Mr.TaterSalad

I post sometimes here about my family because it is something I greatly treasure in my life and I feel that personal stories are often the most relatable. Not only do I reflect fondly on the time we've all spent together, I try as best I can to learn important lessons and take from the wisdom imparted on me from people I am closest with. I also learn valuable lessons of what not to do when I see things in my family that aren't always a positive life lesson. Sometimes, I fail at that endeavor, lose site, and get thrown off course. Each and every month my mom and I would take time out to go and visit the home of my Great Auntie Carmen and my Great uncle Ramon at their home on Rougeway St. in Livonia. When you visited Carmen and Ramon you never just dropped in to say hello and goodbye. Instead, you stayed around. You stayed for dinner and something to eat because they insisted on feeding you something. You also stayed around for the conversations and stories because they insisted on sharing their love with you and imparting their wisdom onto you. Spending time with my Great Uncle Ramon and hearing him tell you about his life stories was an especially valuable experience. Each time you sat around at that brown kitchen table or on their green couch in the living room you got important life lessons that helped you as a human being. Listening to my Uncle Ramon you could gain compassion for your fellow human beings and learn important lessons from history all in one conversation. One story in particular that has always stood out to me and one I heard a hundred times if I heard it once was the story how my Great uncle Ramon fought courageously in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930's and stood up against General Francisco Franco and the fascists of Spain. See, even though Franco and his thugs in the Spanish Army drafted my Great Uncle Ramon into fighting on their side, he refused to march the order of fascism, even if it meant his own death in the end. He knew that democracy and freedom were what was right. He refused to shoot his fellow countrymen and himself was almost killed for his refusal to fire his weapon and kill another human being in the defense of tyranny. Never once did my great uncle fire a bullet out of his gun at a human being on the other side to kill in Franco's honor and fascisms defense. He would tell all of us in my family with a sense of sadness about the war, yet with tell us with great pride, that he refused to defend tyranny and kill in the name of fascism for Franco. I'm posting about my great Uncle, Ramon Sieira, on the anniversary of January 6th not simply to share a family story about who he was and what I learned from him. I'm reflecting on his legacy and sharing it here in the hope that everyone can take something out of it. Through his courage, compassion, conviction, and refusal to defend Franco, he knew what was wrong and right. Ramon Sieira defended freedom, liberty, and the right to vote through his support of the Second Spanish Republic of the 1930s. He defended democratic values and norms that proved fragile in Spain in the 1930's and would indeed fall into Franco's hands of tyranny. No, my post about my great uncle is not intended to indict one political party or another. It is not about Democrats or Republicans being worse or better than others. It is about the lessons of democracy and the fragile nature of a free society and peoples. On this January 6th anniversary, I hope we all take valuable lessons from it and don't take democracy and freedom for granted. Republican or Democrat, progressive, moderate or conservative, we should all be able to come together peacefully and support democratic intuitions and accept free and fair election results.

One of my favorite follows on Twitter for sure. Scarily accurate too.

NYT Pitchbot is on fire today. Some of my favorites . . .

I thought Biden gave a good speech this morning about January 6th. It's too bad almost no one saw it and given the short attention span of people, will have long forgotten both the speech and the insurrection by the time November roles around. I love the media's bothsidesisms that will continue as normal after today. You know, some people on one side tried to overturn an election and overthrow democratic institutions of power, but let's hear from Chuck Todd, the New York Times, and Politico about Democrats in disarray for the 1,000th time and how Republicans can take back power.

I can't get behind a defensive back in the top 5. I would pick George Karlaftis the DE out of Perdue over Hamilton if a scenario like that played out.

Why am I supposed to feel sympathy for people who routinely vote against their own economic self interest in red or blue states? My dad does it all the time when he votes for Republicans and he lives off of Social Security and Medicare. I feel more anger for him that a rotten system set him up to fail through two recessions and multiple stock market crashes. But at some point, he keeps voting for a political party and candidates that would gut the very Social Security and Medicare he now lives off of and I have to stop feeling bad at some point. Republicans would tell my dad to kick rocks and eat rats all in the name of privatizing Social Security and getting rid of Medicare. If you think that is me being hyperbolic, just look at what the prior Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, wanted to do. Privatize Social Security and end Medicare. He's a big boy though, he is smart, he knows how to read. He just choses to rot his brain out by reading poorly sourced books, falling pray to chain emails, and watching Fox News everyday. He could chose to listen to NPR and watch PBS News Hour, Frontline, and Vice News as I do. He could choose to read read Economic Policy Institute, Center for American Progress, Washington Post, NYT, the Intercept, and reputable, sources as I do. Instead he choses chain emails, memes, Fox News, and books like The Bell Curve. If Republicans do gut Social Security and Medicare one day, what should I say to my dad and the tens-of-millions of Republicans like him besides "I told you so" and "thanks a lot".

If you're interested in curbing corporate power and gaining real control than read about The Meidner Plan in Sweden from the 1970s. A democratized workplace with strong unions is the best way forward to curb corporate power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehn–Meidner_model

If I am a Wyoming Democrat or the Wyoming Democratic Party I would 1000% cross over and encourage others to do the same and vote Liz Cheney.

