What "Tyranny" Is the Extreme Right Talking About?

I'm getting tired of hearing the rhetoric about "tyranny," and about how the Biden administration is "ruining the country."  That's all right wing extremist media hype being pushed by propaganda outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, Newsmax, USA Radio and a list of those diving in to divide up the extremist pie left after the demise of Rush Limbaugh.  \

Where's the Tyranny? 

I would like to see one example of "tyranny" that anyone in the United States has had to endure as a result of Trump's losing the election.  And he did lose it.  Even his own lackeys, the now infamous "cyber ninjas" who illegally gained access to Maricopa County, Arizona ballots bent on proving that Trump really won.  What they found was that there were Trump votes that couldn't be reconciled to the registration records, and that Biden actually won by a few hundred more votes in Maricopa County than were actually certified.  If the ballot boxes across the country were stuffed for Trump like that one county, that could add up to a lot of phony Trump votes across the country.  

Don't worry, I don't believe the Cyber Ninjas had anything to say worth considering.  What I do believe is what the 50 state officials across the country who certified their elections results said were the official ballot totals.  Trump lost, as he describes it, "a landslide."  Well, that's what he said when he won in 20I6 by the exact same electoral margin, though he was three million popular votes short of Hillary Clinton  He was eight million short of Joe Biden this time. 

But, let's get back to the original question.  Where's the tyranny?  What rights have been taken away from you as a result of the Biden Presidency?  And I need to see evidence of something that is on the same level as Americans endured under the British monarchy back in the I700's.  Talk of the infrastructure bill and the spending programs Biden has proposed do not constitute tyranny, by the way.  A majority of Americans are in favor of it, the financing works, we've gotten past the silly Republican arguments about "borrowing from the future," especially since their man in the White House beginning in 20I6 didn't seem to have any problem with it at all.  

So is it the COVID restrictions?  That's not tyranny.  That's common sense, or, in the case of those who think it's tyanny, lack of common sense.  It's an insult to those who did face tyranny and founded this country as a result of it to claim that is "violating my rights."  

The fact of the matter is that President Joe Biden is doing a pretty awesome job as chief executive right now, so much better than his predecessor, who was a total failure, that the contrast makes him look even better.  If you're not happy with the way things are, you will have an opportunity to make a change, in as soon as another year when it comes to Congress and in three years when it comes to the Presidency.  The fact that opportunity even exists is evidence that there is no tyranny happening to warrant any complaints, or threats of violence.  At least, not among Americans who understand how their government works and are genuinely patriotic when it comes to being good citizens.  

Oh, the Irony of It All

For the past three and a half years, my commute home took me west on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago.  Right past the point where it splits with I-94 heading north, there's a footbridge connecting two of the neighborhoods.  For the better part of the year leading up to the election, almost every afternoon during rush hour, a woman named Veronica Wolski, a Q-Anon conspiracy theorist and activist, would hang home-made signs with messages painted on sheets proclaiming some nut job conspiracy theory or another, or some pro-trumpie remark.  

I remember some of the signs.  "COVID-I9 is a HOAX,"  "AX the VAX".  There was something up there every day.  In January, 202I, she posted "Congrats, POTUS."  It was always such nonsense that I paid less attention until September, when I noticed she just wasn't there. Then I read a news feed announcing that protests were launched against Amita Resurrection Medical Center because Ms. Wolski was a patient there, with COVID pneumonia, and was demanding that doctors give her Ivermectin.  They, of course, because doing so was medically absurd, refused.  The signs never returned that September, since Ms. Wolski died in the ICU at Resurrection Medical Center from the effects of COVID-I9 pneumonia, in effect, from a virus she believed didn't exist.  

But there's something to be learned about what's happening in this country now, from a political perspective.  Veronica Wolski originally started her bridge sign campaign in support of Bernie Sanders, because of his stance against the richest I% of Americans literally controlling the economy and acquiring their wealth with government help, the exact sort of thing Trump was doing with his tax policy.  So how do you go from Sanders to Trump?  Figuring that out would be one of the most vital pieces of information the Democratic party could have, going into the 2022 Mid-term elections.  

Chicago "Bridge Lady" Veronica Wolski dies of COVID-I9

January 6th, and the Looming Possibility of Another Similar Event, is a Symptom of a Deeper Problem

The principles of our Constitutional Republic are not a guarantee against violent insurrection.  Historically, there are always those who don't get it, are not interested in getting it, and who put their personal interests and "rights" against those of everyone else.  America is the kind of place where you can isolate yourself, find a place where no one will bother you, or build a niche of other like-minded disgruntled, ignorant, selfish people and live as you please as long as you don't disturb the rights of other people.  

There were Americans who once defined "tyranny" as the taking away of their right to own slaves.  They gave absoutely no consideration whatsoever to the tyranny that their slaves were experiencing, because they did not see them as human beings.  They had to be separated from the wrongness of their thinking by a costly war that set the development of the country, and especially the Southern states, back three generations.  

Those same racist attitudes are still behind the problems we are experiencing now.  Reconstruction abruptly ended in a political deal in I876 when Republicans, desperate to save their White House dominance, were willing to negotiate enough electoral votes to elect Rutherford B. Hayes, the clear loser of the popular vote, by sacrificing all of the progress made toward assimilating five million former slaves into society.  With the legal framework of reconstruction gone, and the Southern states being admitted back into the Union, African Americans once again became second-class citizens unprotected by the constitution.  It would be a hundred years before many of them were allowed to vote.  Take a look at what's happening now and make a comparison.  Potential losers of elections figure that the way to win is to keep everyone from exercising their right to vote. 

In a country like ours, with protected free speech, it is likely that one of our foreign adversities, or even more than one for that matter, are behind at least some of the rhetoric and agitation.  There's plenty of evidence of Russian involvement and a lot of connections between known right wing extremists, white supremacists and white Christian nationalists and the Russian banks and gang bosses who provide financial assistance.  Russia is never mentioned as "the enemy" or even "the adversary" in the extremist right wing press, in fact, some of the Fox people (I won't call them "journalists' because, frankly, they're not) are given to calling Putin, "Vlad the Great."  That seems upside down, but which country in the world stands to gain the most from an America embroiled in a civil conflict, or an outright civil war?  

There was a time when our intellectual resources, including the education that we have provided for our citizens, would be capable of defending the Republic against potential violence and insurrection.  But not now.  Our educational system just hasn't been able to instill respect for government and social institutions like the churches.  There are those who see democracy as inefficient and ineffective and are interested in doing things differently, especially the money interests who now control virtually the entire economy.  

So let's see evidence of real tyranny, before we talk again, OK?  This is my country, and you're not going to trash it.