Laura Koerber's Blog: To Live is to Fly

If the Trump admin can silence a widely popular comedian, they can silence anyone for thought crimes. On this day of remembrance, never forget that all of this--the stochastic violence, the actual violence, the abuse of power, the corruption of institutions, the "othering" of a targeted populations so they can be abused, the attacks on science and education, the creation of martyrs--it has all happened in other places. We are supposed to learn from history, not repeat it.

Charlie Kirk was a hate propagandist. His role in the Republican party was to support Faux, Newsmax, Trump, and other haters in promoting hate for everyone who wasn't a Republican.
Years ago when Karl Rove was chair of the RNC, the Republican party decided to adopt the propaganda techniques of Goebbels to win elections since they couldn't win by telling voters their agenda. As the party of, by, and for the rich, they had to have some other message to con people into voting to harm themselves. They decided on divide and conquer: Tell their base a fairy tale about how the Republican party was going to save them from the evil everyone else. Ever since then at each election, the Republican party has picked a target to demonize: Welfare queens, gay people threatening family values, doctors committing partial birth abortions, immigrants, and always Democrats who are supposedly a threat to real true American values. And of course, a perennial favorite: Black people.
My sister's church decided to feature Black American religious music for Easter, For this crime Kirk featured them on his site as "woke" and gave the contact info to his supporters. Her church was subjected to weeks of obscenities and death threats. They had to hire security to go to church.
Kirk said that human life was expendable to protect the 2nd Amendment. I guess he found out that he was one of the expendable ones. This was a surprise, I'm sure; Republicans never expect their ideas to be applied to them.
Now the Republicans are enjoying a wallow in martyrdom, No one fakes victimization like a fascist can. The party of Trump, that launched a violent attack on Congress, is now yowling about the terrible political violence in this nation.
Political violence is terrible. That's why I'm not a Republican. Charlie Kirk was a bad person while alive and being dead doesn't make him any better.
His death will be used by Republicans as a means of silencing anyone who criticizes them. They will continue to use the language of exclusion, of marginalizing and demonizing, to promote hate while pretending to be the victims.
Meanwhile the ethnic cleansing campaign against immigrants--which is no different than the anti-Irish hate campaigns of the 1800s or the expulsion of the Chinese or the Trail of Tears or the internment of Japanese Americans--will continue. Haters gotta hate and hate is the only message Republicans have.
The rest of us are the targets and we get to fight back. Part of that fighting back is to call them what they are: a fascist movement that uses Goebbels propaganda techniques against the rest of America to get power.
Charlie Kirk was a professional hate propagandist. I am opposed to violence which is why I was disgusted with him when he was alive and disgusted by him now.

I know all you winter soldiers will attend the nearest protest. King Pussygrabber is disgusting and this is one of the lowest points in our history. Cruelty Barbie and the rest of the drunks and demented in his government are hoping desperately for a Reichstag fire and are probably really, really frustrated that LA is not, in fact, burning. I expect that their "deployment" of "tactical units" to seize dishwashers, line cooks, hotel maids and gardeners in Seattle will hit significant opposition--this state has already outlawed federal use of the state National Guard and Seattle is proudly a city of immigrants. Attempts to remake the city as herrenvolk will be resisted.
And obviously Faux is not news and people who voted for the pussygrabber owe the rest of us an apology.

A girl I knew in high school died in the attack on the towers NYC. I point this out because in variably if I try to discuss American crimes against humanity someone will say I am excusing or downplaying our 911. I'm not. I am saying that we should feel grief for those we killed while grieving for Americans who died.

In 1973, on 9/11, the Nixon admin, supported and enabled a coup against the elected government of Chile. Tens of thousands of civilians were murdered outright and tens of thousands more disappeared over the subsequent years of Pinochet's dictatorship. Eventually the people of Chile had a velvet revolution and re-established representative government. Pinochet was found guilty of crimes against humanity.

Why did the Nixon admin inflict this harm on Chile? The Republican party was in the process of adopting trickle down economic theory (serve the rich and screw everyone else). Kissinger said that we couldn't let a country go socialist and not do anything about it. Instead, we used Chile as a lab for Milton Freidman's crazy ideas.

