Letters: Why question a bill that aims to protect?; How secure are our rights?
Why question a bill that aims to protect?
There was recently an opinion piece published in the CDT about “unjust outcomes” stemming from a constitutional amendment introduced by our very own State Representative, Scott Conklin — H.B 2596. I found the opinion to be surprisingly contrite, in that the author went to great and personal lengths to advance his positions about a bill that seeks to prevent those most likely to perpetuate a cycle of abuse when in a position of power, from obtaining said power. A bill that aims to protect the vulnerable being so persecuted by those in positions of authority, should give us all pause and make us question why such a bill would be necessary in the first place. Moreover, what do those who are against it have to gain from its failure?
How secure are our rights?
As a boy in America I followed World War II closely in the Buffalo Evening News. In April 1940 I read how Hitler took over Norway and how the leader of a far right Norwegian party — a man named Quisling — became the boss Nazi collaborator.
Quisling became the label for all collaborators. But I never realized how many Quislings there were in countries boasting representative democracy, people who comfortably accepted the loss of their rights for the benefits of collaboration, while others worked and died for freedom — until I read the depressing new “Resistance — The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945,” by Halik Kochanski.
Back in America, the Republican Party now asks us to entrust our voting rights to its candidate for governor, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the legislator who was the point man for the Big Lie in Pennsylvania; the man who wanted to throw out the Biden votes of 1,624 of us in Walker Township; the man who schemed to steal the election through fake electors, and who stood with insurrectionists outside the Capitol. Candidate Mastriano publicly relished appointing a secretary of state to “reform” elections.
Our rights are secure, you say. It can’t happen here. I have only to turn to my own Democratic Party to say otherwise. Though now Republican, until the historic 1960s state legislatures in the South were white Democratic. They wrote Jim Crow laws and watched lynch mobs terminate rights.
But this is 2022. Rights of Americans are safe, you say.
Ask your daughter.
Smoke and mirrors
“His” election was stolen
Despite evidence to the contrary.
An obsequious wave of fact free fidelity.
To a liar
A monstrous, egocentric, devouring beast.
He doesn’t care about you,
Or your children
Or your jobs
Or the air you breathe,
Or the streams where you fish
Or your places of solitude.
He pollutes all that is sacred.
He never gives back.
Send him money,
And he mocks you.
America’s classified documents
All belong to him.
His GOP supplicants
Defile the courageous defenders of our democracy.
Evil is the new “good” and the good are made evil.
Send in the clowns.
Among His GOP, seeking office ...
Accused sexual predators
A former football star
Whose brain can no longer process a coherent idea.
Among thunderous hordes of others
Tiny cowards
With fists in the air,
One running from a building under siege
Saving himself
And several “Supremes”
A few stolen seats
A few credibly accused sexual predators,
Just add a sprinkling of religious zealotry
All deciding the fates of women and little girls
Forced to bear the cellular product of rape and incest to full term.
“I alone can fix it,” the creature touts.
After “blowing up the administrative state.”
Health Care, Medicare, Social Security, veteran’s benefits, the justice system and the economy.
Dictatorship. For. Life.
Courtesy of the Putin Playbook.
A question lingers.
Is there no “place of grace?” Human or Divine?
November. 2022. Vote them out.
Every. Single. One