If you think the GOP’s Congress of Clowns represents the fringiest, freakiest pack of politicos that MAGA-world can hurl at us — you haven’t been to Texas.
It’s widely known, of course, that Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Greg Abbott and most other top Republican officials here are obsequious Trump acolytes. Thus, Texas is infamously racing against Florida to be declared the stupidest, meanest, most repressive state government in America, constantly making demonic attacks on women’s freedom, immigrants, voting rights, public schools, poor people and so on. But I’m confident Texas will win this race to the bottom for one big reason: GOP crazy runs extraordinarily deep here.
We have a county-level layer of ultra-MAGA cultists constantly pressing the state’s far-right officials to march all the way to the furthest edge of extremism — then leap into absurdity. Therefore, the party officially supports abolishment of labor unions, elimination of the minimum wage, privatization of Social Security, legalization of machine guns and ... well, you get the drift. Now, though, local mad-dog Trumpistas are pushing their party straight into the abyss of autocracy by declaring war on H-E-B.
What’s that? H-E-B is a Texas chain of supermarkets beloved in communities throughout the state. “Beloved” because the stores fully embrace the rich diversity of all people in our state, has affordable prices, values employees and supports community needs.
Nonetheless, county Republican zealots screech that H-E-B violates their party ideology by accepting food stamps, opposing privatization of schools, and (horrors!) sponsoring some LBGTQ pride events. So, they’re demanding official condemnation of the grocery chain for — get this — “advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform.”
Yes, violating the party platform is to be criminalized. It’s the reincarnation of Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”: Be MAGA ... or else.
Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King once opposed a bill because, he said, he feared it would “open a whole box of Pandoras.”
An odd rhetorical twist, but it would be helpful if today’s ego-bloated, high-tech billionaires and corporate profiteers had a bit of self-restraint, rather than thinking their money equals genius. For example, such doofuses are presently pushing convoluted schemes to “solve” our globe’s technology-caused climate crisis with — what else? — technology.
Their latest box of Pandoras includes a grandiose plan to “geoengineer” carbon dioxide, the destructive gas spewed into our air by the production and use of fossil fuels. The geniuses say they have the techno-knowhow to suck-up that bad gas and pump it a mile deep into the Earth. See, problem gone! All they need, they say, is for taxpayers to put up trillions of dollars.
Who’s behind this hustle? Oil giants. Yes, the same prevaricating snake oil salesmen who cause most of the suffocating CO2 pollution that’s rapidly cooking our planet! Such petro-peddlers as Occidental Petroleum are now trying to rebrand themselves as “carbon management” experts, asking us to trust them to reengineer our atmosphere. But they’re frauds; their magical “Vacuum Cleaner in the Sky” won’t remove even 1% of the new carbon emissions released every year.
Worse, Occidental says it intends to keep much of the CO2 it vacuums up, using the gas to force more oil out of the ground — thus creating more global warming! As Occidental’s CEO gleefully puts it, geoengineering “gives our industry a license to continue to operate for ... 60, 70, 80 years.”
Razzle-dazzle technology is not a climate solution. It’s a business-as-usual lie told by profiteers desperate to keep burning fossil fuels — and our globe.
“Somebody better investigate soon.” nnThat’s a lyric in Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town,” a 1962 song deploring the relentless murdering of Black people and civil rights activists in the Deep South. The line mocks the refusal of racist officials to punish the White murderers, instead cynically covering up atrocities by promising do-nothing “investigations.”
Six decades later, the depraved ethic of “Oxford Town” is allowing Israel’s indiscriminate carpet-bombing of Gaza, wreaking horror at a genocidal pace on the Palestinian people. So far, some 33,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, with another 75,000 horribly injured — and two-thirds of these victims are children and women. Hundreds of thousands more face imminent starvation because their homes, cities and entire economy have been blown to smithereens. Adding to the depravity, Israel’s fanatical ruler, Benjamin Netanyahu, restricts humanitarian aid from reaching the Palestinian people.
Yet our government is Netanyahu’s biggest international apologist and enabler! Oh, for sure our officials condemn each of his atrocities, loudly demanding “a full investigation.” But even when investigations happen, they produce no punishment ... and no change in our shameful open-ended policy of annually supplying the billions of US dollars and mega-weapons he’s now using to exterminate the innocent men, women and children of Gaza. Thus, the horrendous 2,000-pound bombs he’s dropping on Palestinians bear our US flag.
President Joe Biden said he’s heartbroken by the relentless killing of innocent Palestinians, calling it “unacceptable.” Then he accepted it! Even as he expressed anguish, Biden authorized a shipment of another $18 billion-worth of US bombs and jets to Netanyahu.
Washington keeps sending killer weapons — then, when they’re fired at innocents, we piously demand useless investigations and request (pretty please) that Netanyahu “bomb responsibly.” Gosh, why isn’t that working?
Before there was a USA — before our Constitution was adopted, and even before our 1776 Declaration of Independence — one of America’s best democratic institutions was already delivering for the people: The Post Office.
But it’s important to realize that, for 250 years, this invaluable public service has delivered more than mail. It was — and is — a core element of our national unity. Its network of local employees goes door-to-door, coast-to-coast, six days a week in every ZIP code, physically linking America’s widely dispersed, wildly diverse people into one country. It is a universally popular and essential government service that works!
Yet — as we’ve seen with such other valued public assets as our schools and parks — no flower is so beneficial to the common good that selfish corporate opportunists won’t try to pluck it for their private gain. So for years, corporate profiteers and laissez-faire ideologues have been plucking apart the budget, staff, branches and historic mission of the post office.
Their scheme is to shrivel service, foment public dissatisfaction with the agency, demand evermore cuts in staff and branches — then push for a corporate takeover and downsizing of this universal, nationwide delivery network. It’s not just a piece of government they’re trying to eliminate; it’s the core idea of America itself, namely our people’s can-do democratic spirit and commitment to the common good.
Rather than meekly accepting this corporate retreat from our egalitarian ideals, let’s reassert our rebellious spirit. For starters, we can help the feisty American Postal Workers Union push a “People’s Postal Agenda.” It outlines ways to reinvent and expand the public services that this grassroots network of employees and local branches is uniquely able to provide. For info and action go to apwu.org.
Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor, former Texas agriculture commissioner, radio commentator and populist sparkplug, a best-selling author and winner of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Write him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2024
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