Welcome to The Mystical Underground

NO, THIS ISN’T A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. But it’s the midterms, when the dems   have a chance to take back the house and the senate, so we aren’t  still stuck with trump and vance and his incompetent cabinet as nutty as trump is.

But  the senate can investigate, start impeachment, hold trump and these idiots accountable.The house can rule on the war in Iran and end it. Congress controls the $, the budget, and wouldn’t it be great if gas prices & the price of food went down?

Wouldn’t it be great to have a government that actually works for the people? That supports the people? Wouldn’t it be incredible to have a government that didn’t alienate its allies?

Just look at the state of things worldwide. Who still considers us  an ally? Instead, we have trump courting Putin, North Korea’s little monster, dictators everywhere.

I grew up under a dictatorship in Venezuela.It wasn’t as bad as Maduro or Pinochet or some of the others monsters of their ilk, but it was a fact of life. We used to have “revolution days” off from school & I remember how my mother and I would rush to the auto mercado – grocery store- for food and supplies & quite often, the shelves were bare.

The next day, we would all hang out in our apartment on the second floor of a building on Avenida Orinoco. My sister and I would find games to play to pass the time. My parents would listen to the radio or keep watch on our porch.

The porch faced Mount Avila in the distance and the autopista – freeway – just across the  river. And one night our dad called us out onto the porch “to watch history as it unfolds.” His words.  The history? The dictator, Perez Jimenez, was fleeing the country with his entourage, siren shrieking behind them, lights spinning in the darkness, the race for the coast in full blown drama.

Jimenez was fleeing with $10 million he’d stolen from the Venezuelan treasury. & guess where he ended up?

Initially, he was exiled to the Dominica Republic. Later, he moved to Miami and I remember that one Saturday afternoon, my dad drove us past the island where he lived. At least, that’s how I remember it. Apparently he was eventually extradited back to Venezuela  & imprisoned. Once he got out, he settled in Spain, where he lived under the Franco regime.

By then, Jimenez and Venezuela were just a part of my past. Now, under the trump regime, it kind of haunts me. Same playbook. Same repression of the press and anyone who disagrees with what he’s doing. Same kind of private Gestapo, a secret police called National Security  Service that suppressed criticism and imprisoned people who opposed his rule.

The trump admin is just a more modern, 21st century fiasco.

Vote early, vote blue. It’s time we took back our democracy, our country.