“Let Freedom ring” is a soaring proclamation of our free destiny in our National Anthem. Within the confines of their own personal aspirations, Republicans have given it their own interpretation

Their idea of freedom overrides the rights of everyone else: not to wear a mask during a deadly pandemic and not to require vaccinations, for example. It even encompasses the right to violently storm America’s Capitol building to overturn an election. It overrides the common good, adds great risk to the lives of the under-12 unvaccinated, even trivializes the lives and welfare of the Capitol Police.

And the GOP execution of its agenda is often couched in 2^nd Amendment enforcement language, like tribal war. The freshest threatening reference was the Larry Elder (who wants to replace California governor Newsome) website regarding the Newsome recall, the image of an “ammo box” not a “ballot box.”

Their cause is personal: their own privilege, their own control – not anything noble, and certainly not America’s cause.

For them, “Let Freedom ring” is a personal anthem not a National Anthem.

I hope I’m wrong, but evidence strongly points to a bitter truth in coming national elections. There is a good chance that Republicans will take over Congress, another step toward total supremacy. That event will be detrimental to our welfare and to our freedom.

It’s something we don’t like to talk about, especially for a country once having the promise of a free nation to emulate.

But the truth is that over the years we did very little to assure the continuance of our democracy, to the extent that we have a Republican leadership that serves a shrinking minority of voters. Due to the electoral college system, the last two Republican presidents were elected with a minority of the popular vote except in the aftermath of 9/11. Factually speaking, GOP Senators haven’t represented a majority since 1996.

Furthermore, a majority of states are entrenched with Republican leaders, kept there by extreme partisanship, manipulation, and gerrymandering. In lockstep – and with the support of Dark Money, much from large, Fortune 500 corporations – they are pledged to suppress and even replace the vote. To help cement their control, ruthlessly bending the rules, Republican Mitch McConnell personally packed the courts with radical right-wing judges.

If the United States chose its leaders in free and fair elections, Republicans would be firmly out of power. Sadly Democratic leaders have been too timid and self-serving on their own.

The democratic solution, the “For the People Act,” is strangled in the Senate by a procedure, the filibuster, which Republicans use freely and ruthlessly.

In case you have not been paying much attention to what Republicans have done and openly say, they intend to take control of the federal government and use their power to make their enemies pay. Who are their enemies? Actually, anyone who does not do their bidding.

How do I know? I listen to what they do and what they say.

In case you didn’t hear him, Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House, and in line to become Speaker of the House, threatened to make telecon and social media companies pay. He meant Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. They would pay when he becomes Speaker after the next election if they comply with the January 6^th committee investigating the Trump-inspired insurrection of the Capitol.

An idle threat? Probably not.

The head of the Republican Party, proclaimed such even after he fomented the insurrection. Donald Trump, pretty much made the claim – ahead of the November presidential election – that the election would be rigged.

He vociferously voiced the Big Lie, that Trump won, after he lost handily. His followers, Republican leaders and base, openly suggested on social media taking arms to wrest control after Biden’s victory.

Very few took this seriously.

Any political party that supports the Big Lie and a president who leaves not only in disgrace but also with a violent insurrection on his hands, is capable of anything — aiding and abetting a deadly pandemic, soliciting the aid of foreign government for his own election, and another violent insurrection, for example.

One has to assume that death and suffering of Capitol officers and of pandemic victims, all are collateral damage in the Republican attempt to gain or stay in power. It’s even beyond White Supremacy, maybe even beyond divine right in the Republican mind.

In plain terms, it is a turn toward fascism.

At the local level, we often feel insulated, that it doesn’t affect us. They didn’t come for me. That is how fascism starts, whether you have a long history of democracy or not.

If you have somehow effectively shut politics off from your life and feel unaffected, the oppression of Republican fascism will ring out your freedoms soon enough.