Held Hostage by the Right: Rise Up You Mighty Majority!

These people are not just stupid, insensitive or misguided; they are dangerous to all living things.

You gotta’ give them their props. The Right has been diligently and systematically working on their draconian strategy for over 30 years. Setbacks occur but it presses on. Occasionally, it will boldly announce its moves as if it knows its opponents are powerless to response with a serious and sustained fight-back. It’s like a cat knocking a mouse around with no plan for a quick kill but delighting in ensuring the mouse’s slow and deliberate death.

Ever since the GOP and their foaming-at-the-mouth Tea Party pals swept state legislatures and the Congress in midterm elections, they’ve been in lockstep on voter suppression, jobs annihilation, abortion restrictions, health care crush and the biggy – making Obama a one-term prez.

For the 33rd time, the GOP-controlled the House of Representatives repealed the Affordable (Health) Care Act. Since it was first passed in 2010, Republicans have wasted our tax dollars 33 times, knowing the Democratically-controlled Senate would beat it back. They’re poised to repeal it another 33 times.

According to a CBS News report, these repeal charades have costs taxpayers nearly $50 million dollars. Thinkprogress.org took the debacle a step further by costing out what could have been done with that kind of money. It could have provided “subsidies for about 4,500 families of four in the exchanges, or one year of food stamps for 31,131 people.”

Since the High Court’s ruling, some Republican governors have shouted to the rooftops that they will not implement the ACA. The sad and sick part of this is that it’s coming from the governors with the poorest and least healthy citizens such as Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Florida, etc.

The conservatives in this country are anything but conservative, except when it comes to visionary thinking and humane policies. They love to talk about the beloved U.S. Constitution until they want to disregard it as they have effectively done with expansive abortion restrictions, making it hard to tell that Roe v. Wade is supposed to be the law of the land. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to open the floodgates of unfettered and undisclosed cash into campaign elections was a-ok. But when that same Court upheld the ACA, they were accused of everything from being anti-American to being an activist court. Chief Justice John Roberts was publicly vilified.

Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) testified during the repeal hearings that a person with a brain tumor should not be covered by the ACA. Foster Friess, a billionaire investor and supporter of Rick Santorum’s super PAC, said that Bayer aspirin was effective for birth control; gals can just “put it between their knees.” Former GOP presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, said that poor children had no work ethic and needed to become janitors to avoid being “future pimps and prostitutes.” Indiana Republican Rep. Bob Morris said the Girl Scouts are “bent on Communism, lesbianism and destroying America.” And who could forget the infamous words of Rush Limbaugh who called Georgetown student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” for expressing her views on reproductive rights.

These people are not just stupid, insensitive or misguided; they are dangerous to all living things.

The Right has amped up its racist, sexist, homophobic and Islamophobic rants and transformed them into policy and legislation. Congressmen Emanuel Cleaver was spat upon by an angry white Tea Party protestor as he ascended the steps to the Capitol. Narrow definitions of marriage have been imposed on us. A record number of laws have been passed to curtail access to affordable and safe abortions, abortion doctors have been threatened or killed and abortion clinics have been bombed and de-funded. And can we say Sharia Law?

It’s very clear to me and I hope to most fair-minded people that these people are not just stupid, insensitive or misguided; they are dangerous to all living things. They are in positions of power that influence or that directly impact the lives of everyday people. The 99% aka the Mighty Majority must escalate our efforts to educate, agitate and organize our base. This is not just a numbers game; this is a war between democracy and plutocracy, a struggle between righteousness and savagery. The Mighty Majority must re-affirm our collective strength, wisdom and power. We must win.