Biden Insults Neanderthals
President Joe Biden irately condemned the leaders of Texas and Mississippi for their “Neanderthal thinking” after Governors Greg Abbott and Tate Reeeves announced that the people of their states no longer had to wear masks or take other Covid-19 precautions. This was an insult to Neanderthals, who recent scientific discoveries have revealed were actually pretty smart. These heavy-browed ancestors of the human race were definitely brainier than Abbott and Reeves (who responded to Biden with grunt-like Tweets).
In Texas, despite Abbott’s sunny assessment, the plague is still scything through the state, with morgues and cemeteries stacked so full of bodies there is a three-month backlog for their final destination. Texas lags far behind the national rate of vaccinations, and multiple Covid-19 variants are now surging all over the state. As his critics have pointed out, Abbott’s no-mask announcement was clearly his feeble attempt to change the subject from the collapse of the Texas power grid during the recent winter storm, which cut off millions from electricity and water.
Our tale of two countries is becoming increasingly stark. On the one hand we have President Biden and the blue states that narrowly elected him. Each day the Biden administration is rolling back the criminal corporatism of the Trump regime, implementing environmentally sound regulations, fighting for the massive $1.9 trillion relief package, and even reimposing some supervision over the CIA and Pentagon’s drone strikes which the previous administration completely forfeited.
On the other hand, we have states run by yahoos who have turned masks into symbols of federal oppression. Governors who froth up their MAGA base by declaring war on public health instead of on disease, while their case loads and death rates surge. In South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem NEVER imposed a mask mandate even though her state was among the hardest hit. And she was a rock star at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in Orlando (as was Florida’s know-nothing Republican governor, Ron DeSantis).
Saw off these ignorant red states and let them die Darwinian extinction, you say? Believe me, I often feel the same way. Without the clammy grip of states like Texas, Florida — and even little, retro South Dakota — on Washington, the United States of America would be as socially enlightened as Scandinavia.
But like a toxic family, we’re stuck with stupid and weird relatives in our union. And there are no walls around Texas, with its 30 million, widely infected citizens. So we need to keep talking sense to these people, even though they keep electing rodeo clowns like Abbott and Ted Cruz.
Which brings me, finally, to Stacey Abrams, the true American hero of 2020. Because of Abrams, Biden can just barely win Senate approval for his Cabinet nominees and push through urgent legislation that has overwhelming public support. But Republican state legislators in Georgia and throughout the U.S. are now aggressively reimposing voting rights restrictions so they can continue their racist and backward reign. House leader Nancy Pelosi is fighting this power grab by state Republicans, but without 60 votes in the Senate her efforts to protect voting rights are doomed. This means we need leaders like Stacey Abrams and the citizens’ movement she created in EVERY state in America.
The fight for democracy is never finished. The people with money and power will always try to block or corrupt the popular will. It’s our job to beat them, over and over again.
