Lessons in Wielding Power
From the Supreme Court to the local School Board, the Right shows it understands how power works.
I’ve always said the Right understands how to wield power much better than the Left, even when you factor in their inherent advantage our founding enslavers built into our electoral politics with the Constitution.
We saw this play out with the Supreme Court. Former president Barack Obama bungled what should have been the glorious death of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia by trying to replace him with a tepid, do-nothing Democrat as a fig leaf to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the man who said his No. 1 goal was to make Obama a one-term president.
Cocaine Mitch predictably told Obama to go fuck himself under the guise of it being undemocratic to replace a Supreme Court Justice so close to a presidential election.
When Hillary Clinton looked poised to win the most winnable presidential election in history, Republicans organized to keep Scalia’s former seat open throughout her first term.
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg choked to death on her own hubris a month before the 2020 presidential election, Republicans threw aside their (bad-faith) principles and installed a reactionary hobgoblin to the Court mere weeks before the election.
Nearly a year later, the Supreme Court used the shadow docket to effectively outlaw abortion in Texas with a barbaric law that other GOP-controlled states are rushing to replicate.
That’s called wielding power, sweetie.
Will the Democrats codify Roe vs. Wade into law to stick it to Texas legislators? No. Will they expand the Supreme Court? No. Will they even end the filibuster? Also no.
They preserve their Machiavellian tactics for whenever a non-ordained leftist candidate espouses unforgivable views like taxing the rich, universal healthcare, or maybe not spending $725 billion a year on our decrepit military which hasn’t won a war in 70 years.
We’re seeing this play out on a local level, too. Perhaps you’ve heard about The Right’s new boogeyman, “Critical Race Theory.” It’s something not even taught in K-12 education and is the product of an astroturf campaign by a “dark-money mogul” to trigger racist suburban parents into thinking their dipshit progeny has the intelligence to be indoctrinated as a Marxist.
Add in the mix of them equating having to wear masks with tyranny, and you can see why Republicans across the country have decided to run for school board. Even the QAnon conspiracy theorists are joining the fray.
One such dumb-ass is Lou Sauter of Upper Arlington. You probably don’t know much about him (hold that thought), but if you’ve spent more than an hour around Ohio State’s Columbus campus, you’re probably familiar with his business, Buckeye Donuts.
I spent more money than I’d like to admit during my time as a “student” at Ohio State. And I would take back every penny if I knew it was going to line the pockets of some right-wing suburban freak, though I probably shouldn’t have been so naive in the first place.
Sauter is running for School Board in Upper Arlington. And though my thoughts on UA are well known to anybody paying to read my work, I do not wish to see their children’s minds molded by a guy who cries about a shoplifter on Facebook:
What I love about shit posts like this is it gives such an insight into the poster’s mind, which apparently in this case is: “Vote Donald Trump to Make Shoplifting Thrilling Again.”
Dick’s Sporting Goods didn’t go bankrupt. It cleared over $7 million in profits in 2016. I doubt they’re stressed about losing a single winter coat, so why is he? Because the reactionary mind works in mysterious ways.
Sauter’s main issue running for school board is requiring students to attend the slaughterhouse five days and giving the parents an option if their child should be allowed to come into school unmasked and breathe diseased particles over other kids and teachers, who then travel back home to their families, some of which include immunocompromised people.
He claims he and his family are vaccinated, but he “understands it’s a personal choice” which is virtue signaling to the idiots who could easily get vaccinated but won’t because of what they read on Facebook or whatever right-wing hellhole from which they get their news.
Sauter is just one of many clowns seeking to stage a right-wing takeover of public education in this country. And honestly, he’s not the kookiest person running in Ohio, though he’s probably at least smart enough to keep his most extreme views off social media considering he has a successful business to run.
But ask yourself this… What exactly does a donut shop guru know about public education, other than fornicating a couple times and producing children of his own? Upper Arlington went nearly 70% for Joe Biden in the last election.
Upper Arlington, however, like most wealthy suburbs of Columbus is extremely organized. They have the resources and coordination to repel a charlatan like Sauter who got triggered by Fox News propaganda into seeking office in the first place.
But not every city has those resources, and unfortunately due to the lack of attention most Americans place on local politics, it’s all but assured an untold number of crazies are going to gain a foothold in power over the education of our children.
We will become a dumber country for it, and it’s all because the Right is better at understanding how power works.
THOSE WMDs. Police don’t deserve an impenetrable legal shield… How the Twin Cities became a hotbed of unionization for the craft beer industry… They don’t make third-row bench seats like they used to… We found rage in a hopeless place… The redemption of Michael K. Williams.
I think Lou’s point is if you defund and demoralize police as all liberal mayors across the US including Mayor Ginther have done, this is the result. Serious crime rates are skyrocketing, so minor offenses are essentially left unpunished. Although large businesses like Dick’s can absorb these losses, smaller business cannot and take a big hit. So, shoplifting is a big deal, especially with how rampant it has become (see Chicago), and it is not appropriate to minimize it. On another note, it is shameful to celebrate the death of a Supreme Court Justice (“glorious death of Scalia”) no matter what side of the aisle you are on. That is just sick and disgusting.
Nice try, Lou. Pretending to be a dumb, Woke Millenial 'journalist' attacking yourself with a poorly written hit piece is pretty sad. No serious Journo would produce garbage like this.