I left Wisconsin for the West Coast seven years ago, and neither I nor my cannabis-besotted brain have looked back since. I sure do miss Madison—one of the best cities in the country, in my admittedly biased opinion—but between the winters flash-freezing my dinglies like Han Solo in carbonite and Scott Walker purple-nurpling my callow nips like a Door County saltwater taffy machine, I could brook my life as a Badger no longer.
But part of my heart has stayed in my home state. As has most of my liver—though since leaving Wisconsin I’ve cut down on my drinking by about 95%, as I’m no longer required to blow a .15 BAC on a Breathalyzer in order to legally vote or buy land. (If you don’t grok what I’m getting at, take a peep at the top 20 drunkest cities in the U.S.)
So when stuff like this happens, it only reinforces the wisdom of my decision to hang my rain slicker—for the time being, anyway—in deep-blue Oregon.
The Republican leader of the state Assembly was booed by some convention-goers after telling the crowd there’s no pathway to decertifying the 2020 presidential election.
“We have no ability to decertify the election and go back,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said at the Republican state convention in Middleton during a legislative leader panel. “We need to focus on moving forward.”
Loud boos filled the convention hall after Vos’ comment, which prompted state party chairman Paul Farrow to tell delegates to “let him talk” and “be respectful.”
Booing consensus reality and common sense. What has my home state become? Racist? Yeah, I picked up on that sometime in the ‘70s—but there’s something about huge crowds of white people heckling on behalf of a treasonous, white supremacist deludenoid that really brings it home.
For his part, Vos—who is beyond awful, by the way—struggled to put the moment into perspective.
“At the end of the day we are all Republicans, and people are super passionate,” he said. “They want change in Madison and they are desperate for a change in Washington. … Sometimes they are frustrated because Democrats won’t listen and take it out on Republicans. It’s okay.”
That’s a really nice way of saying the sore-loser seditionists who comprise an unnervingly large portion of the electorate are really fine folks, but simply misunderstood.
Republicans have long since lost control of their racist Frankenstein. The only question is when the rampage will stop—in 2022 or sometime after Republicans have turned our country into a Putin-style Soviet republic?
I’m still hopeful—after all, there are signs that some of the shine has come off Donald Trump’s Big Lie—but we’re still in an extremely precarious spot vis-à-vis the future of American democracy.
Now is no time to be demoralized, cynical, or complacent. Let’s GOTV and support Democrats in any way we can.
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
This is a Creative Commons article. The original version of this article appeared here.
