Texas Libre

Protests erupted in Cuba Sunday, spurred by the economic crisis left from the pandemic, shortages in basic goods, and clampdowns on civil liberties. Cuban protesters are demanding that President Miguel Diaz-Canel step down. Cubans are demanding to live in a democracy. Meanwhile, Democrats in Texas are also demanding to live in a democracy.

Cubans want democracy to come to their island nation. Democrats in Texas are also on an island. Democrats are fighting to keep Republicans from stealing our democracy.

Democracy is in danger in the United States.

The Donald Trump presidency was an attempt to establish fascism in the United States. Even while he was in the White House, Donald Trump claimed he deserved a third term because Democrats “spied on him.” He downplayed elections and told us they would be fraudulent before they even happened. He and his supporters created the Big Lie he won the election and it was stolen from him. Finally, they tried to overturn the election. These people who call themselves “Constitutionalists” attempted to stop the Constitutionally-mandated certification of the election with a bloody coup to install Donald Trump as a dictator. White nationalist MAGA terrorist fucknuts attacked the Capitol because democracy worked and it didn’t give them what they wanted. Donald Trump is currently trying to make a martyr out of the terrorist Capitol Police shot and killed while she was trying to break into an area to attack members of Congress.

Ashli Babbitt was an anti-American terrorist.

And now, the GOP response to a democratically-held election that’s been judged as the most successful of all time, is to decrease democracy.

Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote based on the Big Lie there was rampant voter fraud in 2021, which is bizarre to claim since a lot of Republicans won races in that election too. Republicans are trying to make it harder for black people to vote.

When Republicans defend these voter-suppression laws, they only talk about voter IDs and they leave out all the other restrictions like limiting voting hours, days to vote, limiting mail-in voting, and even making it illegal to hand a voter a bottle of water. While being crazy in love with voter IDs, Republicans do NOT want a system of federal voter IDs.

What happens when you demand that every dark-skinned voter have an ID in order to vote…and then they fuck everything up by actually getting IDs?

State Republicans aren’t just trying to make it harder for minorities to vote. They’re also giving Republican-controlled legislatures more power over election results. They’re taking control away from local election boards in cities and counties, and giving it to Republicans. So let’s say in 2028, Kamala Harris beats Ivanka Trump in a specific voting district that wins her that state. With these laws, a Republican legislature might say, oh there’s fraud in that district so let’s just go ahead and give it to Nepotism Barbie. As Donald Trump screamed while committing election fraud in Georgia, “Find me the votes.” In the future, Republicans will “find” the votes.

In Arizona right now, they’re still recounting despite the fact it won’t overturn that state’s results. Who’s doing the counting? Republicans who are part of a fucknut company full of Trump supporters. While Republicans are screaming there shouldn’t be a “partisan” investigation into the January 6 terrorist attack, they’re fine with there being partisan recounts. Partisanship is bad, partisanship is good, partisanship is bad…make up your fucking minds, fucknuts. The ballots in Maricopa County have already been recounted…twice before. This current partisan recount has been going on for over three months which means they keep getting the same results. Joe Biden won. Trump lost. Three months!

Another big lie is that Republicans care about democracy. They do not. They care about the cult. Democracy did not give them the fascist dictator they wanted so the response is to get rid of democracy. One way to do this, when not storming a capitol building, is to hire a partisan investigation firm with no actual experience counting ballots to spend three months counting ballots. To be fair, they are Republicans for whom counting may be difficult. I would trust a count from Sesame Street’s The Count (and a one, ah-ah-ah) more than I’d trust a count from a Republican (duh-duh-duh).

Texas Democrats have fled Texas to stop Republicans from killing democracy. The state legislature needs a quorum to conduct state business. If the Democrats are not there, Republicans don’t have a quorum and they can’t vote to kill democracy. Governor Greg Abbott, who also wants to use state money to finish Trump’s racist border wall instead of rebuilding Texas’ energy infrastructure, is threatening to arrest the Democrats when they return…which is a sure fire way to convince them to return.

Democrats, don’t forget what happened to Alexei Nevalny.

Texas Democrats are also hoping to appeal to Congress to pass a voting rights measure to kill the democracy-killing efforts in Texas. Republicans in Congress are using the filibuster to prevent Democrats there from passing anything, like saving democracy. If you’re a Republican and you’re upset that Texas Democrats ran out of the state to prevent Republicans from having a quorum, think of it like a filibuster.

Democrats are trying to save democracy while Republicans are the bad guys trying to kill it. Republicans are horrible, vile, disgusting, racist, ugly, nasty, despicable, knuckle-dragging democracy-hating cult-worshipping fascist troglodytes…and they smell too. Ew.

Cuba, here’s a piece of advice: If you get democracy, keep Republicans away from it. They ruin everything. Will Cuba have more democratic freedom in the future than Texas? Probably, as long as they prevent those Trump MAGAt goons from conducting three-month recounts. Ah-ah-ah.

Creative note: I normally hate cartoons like this. You know, where one thing is mistaken for another. You can usually see the punchline coming from a mile away. But, I gave into it this time because I really liked correlating democracy in Cuba and Texas.

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