Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   7/27/2021

Off the grid; pure camping pleasure

A pristine Cascade lake, our “go to” spot of natural beauty for reconnecting to nature, has given us 30 years of such experiences. Changes have required adaptation; our favorite campsites are reservable, requiring a 6-month look ahead to when we’ll “for sure” arrive. The traditional approach—arrive on Sunday when campers are leaving and take the best available—has given way to online maps, site descriptions and limits, and online bookings and emails.

Two weeks at a campground can be a window into “normal” America (we love The Bernie Mac show and how he calls viewers “America” before comedic rants about family, kids, etc.). Left to their own devices, camping equipment and styles, whether an overnight, weekend or extended stay, folks are there to have a good time with zero unpleasantness.

What conversations we overhear or engage in come without “politics or religion” and typically include things seen and done elsewhere, who else is camping and where they’re from. A long-time friend, fellow skier and paddle board fisherman, who we first met when he was a campground host, gives us some good-natured banter over our Trump-supporting thoughts vs. his NPR-soaked ideas. Since he and I have endured hip shots or surgeries, my long hair and bandana earn me the “MAGA hippie” label, he’s the “left-wing hippie.”

While White campers do predominate the scene, we’ve seen and talked to those of Samoan, Asian and Hispanic descent without a clue about their politics. What we do see is what any “normal” person would observe: girls, boys, men, women, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. There is no middle position when DNA science and born physical anatomy are considered; on their own, girls and boys become women and men.

Nobody much cares what choices adults make regarding their friends and intimates. Yet, nobody is ok with having their private thoughts and principles damned as inferior, needing “re-education” into philosophies and beliefs they know to be nonsense—and known to be nonsense for all of human history.

Men aren’t women and can’t become women, only men with artificially-added female features (and vice versa); no man can give birth to a child; no woman can be a father, only a self-chosen “father figure” to a child. A child loved by 2 women or 2 men is just that, and may or may not suffer confusion later in life, as might a child in a dysfunctional family; either situation may be healthy or not, depending on variables.

What is not healthy—an abomination against free speech and religion—is for secular, political authorities to tell religious medical, adoption or humanitarian groups that they must set their beliefs aside and place children with same-sex couples, employ homosexuals, or pay for/provide abortion or sex-change procedures. A federal judge just so ruled in support of religious freedom. Doctors deserve the same.

That was one brave judge; there are those who will twist my words, deny my right to legitimate opinions, and project their own hatred of conservatives, saying we hate gay people. The political left, blind to their own viciousness, intolerance and hatred, will target such judges.

Vile, emotional threats—while usually not followed upon—do have the intended result: to intimidate constitutional judges from saying “no” to overreaching laws and policies that illegally usurp those put in place by the Framers. Even the rulings of the Supreme Court are tempered so as not to upset the legal framework of leftist/socialist laws and policies; the Supreme Court won’t even step up to hear such challenges out of timidity in the face of criticism.

Election fraud, especially fraud that could, if reversed, change election results, has even the highest courts reluctant to make constitutional rulings. They don’t want another “Bush v. Gore,” even though when the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, it was upholding Florida law and the concept of “equal treatment” that Gore’s minions violated by selectively recounting Gore-friendly counties.

Watching states rack up large Trump leads on election night, some of us recalled the thinly-veiled threat that late-arriving mail-in ballots would swing it to Biden.

When it was revealed that 1) counting stopped in crucial states with Trump leads, 2) windows were covered to prevent observers from seeing the process, 3) tens or hundreds of thousands of ballots appeared giving Biden just the lead he needed, after which 4) a normal Trump/Biden mix resumed; and when 5) the Supremes refused to examine the evidence—real evidence—we knew the fix was in.

I speak for most Trump supporters who, in spite of knowing all of the above to be true, would have been satisfied if actual forensic audits—not just repeating the tabulation done the first time on the same pieces of paper—showed that each of the states in question (NV, AZ, GA, PA, MI, WI) had actual Biden wins. Maybe by more, maybe by less; maybe Trump lost some but won others. However, a mere 43,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin were all that denied Trump an Electoral College tie.

Some of the Maricopa County (AZ) audit results cast a lot of doubt on Biden’s thin 10,500-vote win. Reportedly, Arizona Senate’s hearing showed 168,000 fraudulent ballots printed on illegal paper, 74,000 mail-in ballots received that were never mailed, 11,000 voters were added to the voter rolls “after” the election and still voted, access logs to the machines were wiped, and the election server was hacked during the election. We are willing to believe it was all legit but the burden of proof is now on the Democrats—if you don’t want us to believe you stole a state—don’t act like you stole it and now don’t want to get caught.