Occupy America GOP Style

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By Carol Morgan

Late last night, when it became apparent that a complete Republican occupation was taking place, I felt like the weeping Frenchman in George Mejat’s iconic photo; he watched through tears as German troops and tanks filed in to occupy Paris.

I’m not sure that voters realize what they just did, but in the months ahead, they will.

This election cost $3.67 billion, the most expensive midterms in history and most of that sum was used as legislative insurance for megadonors to protect their interests. Did all those television ads motivate voters to go to the polls? Certainly not, but the really big winner in this election was corporate television.

The 30% that turned out in Lubbock County is nothing to brag about and it makes me angry at those groups of newly-registered voters and other groups who aided and abetted last night’s defeat.

Every single year, we depend on them and year after year after year, they disappoint. They dishonor the noble concept of civic engagement, responsibility and commitment, as well as themselves.

Some non-voters even took to social media to brag about their non-participation with #whyvotemidterms. If you're one of those non-voting morons, you helped dig the hole to bury Democracy, especially in Texas.

Not voting as a form of protest is yokel-driven-stupidity in its purest form. NO ONE notices that you failed to vote and isn't that the crux of civil disobedience? To draw attention to a problem?

Look, kids, there is no such thing as a perfect candidate. There were some Democrats that I had to hold my nose as I voted for them, but when I considered the alternative, I knew it was a better choice. It’s true that sometimes you’re not voting "for" someone, as much as you are voting "against" the other.

All this B-movie political theater is too much for me, it’s evolved into corny verbal slap-stick that resembles professional wrestling. Unfortunately, we get the government we deserve. If you have any doubt about that, visit the KCBD Facebook page. It’s the dirty excrement-smeared bathroom wall for fools’ names and fools’ faces in public places.

Default voting will continue until we get money out of politics, excommunicate lobbyists from DC and Austin, and establish term limits. Unfortunately, none of this will be accomplished inside the Pink Dome or in the hallowed halls of the Capitol, but by populists and activists who operate outside of the 1% and the rubes who voted for them.

As for the next two years? Just you wait…a Dan Patrick Texas House will excoriate education further and allow more religious charter schools to siphon tax-payer dollars from public education. The good Christian Conservatives in Austin will enact more laws to protect the oil and gas industry and attempt an equal opportunity slavery redux, minus the black faces. The oil and gas attorneys, who masquerade as legislators, will pass more laws to negate local ones on water and fracking despite all their mantra-vows to local control.

Of course, they will use Tea Party rhetoric to sweeten and lessen the horrors: burdensome legislation, liberty, freedom, family values, hard-working men and women, etc.

You’d be wise to mark your calendar for Government Shutdown 2.0 very soon. This time it will be about ransoming the budget to obstruct immigration reform. Domestic terrorists like the uber-ambitious Ted Cruz learned that this strategy works. And just wait until the GOP cuts and privatizes Social Security and Medicare. We’ll be paying again for $50 million in hearings, not about the carefully orchestrated Benghazi lies, this time it will be about censures and impeachment.

The GOP is pretty rusty at governing. There’s a question mark as to whether they can legislate anything at all without some obstructionism or the word “no”.

I predict our country, especially Texas, is on a swift suicide course with deadly outcomes. You’d better gird up your loins, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

There will be plenty of buyer’s remorse going around, but too bad for you. There’s no return, exchange or refund policy for the poor and uninformed choices you made yesterday; no reset button or recall.

And I’m going to take a great deal of pleasure in saying, “I told you so.”

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Carol Morgan is a career/college counselor, writer, speaker, former Democratic candidate for the Texas House and the award-winning author of Of Tapestry, Time and Tears, a historical fiction about the 1947 Partition of India. Email Carol at [e-mail] , follow her on Twitter and on Facebook or visit her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org

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