Acting on Friedman's theories, Pinochet crushed trade unions, privatized public services, destroyed the middle class, and favored the wealthy. Sound familiar? Ought to since that's the same set of policy goals that the Republican party has had for sixty years now.

So Chile got rid of the supply-siders and the authoritarian assholes, but we didn't. We have had in succession Reagan and bums-on-welfare-tax-cuts-for-the rich and Iran/contra, Clinton's playing footsie with Republicans instead of telling them to fuck off, Bush with more tax cuts for the rich while he lied his way into an unnecessary war that resulted in hundreds of thousands dead and a million made into refugees, then Trump and the Republican party's multi-pronged attacks on representative government including violence, gerrymandering, voter suppression, Citizens United, and other kinds of election rigging--and don't be stupid. Republicans are after power to serve the rich and special interests, not the citizens.

The people the US killed in Chile on behalf of a fascist dictator are not the only ones who died for a foreign policy focused on protecting American corporate profits. And that combination of corruptions, amorality, and raw pursuit of power is here in the US, attacking our representative government.

Dear MAGAs,
Fox “News” is ringing with lamentations about how Biden supposedly dissed all Republican voters. He didn't, of course. He called out self-proclaimed MAGAs for the violent attack on Congress, for your willful refusal to accept election results, for the on-going harassment of election boards, and for your decision to give loyalty to a man, rather than to America and the rule of law.
You deserve every word he said. You made yourselves party to the worst attack on representative government since the Civil War. You tried to overturn an election.
MAGA folks, like most people, are decent people with decent values and ethics within the context of their daily lives: loving family members, good neighbors and friends, good employees. However, in terms of your political lives, none of those positive values or ethics are present.
You deserve criticism for your actions. You tried to disenfranchise the rest of us by negating our votes. You justified that by disrespecting election officials and slandering them with nonsense “evidence” like: Dead people voting! People voting twice! Chinese bamboo ballots! People are voting by using PO addresses in multiple states! The Chinese are controlling the computers! Etc. Didn't it ever occur to you that election officials might be decent, competent people who can catch that kind of clumsy, obvious maleficence? None of the “evidence” trumpeted in right wing media resulted in a prosecution because none of it was remotely possible without getting caught. People can't just walk into a polling place and dump a bunch of ballots to be counted. No, thousands of illegals are not registered to vote. No, you can't stuff a drop-in ballot box with fake ballots. Why didn't it occur to you that maybe you should learn something about how elections are run before jumping to the conclusion that margins of over twenty thousand votes could be achieved by those kinds of ridiculous tactics?
Why did you believe that crap?
The Bible is packed with warnings about malicious and careless speech. Just one example: Matthew 12:36 The Lord Jesus Christ says God will judge every person for every careless word they speak.
You, dear MAGA voter, were party to trying to overturn an election based on rumors, gossip, conspiracy theories and absolute bottom of the barrel malicious nonsense.

Trump had no chance of winning because he went into the election year with a fifty-five percent disapproval rating. He lost swing states by margins uphill from twenty thousand votes. The race wasn't even close. Also:
He lost all sixty-two of his lawsuits, spread across six states.
Every challenged state had official recounts, and some had more than one.
The Pennsylvania Republicans had hearings which turned up nothing but a bunch of flakes saying things like “How can you tell if an Asian has voted more than once when they all look alike?”
Trump supporters in Nevada hired a professional to do a forensic analysis of their election and the only fraud he found was a group of Republicans in Reno who tried to vote both by mail and in person.
Arizona Republicans hired a firm to do an audit and they found nothing actionable.
The governor of Texas offered a substantial reward for evidence leading to a conviction and the only evidence he got was a PA Republican who got caught voting on his dead mother's ballot.
Another group of Trump supporters hired an investigator to find fraud, but the investigator found nothing, and the effort disintegrated into a welter of lawsuits by donors against the leaders of the group.
Individual election officials accused by Trump or others have successfully sued the MAGA accusers for making false claims.
Fox and Newsmax are facing lawsuits for the lies they spread about a computer company.
Bottom Line: Trump lost six swing states by more than twenty thousand votes per state, and Trump supporters have not found any cases of election or voter fraud beyond the actions of an individual here and there.

