Author Archives: Paul Steven Stone

Republican Job Plan: Put Jim Crow To Work

       Shame on you.

       You no longer deserve to be a major political party in the United States.

       You no longer deserve to wear the mantle of moral legitimacy that comes with being “The Party of Abraham Lincoln.”

       I’ll say it again, just in case you’re as stone deaf to my words as you are to the values of democracy, fair play and decency.

       Shame on you.

       And shame on your totally transparent, thoroughly dishonorable and unforgivably crude attempt to steal the votes of millions of Americans, most of them poor, most of them black or hispanic, many of them students, but all of them more likely to vote for Democrats than for members of your amoral and illegitimate party.

       Yes, amoral and illegitimate!

       Illegitimate because after all your efforts to disenfranchise the poor and the marginalized there isn’t an outcome in your party’s favor that any sensible citizen would trust to be valid and untainted.

       Illegitimate because your party members repeatedly lie to defend these corrupt practices. They lie to the courts, to their constituents, to the voting public. Maybe even to themselves.

       Illegitimate because by dressing up voter suppression in the cloak of fraud prevention, you not only perpetrate a lie, you show equal disdain for both the democratic system and the people you pretend to serve.

       Illegitimate because you teamed up with a president, whose legitimacy will always be in doubt, to spend hundreds of billions of dollars bringing American-type democracy to Iraq.

       Is this how you see American democracy working? By purging eligible voters from the voter rolls? By requiring photo ID’s so that people unlikely to have driver’s licenses, like old people or the poor, will be turned away? By making it so difficult to register to vote that students or the elderly will eventually give up? Or by sending thugs out to intimidate voter registration drives?

       And how stupid you must be to think we’re so blind we can’t see what you’re doing? Or recognize the cynicism behind your protestations? Even if you spend all of the Koch brothers’ billions of dollars you can’t buy enough bleach to remove this indelible stain upon your party.

       There are banana republics where democracy gets a fairer shake than in some Republican controlled states.

       Shame on you.

       Shame on your being so weak that you rely on Jim Crow rather than your policies or politicians to win elections.

       You remember Jim Crow. He used to live in the Old South. He’s the guy that instituted a poll tax to keep black people from voting, the guy who used police clubs and fire hoses to keep blacks in their place, the guy who lynched blacks and forced them to ride in the back of buses and to drink from separate water fountains.

       And now he works for you.

      

Rip Van Winkle In the 21st Century (or waking up at the Republican convention)

When I met Rip Van Winkle he was coming out of an Apple store with the newest iPhone. He held up the phone and explained, “Just trying to catch up. When you’ve been asleep for twelve years you tend to miss out on things.”

He looked at me and smiled, “I don’t know what was in that beer I had at the bowling alley last night, but I woke up this morning feeling like I was wearing a swimming cap two sizes too small.

“And that was just the start of the strangeness. Walking back to my home on Brattle Street I noticed things seemed familiar yet very different. The few people I passed were wearing strange clothes, which for Cambridge isn’t all that unusual. But the cars on the street looked futuristic and alien, more like armored vehicles than the friendly boxlike structures I fondly recalled.

       “But the strangest changes were the ones that had overtaken this country during my 12 year siesta. In my unrelenting grogginess, I made the mistake of turning on the TV to watch the Republican National Convention. Once I got my bearings and saw the forces now at play in America, I was in shock. It seemed like I had woken up in a foreign land. How could I fall asleep one night in a country that prided itself as the land of the brave and the free? And wake up a dozen years later in a country ruled by barbarous impulses and totally selfish compulsions? America’s bravery, I soon discovered, was now defined by unprovoked wars on weaker nations and acts of torture against helpless prisoners. Its cherished freedoms now seemingly reserved for those who could financially afford them.

       “To my shock I discovered America had become a nation that no longer gave any thought or care to the environment—or the planet—she’d be leaving for future generations; not if it would inconvenience business interests or negatively affect their profits. Even when scientists shouted dire warnings about the consequences of Americans’ selfish and self-enriching lifestyle, an entire segment of our population chose to doubt the science rather than adjust the behavior. The way Republicans scoffed at protecting the environment for future generations you might have thought FDR created the EPA rather than Richard M. Nixon.

