Alabama Political Reporter: America Has Trouble Coming

Alabama Political Reporter: America Has Trouble Coming 

A government operated by the worst, most incompetent people results in the worst, most incompetent government.  Just ask Alabama. --Josh Moon, Alabama Political Reporter, November 22, 2024. 

This is an excellent editorial, not surprising that it comes from Alabama, arguably one of the most politically backward and provincial states in the country, next to West Virginia, Wyoming and Mississippi.  

I'd put my home state of Arizona in that group as well.  The state that produced Barry Goldwater, and which holds the record for having more governors convicted of felonies while in office, does not have a great record of government for the people.  It's trying to come out of that daze, but still has a legislature that got lost on a road somewhere in the 1950's, and hasn't found its way out yet.  

Some of the author's perspectives are a better analysis than I've seen in the propaganda....eh, ah, mainstream media.  

"It's hard for me to believe that people voted for this."  

In the 49 years I've been a  participant in the American political system by voting, in every election at every level wherever I've lived, I've never seen a more deliberately misinformed electorate, with more people deliberately choosing not to watch or listen to anything that will contradict their already formed opinion, or unable to access media that will tell them the truth, or simply not able to discern what's true through the plethora of information with which they were bombarded.  

Trump's name and facial recognition is not as a politician, or even as a businessman in real estate.  It's as a reality television star.  No one sees the real Trump, the one before his hairstylist is through, or his makeup is on, or the help he needs getting up and down stairs (which is why there were no platforms at his rallies, and the podiums were on the floor).  And the media, which covered his every move from the time he left the White House in 2021 until election day and now beyond, refused to include his gaffes, stumbles, evidence of dementia, and "sanewashed" every report about him while giving the sitting President less than a fourth of the amount of coverage and pointed to every mistake he made.  

So, 2024 produced the most uneducated, uninformed, misinformed, lied to, abused, confused, deliberately ignorant electorate we've had, probably at any point in our history, including long before we had the ability to get today's news today.  Telling people that if Trump were to be elected, and that the people he would put in charge of government would, like him, be convicted felons, rapists, sexual abusers and have "the morals of an alley cat," wouldn't do any good.  His supporters either wouldn't believe it or wouldn't care. 

If we are able to get through the next few years without his or his cabinet's incompetence leading us to another major disaster, as it almost certainly will, the same thing will happen this time as happened last time.  People will associate all of the bad stuff going on with Trump, and by the time the mid-terms roll around, they'll flip Congress back to the Democrats.  That's been his pattern all along, the result of depending on image, with no substance to back it up. 

"The worst people imaginable in charge of everything...the most grift you've ever seen."

I really don't think Trump's supporters give a damn about any of the lack of moral character, the dishonesty, the lies, and the grift.  His conservative, Evangelical supporters give him a pass, and they've invented cutsie little saying and statements to excuse the immorality and try to disconnect themselves from it.  "I'm not electing a pastor-in-chief, I'm electing a commander in chief," is one of the statements I hear, rendered invalid by most everything Evangelical leaders have said about Democratic party leadership.  

Or the excuse that King David, whom God used to achieve his purposes, wasn't perfect either.  No, he wasn't.  But that's a false comparison on so many levels.  According to the narrative, when David was confronted with his imperfection and immorality, which included adultery, lying and murder, he experienced conviction, was repentant and submitted himself to every requirement set out to be forgiven.  Trump, when confronted by some of his Evangelical preacher lackeys to be repentant and ask God for forgiveness, is hostile in his defiance, claiming he's committed no sin requiring God's forgiveness, something that is at the core of Evangelical theology.  But their response is to give him a pass, which undermines their credibility, as if it wasn't already in the toilet, and make them look like the hypocrites and sycophants they are.  

So don't expect the conservative Evangelicals who support Trump to hold him accountable or to be concerned about the grift.  They're in on it, they've sold out to it, they own it and they are just as incompetent, immoral and lost as he is. They are part of the group of the "worst people imaginable." 

"Government...defends us from threats every day."  

This is what scares me the most.  I'm on social security and medicare now, and I don't trust the incoming administration to care about that, or to protect it.  If we thought we had inflation under the Biden administration, strap yourself in for this ride, because it's going to get a lot worse when the tariffs are passed and he starts deporting farm workers en-masse.  

But it's our safety and defense of the nation that has me most worried.  Incompetent civilian leadership of the military is one thing, but having the country taken over by Russia from the inside is something else.  I sure hope there are enough Republican senators who don't want to be wondering what will become of them if the Russians get their hands on our military secrets and pull a coup without firing a shot because his incompetent and traitorous intelligence chief opens the door and lets them in.  And I hope the military leadership also has enough influence with enough Senators to stop the appointment of a Fox News Commentator and rapist from becoming defense secretary.  

"Trust me on this, I'm from Alabama...A land with tons of potential, fantastic natural resources, and good, hard working people, but one that is constantly undone by a government operated by self-serving, self-enriching, pandering, uncaring, ignorant and downright cruel leadership."

Pointing out that Alabama is at the bottom of the 50 states in health care, life expectancy, education, infant mortality, maternal mortality and infrastructure is an indication of exactly where the rest of the country is headed under another Trump administration.  Remember when Trump, speaking in Detroit, said that if Harris were elected, she'd turn the rest of the country into Detroit?  Better Detroit than Alabama, I guess, huh? 

Conservative Evangelicals claim that government and education are not the answer to these problems of humanity, that the Christian gospel is the answer.  Alabama has one of the highest percentages of Evangelicals among its population of any state in the nation, with the highest percentage of residents who are members of Southern Baptist churches.  What have they been doing for all of these years that the state's government, a "state being run by inept brothers-in-law who need a job," according to the author?  Why, then, are these church folks turning to an inept, incompetent, idiot like Trump to do their work for them?  

"But I fear that America is about to find out."  

After four years of a Trump presidency from 2017-2021, we should have learned our lessons.  We had two years of a Democratic controlled Congress, and that would have been the time to put some guardrails in place to keep this disaster that is rolling toward us from happening.  We knew what the Supreme Court, corrupted by bribes from billionaires, was capable of doing.  But apparently four years of grift and corruption wasn't enough to break the filibuster and pack the court.  Had we done that, this demagogue would never have been able to be nominated by the GOP.  

We can't depend on things going back to the way they were.  Rush Limbaugh and those in the media of his ilk, helped to destroy compromise in partisan government, which was the key to the survival of democracy in America.  So we've been on this road for a while.  Our ability to survive with both our sovereignty and our democracy intact now depends on a handful of Republican senators who might not be in Trump's back pocket, and who have the kind of guts that so far I've only seen in Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney among Republicans.  Honestly, I trust no Republican to do the right thing but that's one of the few choices this country has now.