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By Ron Signore

I live a fun, yet extremely busy life. Being a parent on top of work and volunteering my time for community-based organizations can really make time fly. Before you know it, your baby is a teenager, and the miles in your car add up even quicker. Time is the luxury we have no access to altering. Travelling just comes as part of the territory.

However, with all that windshield time, or air time, it is up to us to determine how to spend it. Do we want to waste the time, since we will never get it back? Or, do we want to make the most of that time where the only activity you are partaking in is hurry up and wait. I specifically choose to try and enlighten myself. The concept of factual education may be lost on the right-wing supporters, but I refuse to be as narrow minded. To be an open minded individual that can freely think and form their own opinions based on facts includes never staying stagnant in a world that is always evolving. By the reality of the word, that is a liberal.

Time can be filled with the seemingly normal actions of viewing social media, even absorbing current events and their slants on certain views, but lately, my favorite is in the non-fiction aisle of documented history. Why get sucked down the wormhole of idiots deflecting or projecting their ignorance over supporting a convicted felon, as if that is the worst thing we can say about Agent Orange Turd?

I spent a weekend in Cincinnati for a soccer tournament, which allowed for about 8 hours in the car to and from. During that time, I took a recommendation that I slightly hesitated with, and started listening to the Rachel Maddow book, ‘Prequel.’ I was hesitant because while I do love her analysis and agree with quite a bit of her views that I believe she portrays by being intelligent, its because I feared a potential interpretation of whatever the story told was going to be. To be clear, the book is already a reality of left versus right in many ways and from the view of the left, presumably.

We have all observed this era that involves Diaper Donny in the political realm. We have all observed his ignorance, selfishness, and criminal activity. Take that last one however you want. He is a crook, always has been, he is just now seeing some recognized accountability at the very least. But, the scary part of this era is the rise of all the ignorance and hate we observe daily, some by hypocrisy, some by a guise of freedom in a notion to cleanse America and take it back to be a white utopia. The constant battles over fact versus opinion, where mis/disinformation is continuing to be a regular war in our world, have given a boost of energy to the ignorant racists and xenophobes.

Maddow points out the obvious. We have seen this movie before. This is not uniquely tied to Bunker Boy’s era of presence politically. In fact, we saw this to a degree in the early 20th century as antisemitism plagued our country. While there has always been hate from ignorant paranoia, where the dots connect is not the what, but the how. I have constantly claimed that the what of all these situations we see consistently is the core for reality, and the why in many cases from an opinion perspective does not really matter. Basically, here are the cards we were dealt, we have to play this hand. However, the how becomes very important in the parallels between what was and what is as we watch history repeat itself.

With Hitler’s rise to power pre-WWII, we have all seen the correlations of discrediting the media and controlling messages ad nauseam with a gusto of confidence to hope that if someone hears something enough, they will believe it. Now, in Nazi Germany, this message conceptually was to dehumanize and blame the Jewish population for all the troubles Germany had post-WWI. While Cheeto Boy and his minions have done much of this to a degree, I do not foresee genocide as the result. Mass deportation, the discredit of the media and controlling propaganda similar to a dictator, yes.

Agent Orange isn’t capable of doing this himself. In fact, phase one has been complete. Phase one being a nationalist drive for loyalty while placing blame on others. In this case, the corrupt democrats and crooked legal system. Phase two is ongoing, but incredibly dangerous for all. Phase two is aligning loyalty with those in positions of power, either by wealth or governance.

Cheeto’s clown car is filled with people like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, James Comey, Ted Cruz, and Lauren Boebert to name a few. Like the early 20th century, it was the loyalists in power that allowed for fascists antisemitism to spread in our country. Just enough people to help influence what policies get passed or halted to a final dying breath. He uses his minions to deflect from the realities of the world, including Chump’s legal issues, and projects them on others. Haven’t we projected on Hunter Biden enough? Haven’t we wasted enough time on an impeachment investigation that has gone nowhere? The reality is pushing America to do well now only hurts Agent Orange and his chances in November. He relies on them to flame the messages he wants people to comprehend to favor him and demean the reality of our democratic nation.

Yet, his nationalist followers get all amped up and double down on things he says as gospel. Dementia Donny made all sorts of promises in his campaign leading to the 2016 presidency. Drain the swamp…nope, all he did was grift his loyalists positions they were not qualified for. That is until they stopped being loyal. Build a wall and have Mexico pay for it was a huge platform for him, and frankly the border is the only platform for him now. Construction started on the wall, the flood gates opened and undocumented immigrants have come over in record droves since. We are still waiting on a check from Mexico. Decrease the national debt… nope, increased at record amounts. If you can’t see where I am going here, it is a problem. Bunker Boy is the definition of a politician we stereotyped as the crook back in the day. The man that will say anything, pandering to what his supporters want to hear, then, fail at keeping pandered promises.

We could have put a band-aid on the border scenario a bit. Chump loyalists killed it. While corporate greed is a huge factor in rising prices, Chump’s tariff war with China, ridiculous actions with agriculture policies, and his actions with OPEC are the genesis of supply chain rising costs. His mishandling of the pandemic was the fly on top of the turd (cannot say cherry on top of the sundae since this is not a positive scenario). The actions that resulted in putting trillions of dollars into circulation sparked inflation and put it on the rise.

What his minions are ignoring are the efforts and actions President Biden has done to help soften that blow. Sadly, it could have been a lot worse, and is for many nations around the world. We can talk about failures at the border that have continued into the Biden Administration, because the reality is, until that bipartisan border bill was killed by Diaper Donny’s minions, there hadn’t been much progress on reducing the flow of undocumented persons into this country. No excuses, it is the reality. Eliminating immigration isn’t the answer either. We should look closer at an economic impact the affect certain border control policies will have.

The defense President Biden has, and should take, is his ability to prioritize an economic based focus to try and limit the hardship the previous administration set us up for. He was left with a mess both policy focused and socially focused. People refuse to see that because they sheepishly follow their shepherd, and swallow anything he feeds them. Take that how you will.

The bottom line is we have continued to let history repeat itself. We saw the ‘Prequel’ earlier in the 20th century. We allowed for the spread of hate then, and we are allowing it now.

However, Maddow leaves me conceptually with a glimmer of hope. Despite this rise of fascist racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, whatever, we have won this battle before. We have helped others win this battle. We have the strength of overcoming falsehoods and gain intelligence to what we don’t know causing fear. Never perfect, and sometimes we take a step back to take two forwards, but we know how to win. It starts with our power and obligation to vote in November and prevent the continued rise of fascist hate led by an authoritarian dictator.

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