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Our GOP state representative wants you to believe the DFL legislation passed last session will “… transform Minnesota alright -— right into the economic and crime-ridden desert of a third world country!” So our state representative is now a MAGA Republican?

Adrian Fontes is the Arizona Secretary of State who describes their election deniers quest to reverse the 2020 Arizona presidential vote as follows: “They’re not election deniers. They’re MAGA fascists.”

Luckily, here in Minnesota, Steve Simon is our Secretary of State who can report massive DFL legislative victories for democracy. This includes legislation for election worker protection, national popular vote, automatic voter registration, pre-registration for high school students, anti-disinformation restrictions, expanded access to voting on tribal lands, restoring voting rights to 55,000 people who have left prison behind and nonpartisan youth voter outreach.

These new voter protections and changes look like American democracy in action and certainly not what you would see in a third word authoritarian/fascist dictatorship.

The Minneapolis Tribune editorial column of Aug. 13 demands: “GOP must stop attacking government.” That column, plus a quote from professor Naomi Oreskes’ book — “The Big Myth” — addresses the blubbering columns of our local MAGA Republicans:

“It is time we rejected the myth of market fundamentalism and re-embraced the proven tools we have at our disposal … Ronald Reagan was wrong. Our most consequential problems have arisen not because of too much government, but because of too little.”

It does appear that our local GOP columns are playing to the fascist playbook. In World War II, the U.S. War Department addressed the troops questions about what are we fighting for? The War Department explained: “Fascism … is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social and cultural life of the state. The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people … They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law. Fascism treats women as mere breeders … They play political, religious, social and economic groups against each other … They gain power under the guise of super-patriotism and super Americanism.”

Sadly, the local GOP supports actor Jim Caviezel’s new QAnon movie as Mr. Caviezel has for years been a prominent promoter of the false, violent QAnon conspiracy theory — the baseless claim that an international cabal of elites is abusing and killing children to extract a substance called adrenochrome.

Promoting a fascist and QAnon agenda appears to be coming from the local GOP leadership.

The DFL passed legislative agenda took a giant step to combat the GOP MAGA fascist agenda and especially to save the greatest democracy on the planet.

Ted Hinnenkamp
Albert Lea