ArcaMax

At about 12 years of age, I began working for my father, loading bundles into the two delivery trucks used in his small business. This required that, first, I back the trucks down an alley and into the loading bay. Thus, I learned to drive going backward, which probably says something fundamental about me.

But even at 12, I didn't get stuck in reverse, as today's Republican Congress has. The GOP's autocratic ideologues and corporate toadies are spurning hard-won, economic, social, environmental and other progress made by generations of grassroots Americans. They are trying to drive our people back to Robber Baron rule and Jim Crow law.

Indeed, no progressive advance today escapes the wrath of the GOP's ideological swat squad. Consider the operatic political frenzy they're now stirring up over Post Office trucks. Yes, that ubiquitous fleet of red, white, and blue mail delivery vehicles you see on every street and rural road in America.

Those gas-powered workhorses, now 35 years old, are way overdue for replacement. Sensibly, the Postal Service is buying fuel-efficient, non-polluting, electric vehicles, which include such basics as airbags and air conditioning.

But no, squealed extreme right-wingers like Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa. She condemns the very idea of a battery-powered fleet as lefty "wokeness." So she's demanding that Congress literally defund the purchase of EVs, forcing the Postal Service to go backward to inefficient, polluting trucks fueled by Big Oil -- an industry that just happens to be a generous funder of her career.

To get a clear-eyed view of which are the best vehicles to take us way forward, don't ask a corporate-owned ideologue; ask the postal workers who drive them. Go to apwu.com.

GERRYMANDERING MEANS YOUR LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE ISN'T LOCAL ... AND ISN'T YOURS

In a 2006 documentary, I assailed Texas Republican lawmakers for ramming a brutish gerrymandering scheme into law, doing my report from a street sign in central Austin.

That sign was the exact location the GOP had used as the pinpoint for slicing up the city's one congressional district into four pieces like a pizza. Each slice radiated far out of town, merging into Republican suburbs in distant cities -- thus suppressing Austin's progressive voice in Congress.

Now here they come again, assaulting progressive voters throughout the state with a gerrymandering gang bang. At the command of President Donald Trump, our so-called "representatives" are submissively shoving millions of Texans into jerry-rigged Trump enclaves, solely to serve his political desires.

Far from being just another corrupt hyper-partisan political manipulation, this GOP ploy is stripping away America's fundamental principle of representative democracy. Instead of grassroots communities sorting out their differences and choosing their own governing representatives in local elections, political hacks in Washington and the state capital are cynically relocating people's political "locality" (with no participation at all by the people).

Yes, instead of constituents choosing their members of Congress, gerrymandering lets members choose their constituents. So "your" representative doesn't need to know you, much less serve you. Thus, the issues that Congress considers don't percolate up from local communities, but are chosen by national and state political operatives and multimillion-dollar campaign donors. It's the nationalization of local elections, ignoring the real needs of hometown people.

Why shouldn't you have a representative who's at least from your community, maybe even knows your name and perhaps gives a damn about something more constructive than Trump's anti-democratic, plutocratic agenda?

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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