This is a very special, one-time-only post, and I sincerely hope that each of you who live in the United States will listen to this linked video.
You don’t need your eyes. You can just turn it on and listen while you clean your house, shower, drive, whatever you need to do. But please listen to it, share it with others, and encourage them to do the same.
Please listen to the whole thing. While you listen, you can do yoga, do your workout routine, prep lunches for the week, organize stuff, there are all kinds of ways you can combine listening to this with the other stuff you have to do. For those of you who do listen to it and share it, I thank you in advance.
Usually, this space is reserved only for my poetry and music. Since the swearing in of the orange toddler, tangerine palpatine, I have written several pieces about democracy and the emergence of an authoritarian regime in the United States; not the danger of the possibility of an authoritarian regime, but one that has already arrived and taken root here.
In the last post, I shared not my thoughts (well, a few, but not many), but rather the links to articles and videos from others.
But this is the first time I have used my personal art website (where I promote my music, music albums, my poetry, and poetry books) for someone else’s video. It’s one video, from one person, about one subject: the state of the integrity of American elections as it is today.
I’m willing to bet that you will learn several things from this video that you didn’t already know. He breaks it all down into easy-to-understand bits.
Listen. Like the video, share it on social media or through text messages, subscribe, and comment on the video in the YouTube comments. Those things will help it get seen by more people.
I’m not affiliated with the person, organization, channel, or anyone involved in the making of the video. I just know that what he’s saying is true. And he’s doing a far better job than I usually do of walking the delicate balance between “freaking people out,” and “telling people the truth.”
Even when I try to just speak plain truth, people get an alarmist vibe from me; part of that is intentional, part of it isn’t. But he’s handling the subject of what Republicans are trying to do to subvert the elections in a far more tactful and diplomatic manner than I ever could.
1. Listen
2. Like the video
3. Share it on social media or through text messages
4. Subscribe
5. Comment on the video in the YouTube comments
Those things will help it get seen by more people.
6. Sign up for the Democracy Docket newsletter (free version of the newsletter, or one of the paid plans)
I make nothing from any of this.
So, why am I doing it?
I don’t want to spend my last years on Earth in a fascist regime that’s using violent oppression as a means of holding power and keeping myself and my people from the basic necessities, all so the elite can have a better fiscal quarter.
I would genuinely rather die fighting in the streets, than slowly starving to death in something like Stalin’s fake famine. Surely, by now, you realize, on some level, that this is exactly the kind of thing they’re planning to do to most of us in the future.
If it isn’t, then why are they dismantling education, access to vaccines and healthcare for women who can’t afford to have children, cutting social safety nets like Medicaid, food stamps, etc.
No, they didn’t completely destroy any of them. But they did massive amounts of damage, and you know they’re not finished.
And this video talks about how they’re attacking the only legal way we have of changing the system—voting.
So, please, watch the video, watch the whole thing, share it with others, and start preparing yourself accordingly. What “prepare” means is up to you.
My advice is to prepare for the absolute worst case scenario. But at very least, try to get your birth certificate, passport, and Real ID. If you can, help others who are less fortunate get these things, so they can vote.
But be prepared for what we do when we see that we voted, but it didn’t matter, because they say it doesn’t count, and they seize the ballots and we never see them again.
You need to prepare yourself for what you do after it’s abundantly clear that they either stopped the elections or rigged them.
I truly hope that once you see them do that, you will NOT say to yourself or anyone else, “Oh, well. I guess there’s nothing we can do. We’ll just have to live with it.”
Please, do not come to that conclusion. Millions of people willingly took up arms to fight for our freedoms. They were willing to be wounded, to suffer intense heat and cold, disease, to be hungry, uncomfortable, to be imprisoned, and even to die, so that you and I would enjoy the peace, freedom, and prosperity of a free and fair democratic system.
Please, do NOT just allow them to take that from us, not without a fight, not while there is still breath in our bodies.
Kevin Trent Boswell 