The Barbarians are inside the gates.

It has taken me a long time to rebuild this site and to feel comfortable about posting again after the vicious attack on myself and the S.O. by so-called “patriotic” citizens. It was traumatic, to say the least, and I will explain it in detail when I fully bring the site back online later this month.

However, yesterday, former President Obama returned to the national political stage. Not, I am sure because he wanted to, but because he felt compelled to speak out against growing threat to our once great country by the orange monster in the White House. The monster that our attackers have given their allegiance to, in the hope that their sick, twisted, vision of America comes to pass. They, like him, need to be opposed.

In an eloquent speech, Barack Obama explained exactly why. 

I’m here today because this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us, as citizens of the United States, need to determine just who it is that we are, just what it is that we stand for. And as a fellow citizen, not as an ex-president but as a fellow citizen, I am here to deliver a simple message, and that is that you need to vote because our democracy depends on it. 

He’s not kidding. If you don’t think the nation I have given my life to the service of is in trouble, you have been asleep for the last 2 years.

This Congress has championed the unwinding of campaign-finance laws to give billionaires outside influence over our politics; systematically attacked voting rights to make it harder for young people and minorities and the poor to vote; handed out tax cuts without regard to deficits; slashed the safety net wherever it could; cast dozens of votes to take away health insurance from ordinary Americans; embraced wild conspiracy theories, like those surrounding Benghazi or my birth certificate; rejected science, rejected facts on things like climate change; embraced a rising absolutism, from a willingness to default on America’s debt by not paying our bills to a refusal to even meet, much less consider, a qualified nominee for the Supreme Court because he happened to be nominated by a Democratic president. None of this is conservative.

We should be very clear for the information of those worthless, red hat wearing, souls who think they have the right to interfere in someone else’s life: THIS IS NOT NORMAL. THIS IS NOT HOW AMERICA IS SUPPOSED TO BE.

And by the way, the claim that everything will turn out okay because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren’t following the president’s orders—that is not a check. I’m being serious here. That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work. These people aren’t elected. They are not accountable. They are not doing us a service by actively promoting 90 percent of the crazy stuff that is coming out of this White House and then saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’re preventing the other 10 percent.’ That’s not how things are supposed to work! This is not normal. These are extraordinary times, and they are dangerous times. (Emphasis mine)

But here’s the good news: In two months, we have the chance—not the certainty, but the chance—to restore some semblance of sanity to our politics. Because there is actually only one real check on bad policy and abuses of power, and that’s you. You and your vote.

Whether you believe it or not, the facts are still the facts.  “Without some common baseline of facts, without a willingness to admit new information, and concede that your opponent is making a fair point, and that science and reason matter — then we’re going to keep talking past each other, making common ground and compromise impossible.”

The simple fact is that there is far more misery in America than there needs to be.  And it doesn’t have to be that way. Trump did not create the selfishness that made this misery happen, but he did weaponize it- and he is using it to destroy both our present and our future. All Obama did here was point out the sickness that has infected America and placed its very survival in jeopardy.  ” When it started, its various manifestations, and how it now rages out of control, devouring the higher functions of the collective [American] brain.”

There is still time to cure the disease, but the window of opportunity is narrow. And don’t kid yourself, the MAGA morons are more than willing to trade a vibrant, prosperous country for an authoritarian oligarchy. Just so long as they get to be the authoritarians. That they will suffer as much as the rest of us, has not dawned on them yet.

Watch the whole thing here. It is worth your time.