       “But the worst thing I witnessed was all the hate and resentment. With little concern for its weakest citizens, America’s angriest and most selfish political party was rising up in fanatical revolt against the passage of universal healthcare. And conservative political demagogues, under the guise of strengthening the country’s safety net, were attacking and threatening the social contract that for 70 years had stood like a shield, protecting the nation’s poor, elderly and infirm.

       “What was going on?” I wondered, half in shock, half in anxiety that I had somehow lost hold on my sanity.

       “Strangest of all, my country—the richest nation on Earth—was now broke! When I sipped that last beer in the bowling alley, America was heading into a new millennium with a budgetary surplus. Bill Clinton might have been a sorry philanderer but he’d also been a good steward of the country’s pocketbook. We not only had money in the bank, we had lots of it! Now I awoke to discover the little money we possess is dedicated to programs we can no longer afford or, truth be told, owed outright to the People’s Republic of China!

       “Hey, where’d all the money go!

       “You can imagine how appalling this all seemed, waking up in an America where people were losing their homes to the predatory banks that had suckered them into unaffordable mortgages. An America where the government had thrown money at those same predatory banks to keep them afloat, who had then refused to loan anything—not a penny!—to anybody! For fear it might interfere with the outsized bonuses they felt obligated to pay their highest and most incompetent executives and managers.

       I kept waiting for someone to talk about whoever was responsible for America’s sudden slide into mediocrity, pennilessness, and criminal behavior. But no one ever mentioned the man who was president for the first eight of my 12 lost years. Nor his accomplices, none of whom will ever be charged for all the lives they ruined, the deaths they caused, or the tragedy they fecklessly made of the American Dream.

       “Also, before I fell asleep for 12 years, America had been a democracy that believed in democracy, believed in spreading democracy. That was before I slept through two presidential elections that had been stolen by that same unmentionable Republican president. And before I woke to find this latest batch of Republicans doing their damnedest to deprive blacks, students, Hispanics, prisoners—anyone from the bottom of the economic ladder—their voting rights.

       “Jim Crow wasn’t dead, I discovered, he had merely joined the Republican party!

       “And, strangest of all, rather than protect the rights of these marginalized American citizens, the courts were complicit in this outrage, deaf to any arguments about the real motivation behind voter fraud regulations in Republican-controlled states. Even though everyone knew, and vote-suppressing politicians freely admitted, there was never any voter fraud to prevent.

       “To think of the party of Lincoln actively working to deny voting rights to blacks, as well as the poor and the marginalized! It was enough to send me back to the bowling alley for one more beer.

       “And, hopefully, a dozen years more sleep.”

       “Well just wait,” I told Rip Van Winkle, “With any luck, you’ll wake up to find this was all a dream.”

IN CASES OF LEGITIMATE RAPE…

Me and the boys on the platform committee of the RNC were sitting around the convention center talking about you girls and all your nit-picking responses to Republican policies and priorities. After all the hullabaloo you gals kicked up about poor Todd Akin’s comments out in Missouri we decided to seek out a middle ground on this issue of abortion in cases where a woman has been legitimately raped.

I believe you’ll find our solution more than adequately answers your concerns as women, yet clearly holds the line against permitting abortions for any reason whatsoever.

Go down to page 24, paragraph 3 of our 2012 Republican National Platform and you’ll read, “Abortion shall not be permitted in the United States without exception, even in cases of rape or incest. To eliminate the need for abortion in cases of legitimate rape, we the men of the Republican Party promise to never use force in the rape of a woman, or to have unprotected sex with our sisters or our mothers. Additionally, it is the stated position of the Republican Party that all rapists must wear condoms during a legitimate act of rape.”

