A war for decency by Sherman Yellen

It would be funny if it weren’t so awful, this search for bamboo in paper ballots in Arizona, the shining of ultraviolet light to look for those telltale bamboo fibers. Bamboo in paper means it comes from China! Proof that the election was rigged! No. It’s proof of the metastasis that is sickening our democracy. It’s a different kind of pandemic.

103-Year-Old COVID Survivor Has Advice For The Unvaccinated—NPR

Gas Price Spike Feared as Ransomware Attack Shuts Colonial Pipeline Network—Newsweek

A Chinese Rocket Is Tumbling Back to Earth. Where Will It Land?—The New York Times

May 8, 2021

A war for decency
by Sherman Yellen, New York, New York

Mad mad world. Now we know that some of the people who were attending the Capitol riot are recounting the Arizona ballots — in order to discredit Biden’s win. They are looking for signs of bamboo in the paper ballots — believe me or the Times, but they are — trying to trace them to China — all this from the NY Times report on the illegal shenanigans that this recount takes pride in. Having just verified that former Attorney General Barr cooked the Mueller report that proved Trump’s conspiracy with Russia in his election — how long must the public watch these notable criminals escape justice?

Every day that Barr, Giuliani, and DJT escape justice is a day that discredits our democracy. People in high places are not above the law — they are just above the common humanity and morality that we all try to live by. I know it is said that the wheels of justice turn slowly, but these wheels need a good lubrication, and retread, so that they can move at a pace that any common criminal trial would be obliged to move at. And the blatant attempt to revive Jim Crow law at the ballot box by restricting voting that is brazenly taking place in Florida and Texas and Gawd knows where else — redefines the meaning of shame. Alas, the GOP has no shame. We fought a war against fascism abroad — with bullets and human loss — the least we can do is fight against fascism at home, without guns but with our united voices.

I trust that ultimately the higher courts will strike these down because they are so blatantly discriminatory — but it could be many months before that happens, perhaps years. I am blessed from birth with seeing the funny side of most situations — I laugh a lot — but my soul fills with rage as I read of these attempts to turn back the clock and nullify the rights of African Americans and Latinos. Where are the marching feet protesting for voting rights? We would not have remained silent about this in the sixties when my wife and I marched against the Vietnam War. It’s not that we were better — it just that, sadly, it may take a war to revive the activism. But this is a war for decency — another word for democracy.

Yes, I am an impatient man. Impatient for this epidemic to be over, impatient to recover my physical balance through my PT so that I can walk the streets of my beloved NYC without a son as Secret Service guardian, impatient for Spring to arrive in its full glory — but most of all I am impatient for Trump to be put on trial for treason, and for Texas and Florida to break away from the rest of the USA and become their own voter-fixing banana republics. I apologize to Ernest Hemingway for that run on sentence but it was going so fast that I had to end it before it went off the rails taking me with it. When in my life would I be rooting for an arch conservative named Liz Cheney? Never — but she clings to one simple truth — that Biden won — that truth is truth — while the rest of the GOP sheep follow their shepherd DJT off a cliff. They are not just fools but damned fools, emphasis on the damned, having to live with a lie that attempted to destroy the republic.