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You may be familiar with the handful of countries — Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland — rated highest in terms of health, safety, quality of life, and satisfied citizens.

The US is somewhere down around 20th place. That’s because we excel in other categories: mass shootings, bankruptcies due to medical bills, rate of incarceration, and black people killed by police during traffic stops.

When I was young, I remember thinking I was lucky to have been born an American. I was grateful and proud.

But that was then. Today, the US is a flailing, bumbling embarrassment. Thanks to the right-wing loonies and the wild-eyed, fully-Nazified Republican Party, we’re in the worst shape since the Civil War.

The MAGA crowd learned from Donald Trump, the orange gasbag, that lying and cheating are acceptable options and essentially consequence-free. (According to the records of the Washington Post, Trump lied or made misleading statements 30,573 times while President.)

In this new reality, the efforts of Democrats to play by the rules becomes a waste of time. And we are screwed unless enough normal, decent, rational people start voting en masse for Democrats, and we overwhelm the nutjobs.

In the past, Republicans were, by nature, merely the most cautious and conservative of us. They always were guarded and awkwardly weird, but largely were in touch with their faculties.

Not any more. Conservatives today are fire-breathing extremists whose creepy religious overtones are getting more unsettling. The Republican Party has morphed into a terrorist organization.

These are the people who put Trump, one of the most wretched, crooked, despicable humans alive, in the White House.

Trump is owned by, and financially beholden to, Vladimir Putin. Trump caused the death of one million people by bungling the COVID pandemic. He sent white supremacist goons to storm the Capitol and attempted a literal coup to try to remain President. We all saw it on live television, remember?

Why he isn’t already in prison is a disgrace.

The other bad news lately is about the radicalized Supreme Court and the efforts of right-wing state legislatures to ban abortions. Even when medically necessary. Even when caused by rape or incest.

AND they want to ban women from crossing state lines to get the procedure. AND they want to outlaw contraception. AND they want to end gay marriage.

The bible-thumping, neo-Nazi minority of the country will make our lives miserable, but they won’t win. The rational majority won’t stand for it.

Abortions will continue. Contraception and gay people aren’t going anywhere. Those genies are out of the bottle, folks.

So, what are normal people to do?

Vote. Vote only for Democrats in every election from now on. Do NOT vote for a single Republican in any race, at any level, period, full stop.

If you vote Republican, you reject democracy and embrace fascism.

If you vote Republican, you are no friend of this country. You want to end it.

If you think I’m being alarmist, then let’s talk about the uniquely American epidemic of gun deaths and the right-wing’s depraved obsession with weapons.

When you enter the voting booth, remind yourself that Republicans believe a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced by the government to have the baby, and Democrats think the very idea is appalling, obscene, and monstrous.

It’s that simple.

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You realize, I presume, that the good old days never existed.

To be blunt, human history has been a random progression of events, mostly involving misery, suffering, cruelty, and death, intermingled with sporadic discoveries that were advantageous to our health and lifespans, plus allowed us to create more potent weapons.

And that history has carried us to a truly bad place. Humanity today is in dreadful shape, and we are dragging the planet down with us.

Earth is badly polluted and reeling from overpopulation. The polar icecaps are melting. While we sit here watching it happen, the greenhouse effect is leading us to our extinction.

Poverty and starvation are widespread. The rich and powerful control everything and everyone. Most people live under autocratic regimes.

In many ways, life for Homo sapiens (which ironically means “wise human”) has changed little since the Dark Ages.

Adding to the general unpleasantness, the Republicans in the US, all of them, have lost their minds. Their beliefs are closer to those of the Taliban or the Nazis than to American democracy.

A sad outcome for a political party founded to oppose the expansion of slavery.

Speaking of Republicans, I found this definition on Wikipedia:

Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

That describes present-day Republicans as succinctly as it does the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. Republicans see Donald Trump, one of the most deplorable human beings imaginable, as a kind of creepy father figure. Their very own Hitler. Incredibly, they put Trump in the White House and would do it again.

Moreover, after 50 years of trying, the right-wingers apparently have a Supreme Court willing to reverse Roe v. Wade. That should come as no surprise. Outlawing abortion has been at the top of the conservative agenda for decades.

The looming demise of Roe ought to shock great numbers of rational people into voting, but I doubt that it will. When the Access Hollywood tape didn’t end Trump’s political career on a dime, I learned an important lesson about my fellow citizens.

The difference between the political left and right is like day and night. Liberals, the normal people, want universal healthcare, a living wage, rational gun control, and action to save the planet. They want to protect women’s rights and voting rights. They want police to stop killing people.

Over on the Dark Side, the conservatives want to give tax cuts to billionaires, close the borders to non-whites, ban books, and put women in their place.

If, for some mysterious reason, you still wonder who the good guys are, consider this: of the 42 million jobs created in the US since 1989, 40 million — 95 percent — were created while a Democrat was President.

The Republicans, who haven’t done anything remotely positive in half a century, have managed to poison the Senate and the Supreme Court.

These are the people, for God’s sake, who stormed the Capitol when Trump lost the presidency. They literally attempted to stage a coup. Their low-life politicians are working nationwide to rig voting systems. They have nothing to offer, so, with no qualms whatsoever, they resort to lying and cheating.

This is unsustainable. When an entire political party decides to ignore the rules of governance, the country can’t survive.

The current GOP fascist cult is a minority. To defeat them, we need to end the filibuster so the actual majority can rule again, make sure the election system is protected from the cultists, and vote against every Republican on every ballot in every election, until they go extinct.

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Even though the Republicans have gone full fascist, and will lie and cheat with no reservations, we are living, miraculously, under a Democratic President again. And we are moving past the COVID pandemic, despite the bonkers efforts of the conservatives at sabotage.

Many of them, by the way, still talk about jailing or executing Anthony Fauci.

But just when I had hopes that better times are possible, Vladimir Putin, the villainous, murderous dictator, started a war.

And yet, the villain miscalculated.

Unexpectedly — to me, anyway — Ukraine is holding its own. Putin believed his forces would declare victory within days, but they couldn’t. While the Russian forces seem curiously hapless, the Ukrainian people and armed forces have shined.

Putin miscalculated so badly, in fact, that more countries than ever are united behind Ukraine, NATO, the European Union, and the US. And more are imposing sanctions on Russia.

My reaction to Putin’s War was alarm and outrage, followed by puzzlement. Why did he do it?

The world is too small today, with too many complex interconnections and alliances, to send a ground army into another country and not expect major blowback. Putin underestimated the strength of the Ukrainian forces and the resolve of Ukraine’s allies, and overestimated that of his own. But why?

I think he is becoming more aware of his own mortality. The guy is 69 years old. Time is running out to resurrect the former USSR under his glorious leadership.

It’s possible, too, that he has health issues. An illness would speed up the timetable. Or cloud his judgment.

As you would expect, he threatens nuclear destruction if his enemies go too far and force his hand. It’s a dictator thing.

Everyone hopes Putin is not insane enough to start firing off tactical nukes, but we don’t know for sure.

Everyone hopes he will find a way to declare partial victory and go home, but we see no easy way out.

In whatever manner Putin meets his end, I hope it is sudden, unpleasant, and soon.

I have been genuinely impressed by the courage and fortitude of the Ukrainian people, and especially by the example of President Zelenskyy. I haven’t been this inspired and heartened in quite some time. It’s a good feeling.

It even distracts my thoughts, albeit briefly, from this maniac.

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