Buckle your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy road to Election Day and beyond for the U.S.
That’s the United States, for those who don’t remember what the initials stand for. A group of various territories within the country that are “united” because we believe in democracy as stated in the Constitution, amendments to the Constitution, The Bill of Rights and general laws.
The very first amendment to the Constitution is all about freedom of the press. What that means, aside from Congress not making laws abridging speech, is that the government can’t stop the media from printing or broadcasting opinions it doesn’t like.
So what do you do when the sitting POTUS bans three major press outlets from the White House whose coverage he doesn’t like because they criticize him?
Well, if you’re the press corps you unite around those banned unfairly/illegally and don’t cover him.
And if you’re the publications and networks he banned you sue to get your press passes back so you can cover him along with all the other media he finds acceptable.
This all happened this week when CNN, MSNOW and Politico had their White House press passes revoked.
Good news for free speech supporters, which should be everyone in the country. They won in court.
Bad news is after letting them back in for a day, the White House banned CNN from the WH media pool again and blocked its access to Air Force One.
This is going to go on for awhile.
Sort of like a grade school fight where one big kid keeps trying to torture those less big and powerful behind the back of the teacher.
Well, you can beat them up, take away their lunch money, call them names and criticize everything they do (Note: FAKE NEWS!) but that doesn’t mean the kids are not going to show up in school every day.
It also doesn’t mean anything you do or say is justified under the law.
The teacher, nee the courts, are going to continue to take you to task and remind you of the rules and the kids are going to keep showing up.
You can appeal but years of precedent and written rules of the school aren’t likely to allow you to change anything.
Meaning you won’t get your way.
You can yell and scream and keep insisting you can do whatever you want forever and a day but it won’t alter those facts of life at all and you’ll look like a childish idiot.
That is unless you decide you to burn the entire school down and get a few people in high places to torch the entire school system, and education, along with it.
This is where democracy is in the U.S., metaphorically speaking, in case you wondered.
Hanging on with a lot of support from the general public. Hoping that a metaphorical handful of those in power that clearly represent a minority of the country, don’t throw any more fire at the 250 year-old American experiment in an attempt to extinguish it and it’s traditions, under the direction of its sitting, and temporary as mandated by law, leader.
This week the current White House issued a commercial supporting the actions of our current and temporary POTUS (Note: With his face and images are all over it) that taxpayer dollars paid for.
This is not only precedent-breaking, but likely illegal.
In said commercial, which you can access here since I can’t bear to print it, we are told definitively by this POTUS that America “will never be a communist country” and then harangued by words shooting out onto the screen listing his supposed achievements.
And this is all done unironically to the tune of Love Me, an r&b song by JMSN.
Meanwhile, in real life, our sitting POTUS literally had workers on their knees rolling out a large red carpet, which he then stood on, to greet the most powerful communist leader in the world, China’s Xi Jinping.
This guy is an authoritarian governing 1.4 billion people with an iron fist and absolutely ZERO freedom of the press.
And in the course of a few days there were dinners, presents exchanged, one-sided purple prose compliments to the man from our sitting POTUS.
As well as a bunch of insults about our former POTUS by the sitting POTUS to the worldwide leader of the biggest and most powerful Communist Party country on the planet, which we will never be.
And who says American is not a land of opportunity?
There is very little editorial in anything I just wrote. You can look it all up on the google, or ask your favorite A.I. and check the facts with them.. it…I mean….
You will need them, and a lot of other facts, come Election Day.
It is especially important in order to not be scammed by shameless opportunists who want to convince you that ongoing attempts to tear down a pillar of democracy like freedom of the press is a move against communism, rather than three giant steps towards it.
As for Election Day:
If there is an overwhelming response to preserve democracy, a democracy will not be torn down.
Six months ago an election in Hungary proved that by ending a 16-year rule of a political party dancing around and well into authoritarian rule.
But only because a record 80% of the electorate turned out to vote.
We can do the same if we choose to preserve our democracy and truly stop a communist-style rule in our real lives.
THEY are unable to throw out and/or disenfranchise 80% of our vote.
At least for now.
