What's left to say about 2024?

I can't help but say it...but here it is: 2024 was a year where, here in the United States, hate and bigotry won out at the polls.

And the price of eggs was used as a cover.

We, as a group, put a convicted felon back in the White House...a man who called for an insurrection when he didn't win the 2020 election...a man who, like his runningmate, ran with the nonetheless-debunked belief that immigrants in Springfield, OH, were eating their neighbors' dogs and cats...a man who won't take responsibility for his actions.

77 million voters showed they'd rather stick a twice-impeached man back in the Oval Office than put a woman of any color in there.

Yes...I admit that the Democrats would've been better off running a brokered convention at Chicago's United Center last August and finding Joe Biden's successor at the confab. (The leaders of America's legacy media probably would've trotted out the old "Dems in Disarray" headline.) And things would've been better if Merrick Garland and his people would've acted sooner (like on 1-20-2021) to make sure an insurrectionist never again held the nuclear codes...even if Garland would've been accused of doing this for political motivation.

I can't help but think the rest of the world looks at us Americans in light of last year's election and comes away feeling that our laws are toothless.

I remember what happened to Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro and how that country's government dealt with him.

Power-abusing Bolsonaro lost his presidential reelection bid in 2022...and went on to cast unfounded doubts about Brazil's electronic voting system. So...in June 2023, that country's top electoral court ruled him ineligible to run for any political office until 2030.

What if America's government officials had mustered the courage to do the same to a former reality-TV host?

Instead, starting on 1-20-2025, we'll be taking a ride many of us just might regret...the kind of ride we've been on before.

We'll see what happens.

Overlooking and letting go

When I'm not writing blogs or getting involved in music, I work in a plastics factory here in Omaha. 

This company recently hired a new director of human resources after firing her much-appreciated predecessor, a long-time company executive.

This past Wednesday, a question the firm's new HR chief asked me got under my skin...big time.

At 4:55 PM that afternoon, I was trying to leave the break room at the plant I work at in order to resume production. A fellow machine operator of mine (a middle-aged woman) was talking with the new head of HR about trying to recover items stolen the previous day from the machine operator while she herself was in the women's restroom at the same plant. 

The operator was attempting to find the culprit.

As I was trying to get back to the machine I was assigned to run, our company's new exec asked me: "Did you do it?" 

I felt stunned.

Nevertheless, I answered: "No, I didn't! I was raised better than that." 

WHAT THE HELL MADE THIS DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES THINK I'D GO INTO A WOMEN'S RESTROOM AT ALL...LET ALONE TO STEAL FROM ANYONE IN IT? 

When I returned to the break room that night to eat dinner, I told another machine operator about the incident...and this coworker asked me to "let it go."

I WON'T!!

I'm still stunned by this question.

In fact, three days ago, I regained enough composure to write down what had happened in the break room and submit the report to the supervisor's office...then got a copy made for personal safekeeping (and to provide documented proof that this HR honcho asked me this inane question). 

By the way, I learned that this isn't the first time said executive popped off like this to a rank-and-file employee.

Every late summer or early fall, the firm holds a picnic, and all the executives within the company get involved in it. (And that means the head of human resources will be there...to, among other things, help conduct an employee raffle.)

This year, I'm not going to show up.

And I'm going to continue to boycott the company picnic as long as this new HR leader is part of the firm I'm still with. 

You know, all of this overlooking and letting go has, in recent decades, led America to the point where- let's not kid ourselves- a dictator is in the White House (and his fellow Republicans, especially the ones on Capitol Hill, are fighting tooth and nail to help him convert America from the constitutional republic it was founded to be into a police state). 

During 2016, 231.6 million of America's 323.1 million people were eligible to cast ballots. 

62.9 million people voted to turn these United States into a fascist nation. (I mean, let's face it. They're getting what they've been on their knees begging for.)

They sold out their country...and, in the process, trashed the Allies' 1939-45 efforts to keep full-fledged fascism from spreading beyond Germany, Italy, and Japan (let alone hit America's shores in a complete and total way). 

In addition, according to the United States Election Project, 108.6 million citizens stayed away from the polls on 11-8-2016...but 21.0 million of them were forced to do so on account of voter-suppression laws enacted in state after state after state after Barack Obama picked up his second term of office (and because the Supreme Court ruled against the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013). 

So...87.6 million citizens are, like it or not, just as complicit as the aforementioned 62.9 million folks in saying "yes" to the nightmare we entered into on 1-20-2017.

That's right...the self-inflicted nightmare. 

After all, when you don't vote, you give the other side the choice. That's all there is to it. 

Do you enjoy GOP efforts to take away more and more of your rights- especially the right to speak out against injustice? Are you okay with the Republicans' drive to capitalize on Russia's heavy hand in the 2016 US election? [By the way, do you remember when US Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) talked about how much they admired Russia's Vladimir Putin? This was just four years ago!] 

You cool with families being torn apart at the border...

with the children thrown into cages? 

Well, if you don't like this Great American Nightmare, all you've got to do is make sure you get out to your neighborhood polling place on 11-6-2018. 

Vote to take Congressional control away from the Republicans. Today's Elephants keep proving that they don't give a crap about America.

They just care about power.

Come on now...you can't really expect a Graham (or a Mitch McConnell or a Paul Ryan or a Steve Scalise) to call Donald Trump out when they have the same basic core beliefs Trump has.

And you can't expect the heads of this country's biggest media companies to call DJT and his fellow Republicans out on the carpet when Big Media helped bring all of this garbage about. 

It's up to us rank-and-file citizens to save this country.

We won't do it by overlooking and letting go.