Grim Forecast – Maniscalco Gallery

[ad_1]

Once upon a time, children, there was this delicate, beautiful thing called Democracy. . .

Here’s what’s going to happen, and it does not make me happy to forecast doom and gloom. The Democrats haven’t done away with the filibuster because they still hold out a quaint hope for bipartisanship, and because they can’t get a majority within their own party. They’re being blocked at every turn by the so called “moderates.” They dithered their time away in fruitless talks with that absolutely useless Joe Manchin and a result won’t get any meaningful legislation done by the midterms. They will have failed to deliver on what they promised.

So the Republicans will easily take both houses this November. The first thing they will do is abolish the filibuster and ram down their most extreme agenda items. They will very quickly transform the US, once and for all, into a theocratic oligarchy, preparing the way for the criminal. DJT, to consummate his fascist coup in 2024. And we will only have ourselves to blame. Pinning our hopes on lukewarm moderates and ignoring our progressive base will have proved the exact wrong way to go. I don’t want to say I told you so. And don’t blame the right wing cult; they’re not responsible. They have been systematically brainwashed by Fox news for decades, preparing the way for the madman prophet who has figured out just how to capitalize on America’s fears and frustrations. Unless something dramatic happens to change the trajectory, it is not looking good at all for my children’s America.

I know so many people who think I’m over reacting. They take for granted that democracy has always been there and assume it always will be. But democracy is only a very recent experiment in the context of human history. It is a delicate and fragile enterprise. And we never did get it quite right, never really achieved full equality and real equity. We came as close as any society has ever come. But we fell short. And now, I fear, we will never achieve it.

Our only hope at this point is for everyone to vote this November. Never forget these words:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863