Post-Election Choices

 Whatever will be with the republican party?  It's not going to disappear, as many of us had hoped.  Four years of cheering racism, fake news, fake ideas and general misinformation to build support for their hatred of the more than half of the country who don't support them has actually rewarded them with new supporters.  The reward appears to have been a loss if one only looks at the outcome of the popular vote.  But when one considers that the loss wasn't large enough to prove that the GOP was wrong to have done what they did, one realizes that the republicans have been incredibly successful in building an alternative narrative to describe the last 30 years.  The decision-makers in corporate America have effectively sold trump to the USA in order to cure the problems that they created in off-shoring thousands upon thousands of good jobs.  They've been rewarded with an enormous tax break that is bankrupting our country.  We have to learn to see past the smoke because the republicans will double-down on the smokescreen in 2024.  How do I know?  Because that's all they've done for the last 5 years.

The claims to pro-life give the republicans an effective base that doesn't believe it's significant to judge the GOP based on their "separate and torture" policy for small children on the border.  To these pro-life voters, anything is justifiable for those who claim to protect the un-born babies.

The GOP "campaign-by-shouting" strategy was always designed to bring people on the bandwagon through the addictive drug of hatred.  The republicans did a remarkable job of making people believe hatred was cool and that anyone who doesn't hate is a communist or a socialist.  Hatred isn't going to solve our problems.  We, as human beings are not each others' problems.  Be happy!

The Biden administration by themselves can't steer us away from the fraternity of hatred that the republicans have brought to a boil.  It's a huge risk for the USA to continue behaving in this fashion.  There is a better way of viewing things that actually takes history into account and doesn't seek to reimagine the past for the purpose of feeling better about supporting hatred.  We're all going to have to step up and do more to hug the haters.

When the pandemic is over, we'll be forced to address an old problem that has been displaced out of our daily conscience by the virus.  We'll be back to daily mass shootings again.  No doubt, the republicans will praise our gun laws after each shooting, as they always have.  We can't continue allowing mentally challenged people to have easy access to guns and all the bullets that they can dream of.

If shooting is your hobby, please consider another.  You could volunteer your time to tutor children, help out at a pet shelter or spend time with the elderly at a nursing home.  If you don't want to volunteer, then resolve to read more books or spend more time outside.  There is an infinite number of better ways to spend your time.  Whatever will be with the USA is up to all of us as citizens, as immigrants and as neighbors.  Helping someone else doesn't make you a communist or a socialist.  It makes life better, for all of us.