noted

before in TIPNation, the moral high ground the US tried to

dominate for so long is now a desolate waste-ground of good

intentions mixed with the toxic reality of a warped democracy

becoming ever more twisted and unfit for purpose.

Remember that family member that would win at Monopoly no matter

what? Somebody would inevitably argue for changing the rules so as

to emerge victorious. And this is where the GOP now find

themselves. Not content with outrageously gerrymandering for the

last 20 years, they now want more ridiculous electoral changes in

their favor in the forlorn attempt to stem the progressive will of

millions of Americans.

That’s not going to happen. And both figuratively and actively,

Republicans need to go to jail. Do not pass go. Instead, just go, a

long way away, and let us all try and play out democracy by the actual

rules, not by your fevered, cheating minds.