Pretty cool, eh? Believe me, it wasn’t easy working out that position or the language in which it was stated. Some of the boys on the committee wanted to require the police to use that invasive vaginal probe they like so much in Virginia whenever a woman claimed to be the victim of legitimate rape. Thinking, of course, that by doing so we might seriously reduce the number of reported legitimate rapes, which has its merits. See no evil, hear no evil, report no evil, if you know what I mean. 

In the end, we just decided to outlaw unprotected legitimate rape and leave it at that. We didn’t put it in the platform, but the consensus of the committee was that things would be a whole lot better if you women didn’t let yourself get raped—legitimately or otherwise, if you know what I mean.

LET THESE PEOPLE GO!

When Romney was in Tampa land,

Let these people go!

Lied so much, they gave him a hand,

Let these people go!

Go ‘way, Romney,

Way down in Liar’s Land

Tell Obama

To let these people go!

No more shall they in bondage toil

Let these people go!

To billionaires and big crude oil,

Let these people go!

Go ‘way, Ryan,

You can’t kill our medicare

Tell Obama

To let these people go!

Oh, let us all from Republicans flee

Let these people go

And let our safety nets be free

Let these people go

Go ‘way, Romney,

Pay your taxes like we do

Tell Obama

To let these people go!

Mitt need not always change his views

Let these people go!

Sooner or later he’ll get the news

And let these people go!

Go ‘way, Bro-boys,

We’ve had enough complaining,

Tell Obama

To let these people go!

Ah Mitty, We Hardly Knew You!

Dear Mitty:


 

I hope you don’t mind my calling you Mitty? ‘Mitt’ sounds so stiff, so formal, just like the blood-sucking millionaire we used to read about. The venture capitalist vampire who sucked dry the lifeblood of a hundred soon-to-die companies.

 

So, allow me to call you Mitty. If only because you had your way with us all those years.

 

Hey, It’s not easy to woo and screw an entire state, but you made it look like child’s play. Swooping down on us. Climbing in our window. A lover who came in the dark and left before dawn. We can still feel the lingering kisses, Mitty, and recall the eager, sophomoric foreplay of your 1994 senatorial campaign, not to mention the SLAM-BAM-THANK YOU M’AM screw job you gave us before you left.

 

Yes you wooed us as a moderate Republican, Mitty, said your kisses and liberal leanings were all true and deeply felt. But then your ardor failed, your interest waned. Was it something we said? Many of us still recall that fourth year of your ONE-AND-ONLY term as governor, when you couldn’t find the interest to spend even half your days in the state. It was tough living with someone who was never around, Mitty. Clearly your love—if love it was—had fled somewhere else. 

 

Though your marriage to us was consummated in Massachusetts, your heart was now committed to Washington, D.C.

 

And what about when you derided Massachusetts’ liberals down in Washington, Mitty? These days, you castigate Obama for apologizing for America. You were still our governor and you were dissing us to a panel of senators as if Massachusetts and its citizens were some objectionable lab-bred culture.

 

Hey Mitty, it’s not easy shifting your shape from a moderate to a conservative! The things you have to do, right?

 

And so you left us; leaving your job as our top officeholder unfinished. How many people can govern a state for three years and finish their mission, Mitty? There was so much you still could have done. You had strong relationships with the legislature, knew how to get things done. Had even authored a universal health care bill that actually improved people’s lives. But you heard another voice calling. Once again, desire was rising. Here within reach was another object of affection to woo and screw. A new siren’s call to chase after.

 

I guess we should feel proud you left us for a bigger state. And not just any state, Mitty, or one state, but the entire United States of America! And if you don’t win them through election, whose to say you can’t buy them all later?

 

Well, anyway, let me end this before I start to sound bitter. Don’t want you thinking your abrupt rejection has left us sad or bitter. Other states might feel exploited or cheapened by your quick, loveless encounter, like a prostitute who feels undeserving of a goodbye kiss. But we always secretly knew you would love us and leave us.

 

No hard feelings, Mitty, we were only looking for a cheap thrill ourselves.

BTW: your Guatemalan landscapers asked to be remembered.
Affectionately,

Paul Steven Stone

For The Commonwealth of Massachusetts

And All Your Former And Forsaken Constituents