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Bitching Solves Nothing

Recently overheard conversation:

“I can’t stand Trump and can’t believe he is our President!”

“Did you vote?”shut-up

“What?”

“Did you vote?”

“Well, no, but–“

“Goodbye.”

When bad things happen to good people, sometimes it’s because of blind luck or things way beyond our control. But when bad politicians get elected or pass laws we don’t like, this isn’t because of luck. It’s because we let them get away with it.

You have to get involved if you want to complain about things. You have to make the difference. This is true not only in politics, but in life. If you bitch about how you have a terrible job and no one loves you and the world is screwing you over and you do absolutely nothing to change that, then whose fault is it?

Have you ever read history and thought “If I were alive during the civil rights movement, I would have been marching next to Martin Luther King, Jr.”? Have you ever thought “If only those people had stood up to Hitler earlier, World War II wouldn’t have happened”?

Well, history hasn’t stopped. Now’s your chance to prove you weren’t just spouting off at the mouth. Don’t just bitch and complain — do something!

In many states, there are primary elections coming up. Get out and vote. Even in these small elections (and in fact, moreso), your vote really counts. Even if you don’t know anything about the candidates, go out and vote against the Republicans. Don’t think “Oh, it’s just the County Dog Catcher, who cares what party he’s in?” If he’s a Republican, that means it’s very likely he supports what our President is doing or he wouldn’t be a Republican. And even if he doesn’t, every Republican you elect helps the party grow, raise money, and push its agenda.

Posting memes on Facebook to your friends who probably already agree with your political views accomplishes nothing except making you feel good.

Do something! Participate in a march! Write your congressman! Run for office! Donate to groups that are fighting Trump and his agenda! (May I recommend my favorites:  Planned Parenthood, The American Civil Liberties Union, and American Atheists.)

And don’t ever let me hear you complain if that’s all you’re doing.

 

 

 

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Editorial cartoon: Still fighting the war

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Pat Bagley

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Christians are “broken people” who “cause poverty”

A Democratic Mayor of a prominent city recently said that Christians are “broken people” who are not “productive members of society.” She said that they were the “deepest systemic causes of generational poverty.”

This kind of bigotry is unacceptable, of course. We are a land that values our beliefs, and in fact, guarantee the right to believe or not believe in the very first Amendment. To degrade an entire group of people simply because of their beliefs is about as unAmerican as you can get. So you can imagine how people who strongly believe in the 1st Amendment and the values of our country are protesting this woman.

Oh.  Wait.  My mistake.

She didn’t say that about Christians. She said it about atheists.

Well, that’s completely different, isn’t it? Even though some estimates place non-believers in America somewhere in the 30% range (much larger than Jews or Muslims or Mormons or any non-Christian religion), it’s still perfectly acceptable to degrade, insult, and demean non-believers in a way that would ruin the career of any politician saying that about a religious group.

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Editorial cartoon: This Ain’t no Party

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Tom Tomorrow

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More Republican hypocrisy

According to a new survey, Democrats did not support airstrikes in Syria when Obama was President or when Trump was President, by almost the exact same percentage. Republicans, on the other hand, were hugely against them when Obama was President and hugely in favor of them when Trump was President.

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Is there any other conclusion to draw other than Democrats actually stand for something and Republicans are flaming hypocrites?

And there  are plenty other examples. When they block a Supreme Court nominee, it’s fine — when we try, we’re subverting the Constitution; They like “Romneycare” when they propose it — they hate it when we propose it; When Obama takes golf vacations it’s terrible — when Trump takes them it’s no big deal; When Hillary uses a private server, they shout “lock her up” — when Trump does, it hardly makes the news….

I could go on and on.

 

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Editorial cartoon: How to save $38 Billion

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David Horsey

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School Shootings: The new normal

Ho hum. So what’s in the news today?  Another school shooting? A child killed? Three dead?

Meh.

Nobody cares about that any more, don’t you know? We hardly even notice these things any more. Well, unless the killing is committed by a Muslim — then it gets attention.

This is the new normal, where crazy people can get guns easily and instead of stopping the problem at its core like every other modern nation has done, we just chalk it up to the cost of living in America. After all, what’s more important, the livgun-deaths-us-other-countries-chartes of children or the right to own deadly weapons?

Seems that question has been answered.

I used to post about these every time they happened, and I referred to it as the “Gun Control Shuffle”:

1. Have a mass shooting.

2. Bury the dead and cry.

3. Politicians talk about the need for gun control so this never happens again.

4. Gun manufacturers, through their lobby group the NRA, warns that the government is out to take everyone’s guns.

5. Gun lovers buy lots of guns because they believe the NRA and the right-wing media.

6. Gun manufacturers’ income skyrockets.

7. Gun manufacturers use this money to bribe politicians through their lobby group, the NRA.

8. Despite overwhelming public support, no gun control passes.

9. Another mass shooting occurs.

Repeat every few months.

I got tired of posting it, because instead of repeating every few months, it got to be every few weeks.

But apparently that’s the world we want to live in now.

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Editorial cartoon: Thieves

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Clay Bennett

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Why the fight against Gorsuch is necessary

“Oh noes!” scream some Democrats. “You can’t threaten a filibuster against Gorsuch! They might use the nuclear option to get rid of that rule, and then they can do anything they want. Save the fight for later.”

I could not disagree more. Putting aside the argument that Gorsuch would be a terrible justice who deserves to be voted down, let’s just talk political strategy.elephant donkey

Here’s the thing — “When they go low, we go high” doesn’t seem to be working. We’re like the kid who refuses to fight back who is constantly being beaten up by the bully. Well, I’m tired of being beaten up. We need to fight the bullies and teach them that they can’t keep getting their way just because they’re willing to fight and we’re not.

Idealism doesn’t do you a lot of good when you’re fighting bad guys. “Please Mr. Hitler, don’t hurt us” didn’t get us anywhere.

The more the Democrats fight now and make Trump look like a big loser, the more they’ll make it clear that they’re not going to just give in and let him do everything he wants. They’re going to block every damn thing he tries to do.

Oh, Republicans don’t like that? Let’s see — where did that plan first originate? Oh, right, with the Republicans blocking every thing Obama tried to do, including bills that the Republicans themselves originally proposed that they later had to block simply because Obama agreed with them. I am not making this up.

Here’s how we’re going to do it differently, though: We Democrats won’t lie. We won’t say one thing while doing the other. That’s how we “go high” — not by refusing to fight, but by refusing to fight unfairly.

You don’t give in to evil. You don’t allow the minority to trample the rights of the majority. (And, let’s be clear, Trump and his people were not and still are not supported by the majority of Americans.)

As my friend Hoyce pointed out, the way some Democrats argue about picking your battles would be as if Churchill had said during WWII, “We won’t fight them on the beachhead, we can’t win that. And we’ll probably let them take about half the streets, we have to pick our battles. But once we find a spot where we can win we’ll totally fight them all out.”

Somehow, I don’t think a quote like that would have made it through history.

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Editorial cartoon: Regulations Schmegulations

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Ruben Bolling