Hampton Roads Community News
The 2022 Midterms: Attack of The (F)Right
By Sean C. Bowers
Local Voices Columnist
New Journal and Guide
I write this before the 2022 mid-terms have been decided, not knowing which party has taken control of our nation, for the good of “the-will-of-the-people.” The optimist in me hopes that the better angels of our nature came through in flying colors to save the day with resounding unprecedented voter participation delivering an overwhelming Republican knockout “get-outta-here.” Let’s finally bury the “big lies” of a stolen 2020 election with reasoned and measured candidates delivering a gigantic “butt-whooping.”
Yet, the realist in me knows that even when the Dems win honestly, the Right will contest and not accept the results, as their new playbook calls for. It is one of many of their last acts of democracy-killing-chilling.
Should the unthinkable transpire and the Right win control over one or both the House and the Senate, I am unsure of the nation’s next steps.
Either way, we as Americans, placed ourselves here, on the edge of insanity, on the brink, tail out, by toying with 45 for the last seven years, by thinking he somehow wasn’t that bad, that dangerous, that sexist, that racist, that classist, that insidious, that incurable, that detrimental, that dishonest that fatal to our democracy. We became co-owners of 45’s new American slums, and “bums” of our former selves.
When you play with fire too long you get burned. In this case we have all been branded numerous times by the 45 and Right. Their intentions to break America are clear, as they believe it their God-given right to break, but never fix or repair the nation and all because they didn’t get their way and allowed a child to wear big boy pants, when he had never been never formerly potty trained.
The saddest day will be when America is so broken, she is unrecognizable to the rest of us. Realization day will be when we understand that it is we who have broken our own house, destroyed our own home of the brave, and degenerated our own special place in the world’s history.
America has always been a blessed nation. Now we embark on finding out the hard way, what (we didn’t know that) we took for granted: our free speech, free choices and our basic freedoms and privacy.
Let us refuse to fear those who would deny us our basic freedoms. Fearing them is exactly what they want. Fear has always been the cowards of the Right’s, chosen “go-to” tool. The hooded KKK, riding at night, never revealing themselves. Now the anonymity of the internet allows bullies to further try and intimidate others through their tweet-dumb-full-force-full-force-nonstop-QaNON, until they drop.
Under the cover of over a billion dollars in DARK MONEY, the Right has stoked the dying embers of Civil War fires at every one of their talking point issues (for 50 years) out of their fears until here we are.
Even now some will openly proudly say they want to see old people beaten with hammers. Message to the Right; you don’t have enough hammerheads. Eventually you will come to understand, you broke a good thing. The far Right wants a Civil-war they can’t win even if they had all the hammers in the world. Finding unification points of light now becomes the challenge for us all.
America is not about, who (in their minds) can’t make money fast enough off others or who can’t step over those in need, fast enough. She is about setting a better world example than we currently are offering, more like projecting-protecting.
We shall all be made to now actually document and track, earning the few things we do get. Those rights we have lost, may never be retrieved. I hope to still be here writing for the New Journal & Guide in my twenty-fifth year, God willing, fighting the good fight for good versus evil, honoring diversity, honestly, with integrity. Faithfully Mrs. Andrews and the family of the NJ&G staff will continue to publish “ … that no good cause shall lack a champion and evil shall CONTINUE to thrive unopposed.,” (Thank you to all as this is my 400th published article milestone for the NJ&G.) The pledge remains the same. We are American, we shall never be vanquished for our beliefs and our God-given rights as long as we draw beaths of the Divine Providence’s amazing grace. Fear Not!.
Sean C. Bowers has written the last 25 years, as a White Quaker Southern man, for the nations’ third oldest Black Newspaper, the New Journal and Guide, of Norfolk, VA, about overcoming racism, sexism, classism, and religious persecution. Some of his latest NJ&G articles detailing the issues can found by searching “Sean C. Bowers” on the NJ&G website. Contact him directly on social media at Linkedin.com or by email V1ZUAL1ZE@aol.com NNPA 2019 Publisher of the Year, Brenda H. Andrews (NJ&G 35 years) has always been his publisher.