So...Biden hurt your feelings. I am sorry when anyone's feelings are hurt, but frankly I think the integrity of our elections is more important than the injured feelings of people who acted on slanderous BS, tried to overthrow our election, and are still making false accusations about local election officials. MAGAs not the victims. The rest of us are.
So dear MAGA member, if you don't like being called out for your attacks on our elections and election officials, then stop making those attacks. Trump lost. Please try to handle that reality with the same dignity and decency shown by voters in our previous presidential elections.

I realize that some MAGAs are just very stupid, ignorant people who are being played for chumps by Trump. I realize that most MAGAs are good family people, good employees at their work sites, kind to animals, and so on. BUT THEY EITHER DIRECTLY ATTACKED CONGRESS OR SUPPORT THE ATTACKERS AND THEY SPREAD LIES IN AN ATTEMPT TO OVER THROW OUR ELECTION>

Not since the Civil War has any group of Americans been so unpatriotic. Thier arrogance is breath-taking. They tried to negate our votes--disenfranchise other Americans--because their Dear Leader lost the election. Now they are whining because Biden criticized them.

They are not the victims. The rest of us are. They acted in complete disrespect for the rest of us and in disrespect for the rule of law. They tried to end representative government because they didn't get their way.
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Anow they are screaming about getting their poor widdle fee fees hurt.

Listen, MAGAs, if you don't want to be called fascist, then stop acting like fascists. If you don't like being criticized for attacking America and democracy, then try acting like decent people before, during, and after an election.

And try to behave decently toward the rest of America. A little less snobbery and hatefulness, please. Try to acquire some genuine patriotism. And get over the idea that a pussy-grabber, three-time adulterer who has been convicted of fraud twice and who used your donor money to pay off a porn star--and who stole state secrets--is anything but a sleazy con artist. Stop being chumps.

I am posting my new novel on Inkitt as I write it. That is. I am posting the sections that have been proofed and revised enough to be readable. I would very much enjoy feedback on the story. How is the pacing? Is it interesting? Are there inconsistancies that need to be fixed? Is it too gloomy? Coyote's Road Trip is another one of my post-climate change dystopias set in the near future. I hope a few people will feel like reading some of this! Thank you and happy new year to everyone. Except Republicans. They need to go sit in the corner and think about their bad behavior.
Here's the link:
https://www.inkitt.com/edit/863573