Agreed! People are broken and aggrieved for different reasons. But as you said, demagogues like Trump in America, Orban in Hungry, Lukashenko in Belarus, they find their way into the minds of people like my dad and exploit what troubles them for political gain. You can be conservative or libertarian without being like that. Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, George Will, Jack Kemp, Ron Paul, William F. Buckley, and countless others over generations of the conservative movement proved that. Unfortunately, they and their ilk have been casted aside for the Donald Trump's, Louie Gohmert's, Matt Gaetz's, Lauren Bobert's, and MGT's of the political world and it doesn't look like the Republican Party is coming back from that rink anytime soon.

I don't think that's what it's all about. For someone like my dad, a white male over 70, it's about racial grievance and the feeling that being white in America is under attack. It's also about white superiority over others. My dad is the least religious person you'll ever meet, so Christian Nationalism is far from his mind. He's a George Carlin when it comes to believing in God. He wants whites to be recognized as superior beings in society. He read a book called the Bell Curve years ago and has used that book as evidence that whites, and specifically certain sects of Jewish people, are just smarter than blacks and brown-skinned Hispanic people. To him, it is a scientific, irrefutable fact that there are intellectual differences between blacks and whites. He yearns for a time where blacks and whites live separate lives. Where schools, cultures, and daily lives were separate. He yearns for an America where you could go into polite society, the workplace, wherever and make jokes about Asians, Blacks, Jews, Muslims, etc. He also hates immigrants from the Central/South America, Mexico, the Middle East, Asia, and the Indo/Pakistan region. He believes that America is losing its heritage and standing in the world because of these people. He believes they are taking jobs from Americans and white people, driving down wages all the while. He also hates woman and taking direction from woman. Woman are out to get him and ruin his life. Feminism has made it harder to get ahead as a man and has oppressed men's rights and standing in the world, all in the name of false equity in his mind. To him, MAGA is about restoring white identity and a man's role in the world. He'll tell you he's a conservative and what not, but that's all bullshit. My dad doesn't have a pot to piss in after losing all his investments, savings, and home through multiple financial crashes since being bought out by his company in 1999. He literally lives off of Social Security, Medicare, and a part time job at a theater he works at. He's the last person that should be some strident fiscal conservative or libertarian. When my father was a child he moved around a lot and ended up settling in Ecorse, MI. Ecorse was always a multi-racial working poor town with blacks, Hispanics, and whites all living in close quarters. My father and his two brothers were violently abused as children by their father and for a period of time, abandon by their mother after she left his dad. When he was 13 his dad threw him and his two brothers out of the house and they ended up going to Ecorse to live with their mom and sister. They lived poor as church mice in a two bedroom home. After graduating high school in Ecorse my dad and his brothers were all drafted to fight in Vietnam. So after being abused and abandon as Children, they all had to go and kill for Uncle Sam in Vietnam. After Vietnam he went to work in the steel mills on Zugg Island and then got himself into the corporate world at AT&T once he got tired of working in the mills. He put himself through college at both UofM Dearborn and Wayne State. He spent 25+ years at AT&T until he was bought out when the company downsized during the dot com bubble era. From there, he would go onto lose his shirt financially and life savings through multiple economic downturns and stock market crashes. My dad is a broken individual, who never got the help he needed from the horrific childhood he experienced. Abused by his father, abandon for a time by his mother to his abusive father, and asked to kill people in Vietnam. Those are life experiences that are hard to overcome and shape you into being a toxic and self destructive person. It's why my dad drinks, it's why he reads books like The Bell Curve to feel justified in his moral superiority, it's why he's racist, xenophobic, sexist, and more. First and foremost, beyond his identity politics, he wants everyone to be equally miserable like he has been. I think for many in the MAGA community they are just miserable human beings and want others to feel the same way they do. So the hope and optimism of a Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, or Elizabeth Warren is a turnoff to them. Beyond being miserable, as I mentioned above, they want the whiteness of America restored, which to them is the Great Again part of MAGA. Having a woman, person of color, or someone of a different religion in power is a troubling sign that they are losing their grasp on what makes America, America. Again, you can talk to my dad about him being a small government conservative, but that's all bullshit. Misery loves company and so do racists. Intolerance, grievance, and misery are what really drive my dad towards the MAGA movement. I suspect it drives others as well. For the record, I still have a great relationship with my dad and so does my sister. We argue about politics from time to time and he sends me stupid right-wing chain emails about current events or whatever and I just ignore and delete them. My father was good to me as a kid, when he wasn't drinking and yelling all the time. He could never bring himself to spank me or my sister as kids because he knew how much he hated it as a child. He is a far better father to us than he was husband to either of his ex-wives. That said, he's still who he is and wants America restored to some former glory it never really had.

Just like a televangelist Jimmy Swaggert he's been caught having multiple affairs with multiple woman.

Shouldn't New Netherlands be Grand Rapids, Holland and West Michigan? Doesn't it say on the Grand Rapids city seal "If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much!"

Haven't you learned by now they're all playing 3D Chess with us simpletons.

Timothy McVeigh was actually Timothy McVeigh-Surarez-Ramirez from El Salvador.

Is anyone else picturing Trump eating a Big Mac with a Diet Coke laughing all the while?

I don't know if Cade is rattled or what, but I'm in favor of this. What can it hurt, you're getting blown out anyways and have no offense to speak of.

Stick a fork in Michigan, they're done! Not that they weren't anyways.

Nevermind, still a turnover. This is a bloodbath!

Holy shit we might get lucky here.

That wasn't good!

Lack of a running game is going to be real tough to overcome if we don't get it going.

Doesn't it!!! WOOOOOOT!