Prologue
Most of the humans who pass through the Valley of Dry Bones have their eyes on the horizon and see very little of the desert outside the windows of their cars. Bored, they count off the miles left to get somewhere else. They calculate speed-to-distance, estimate their ETA, and grind out the hours of white line fever by fiddling with the car radio, tossing cigarettes out the window, eating junk food, or yelling at the kids in the back seat. Three hours to Reno. Ten hours to Redding. And hour to Ely to get the car charged up, buy some snacks, and hit the road again. They have no desire to be where they are. They want, often very badly, to be somewhere else.
A century and a half ago, the people passing though in wagons had their eyes on the horizon, too, and dreamed of California, but they figured distance in terms of footsteps and diminishing water, while calculating how long their cattle were going to hold out.
The first time Coyote watched a human die was when old man Hardkoop finally gave up and set himself down in the dirt in the meager shade of a sagebrush bush. He'd been a passenger on the wagon of the Keseberg family—Mr. Keseberg being the guy who later became notorious for eating Tamsin Donnor. Mr. Keseberg's oxen were the walking dead. He'd already tossed furniture overboard, and he and his wife were afoot, carrying their young daughter. He told old man Hardkoop to get out of the wagon and walk, knowing that the old man wouldn't be able to keep up.
All of the settlers in the wagon train knew that old man Hardkoop wouldn't be able to keep up. They didn't discuss it, at least not while Coyote was in earshot, tracking their progress through his territory. They just trudged onward, eyes on the distant mountains, dreaming with increasing desperation of California. To them, the desert was an obstacle, a dreadful passage, a trial that tested their moral and physical strength. They saw nothing in the desert to sustain their lives.
The sustainable was there. After all, people lived in the desert, had lived there for hundreds of years. They came on foot and they looked around, learned what they needed to learn, and found what they needed to find: a landscape of soft grays and beige, delicate pinks and vivid greens; a landscape of thorns and insects, of drought and torrential rain; a land of sage and rice grass. They found springs of fresh water and a river. They found pinon nuts on the slopes of the mountain, reeds in the marsh, and antelope and jackrabbits out in the sagebrush. In other words, they found the necessities of life: food, water, shelter. It was coyote's territory but he was willing to share.
The valley's name came from the tendency of dead animals to hang around forever as white bones, cleaned by the vultures and insects and scoured by windblown sand. Strewn on the ground were the tiny bones of mice and the slightly more robust bones of rabbits. All of Coyote's existence, he'd walked on bones of hawks and deer and heard the bones of the desert tortoise rattling in the shell like castanets. He'd seen bones of snakes, bones of people, and bones of his brother and sister coyotes. All those bones were constant reminders of how everyone's story ended, but none of the animals and nature spirits were afraid of death. Death was like the tangy taste of dried ants—it had a sting but flavored life. Death was the reminder to see beauty.
The valley was a wide, flat plain between sudden mountains that climbed up abruptly, not bothering with foothills, straight to the sky. Often hazy from the hot dry air, washed out by the glare of the sun, or obscured by thunderheads, the mountains were like a distant dream. The best time to see the mountains was on an overcast day when the sky is a dark cloudy blue. Then your eyes can see across fifty or so miles of flat land to where the pinon forests cover the mountain slopes with a soothing dark green. The bones of the mountain are easy to see on those days: steep slants cut by ravines. The forces of erosion have been in action since before Coyote came into being, and that was longer ago than any human life; another way that death spiced the lives of the living. All you had to do was look at the mountains to know that life is short.
Coyote didn't pay much mind to the People who lived in his valley. They were competent, lived by the accumulated years of experience, and weren't in need of his magic. Nor did he need much from them. They existed side by side, foraging and feeding, procreating and dying. Coyote didn't pay much attention to their deaths because he knew that, while individual humans lived and died—just as the animals and plants lived and died--the web of life in the desert remained. Besides, he never hung around to watch when People were killing each other.
Old Man Hardkoop's death was different. Coyote stopped to watch out of curiosity. He was...interested? No, that's not right. Intrigued? Startled? Disgusted? The wagon people had turned their backs on one of their own. The people of the desert never did that. They moved seasonally, but they carried those who needed to be carried, as best they could. If they were starving—which happened every now and then—and they couldn't carry someone with them, they mourned those that they couldn't save. Coyote was baffled by the ways of the new people. They seemed to be stupid, incompetent, and cruel.
Old man Hardkoop didn't die right away. He tried to keep up. His feet were swollen and bleeding, his boots worn down to rags. The wagons—wearily dragged along by thin, thirsty oxen—didn't move fast, and neither did the thin, thirsty women or the dusty, frightened children. Everyone shuffled and stumbled. Mrs Keseberg held on the side of the wagon to keep herself on her feet.
No one spoke except to yell. Mostly they yelled at the oxen, but sometimes they exploded at each other with voices raw and ragged from the dust. When not yelling, they trudged in silence. Old man Hardkoop didn't ask for help. He staggered on, first only twenty feet behind the Kesseberg wagon, then forty feet, then behind so far that he couldn't see the wagons anymore, just the dust.
He couldn't keep up, and no one wanted him to keep up, but he tried. Coyote tracked him from the brush nearby. He watched the bony shoulders and limp, dusty hat; the swollen hands dangling; the tear tracks on the dirty cheeks The old man's eyes weren't on the horizon, and any dreams of California were dead. His steps slowed. His head bobbled at the end of his skinny neck. He was wondering which step would be his last one, what bit of sand would be his final resting place, when his knees gave out.
Coyote watched the old man's sore muscles flop in a heap on the ground. There he slumped, his head dangling on his neck, his gnarly old hands laying in his lap. Maybe he thought about his home on the farm in Belgium. The tulips that bloomed in the spring. His wife, God bless her, in her grave. His son had a homestead in California, but old man Hardkoop would never see it.
Coyote thought his hands looked like dead spiders. He watched the old man cover his eyes with his spidery fingers. Then he wiped his face and looked around. Old man Hardkoop couldn't see anyway to sustain life. Slowly, gently he lowered his shoulder and his head so that he was laying on his side. Then he covered his face with one of his spider hands.
Coyote trotted away. It was all very confusing. For millennia, only the People had lived in the desert. Now these new people were passing through and they didn't know anything, didn't seem to want to learn anything, and they didn't take care of their own. He didn't like them.

My new dystopia/magical realism novel is OUT TODAY! Title: Wild Hare's Daughter. Yeah, I know, another book with Somebody's Daughter as a title. But, honestly, nothing else fit.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

I built the story out of three quotes:
"I want to do right, but not right now." Gillian Welch

"Father forgive us for what we must do. You forgive us and we'll forgive you." John Prine

"To live outside the law, you must be honest" Bob Dylan

That kinda sums it up.

Around fifty-four thousand Americans are dead from the delta variant of the covid virus. Unvaccinated people are responsible for the deaths because they spread the disease.
The delta variant spreads in the same way as the common cold: the virus enters a human through the nose or mouth, multiplies, and is exhaled for a day or two before the infected person gets symptoms and realizes they are infected. That's how colds spread and that's how unvaccinated people spread covid. So yes, the unvaccinated are to blame for the deaths.
Why aren't people taking the vaccine? After all, vaccines and vaccine mandates (which ARE constitutional) have been with us since George Washington mandated that his soldiers get the small pox vaccine. Schools mandate the polio vaccine, which is why children rarely are crippled as my mother was. Vaccines are good, and mandates are an established and legal part of our society.
So where did the anti-vaccine propaganda come from? Where did the sociopathic “It's my free dumb” nonsense come from? Republican “news” sources, that's who. Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Dan Bongios, Townhall, Brietbart, and the Faux News lineup of of talking heads, to name just a few. Also Republican politicians such as DiSantis and Abbott—who have actively helped spread the virus in their states. DiSantis has been using his power as governor to punish schools that require masks for kids, even though children can't get vaccinated and their only protection from disease is masking. There are now children dead and dying in his state from a preventable disease. COVID-19 deaths in children more than doubled recently in Florida, data shows (msn.com)
Unvaccinated people are not all alike. However the data shows that the larger subgroups are the uneducated, middle-aged or younger people and white people. The core group who say they will not ever get the vaccine are Republicans. This makes sense, given the tendency of Republicans to be consumers of the Republican “news” sources that are pumping out the anti-vaccine propaganda. Unvaccinated Americans Whiter, More Republican Than Vaccinated (voanews.com) Here Are The Biggest Groups That Are Still Refusing The Covid-19 Vaccine, Poll Finds (forbes.com)
Because of the correlation between Republican “news,” Republican citizens, and unvaccinated people, the delta variant entered the US through red states, spread first to more red states or parts of red states and is now a crisis in red states. Idaho hospitals so overwhelmed that they have to triage care. Idaho moves to crisis care standards due to COVID case surge | Idaho Statesman Ten thousand dead in one year in Missouri MO COVID updates: child infections, new cases, vaccinations | The Kansas City Star. Texas hospitals in crisis mode. COVID-19 crisis has Texas hospital officials scared, they told senators | The Texas Tribune Of course, the red states have not kept the virus to themselves. They spread it around: Hawaii hospitals face possible oxygen shortage amid rise in COVID-19 patients | Honolulu Star-Advertiser (staradvertiser.com)
So far unvaccinated people and Republican “news” sources have killed 56,000 Americans—so many dead Americans that they make Al Qaida look like amateurs. Think about that next time you hear someone on Faux ranting about the Taliban. Thank about all those dead Americans next time some Trumper claims to be pro-life. Think about the incredible stupidity and selfishness of the “free dummies” next time some Republican starts bragging about Republicans being the real true party of American values.