Who speaks for the 1,100 Alaskans who have died? Not these right-wing politicians
According to the official statistics, which are likely on the low side, nearly 1,100 people have died of COVID-19 in Alaska in the last two years.
Most of them have died within the past year. And most of them had refused to get vaccinated, following the con artists and carnival barkers who peddled endless lies.
The dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, Dr. Ashish Jha, recently told NPR that with more widespread vaccinations, “at least 300,000 Americans who have perished would still be with us. It's tragic."
The tragedy is lost on Sen. Dan Sullivan, Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, Assembly member Jamie Allard and Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka.
At the anti-vaccine rally in Anchorage Sunday, the right-wing Alaska politicians disgraced themselves by not paying respects or even acknowledging the deadly toll that the pandemic has had on Alaska families. They didn’t mention the 900,000 Americans who have died and how many hundreds of thousands died from disinformation.
Allard told the crowd, “I want everybody to look to the left of you.And I want everybody to look to the right of you. See those people? Those are your battle buddies.”
She also gave a campaign plug for Tshibaka, the Washington, D.C. insider who is running against Washington, D.C. insiders.
Tshibaka distinguished herself with a campaign sermon/speech captured on this right-wing Facebook page about eight minutes into the proceedings.
Allard brought up the Rev. Tshibaka to stand in the back of the flatbed pickup in the Cabela’s parking lot to give a speech and lead the assembled in prayer. This was not long after the crowd chanted “Let’s Go Brandon,” which means “Fuck Joe Biden.”
Tshibaka launched into her standard campaign speech and the fable of her “homeless” parents, who lived briefly in a tent in 1975, four years before Tshibaka was born. This is the backstory Tshibaka created to contrast herself with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, daughter of a banker.
“Who wrote my story? Alaskans did. The Alaskans on the oil field. The Alaskans over at ATU in my dad’s maintenance shop.The Alaskans in the mobile park who taught my parents how to feed me because they were a little young to have a kid. It’s the people in this crowd. We write each other’s stories.”
“Who wrote Lisa’s story?”
Murkowski doesn't understand Alaskans because of who her parents are, according to Tshibaka. I don’t know who wrote this campaign script for Tshibaka, but it’s not going to work.
She claims Murkowski, “doesn’t feel it when she votes for over 90 percent of Biden’s radical nominees. The same people who pushed that radical shot mandate. Biden imposed on millions of Americans bodies without their consent and at the duress of losing of their jobs. When you impose your will on someone’s body without their consent what does that sound like?”
Tshibaka said of herself, “I ended up pursuing a public service career, of the people, by the people, for the people. I’m an anti-swamp bureaucracy whisperer.”
At this point, the whisperer was shouting: ”All of those things that we do not support in Alaska. So I just decided that the next D.C. insider that I’m gonna hold accountable is Lisa Murkowski.”
Equally fraudulent as her homeless fable is her claim that she decided to run against Murkowski because the senator backed Deb Haaland as Secretary of Interior in early 2021. Tshibaka was telling people in Juneau in early 2020 that she was going to run against Murkowski.
Tshibaka’s campaign is all about tapping into the anger of some Alaskans.
“We are not being listened to. Yes. People 4,000 miles away in the Beltway in D.C. do not hear us in Alaska. Everybody believes this. But we are sending a loud and clear message and yet they continue to march forward with Biden’s business-busting, border-bungling, crime cascading, defense-decimating, energy-annihilating, gun-grabbing” agenda, etc., etc., etc.
“I’m done with this. Who’s fighting for us?”
“It’s not the leaders back there. Where did our American dreams go?”
“When normal people who’d rather be left alone start running for Congress it’s because there’s a problem. That’s what happened. My parents moved here before I was born. They had a dream in their hearts. It didn’t go according to plan. They ended up living in a tent in Russian Jack Spring Park. We’d call that homeless. But my mom got a job up on the Slope, two weeks on, two weeks off, changed the course of our destiny.”
In time, Tshibaka got around to saying, “We owe our truckers more.”
“Who brought us our groceries? Who brought us our packages? The truckers did. The truckers did. We owe them more.”
She said her daughter asked, “Mom, why aren’t the grocery shelves full?”
“Because the truckers aren’t trucking. Nor should they. I stand with the truckers. We stand in solidarity with anything that stands for freedom. Anyone who stands for freedom. Because it’s not about Kelly. It’s not even about Lisa. It’s about us. And until they start listening to us, we haven’t done enough. Cuz we stand together. We’ve always stood together. This is what Iditarod’s about. This is what Alaska’s about. And I swear to you America is following in our footsteps, we are leading the way.”
A few seconds later, with little in the way of transition, she moved to the sermon part of her speech, which was not much different than the political rant that preceded it.
“So shall we pray?” she said. At that, the crowd bowed their heads.
“Alright, let’s pray. God Almighty we thank you that our founders got it right. We have inalienable rights that come from you, they cannot be taken away—life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness—and when you put life and liberty together that gives us medical freedom. Thank you. But we also know that we have to fight for it. That just because you gave it to us doesn’t mean that everyone just observes it. And so today we thank you that we come together.”
“You say whenever two or more are gathered in your name you are there so be with us today. May your grace cover us, may you protect us. May everyone drive out safely. Lord we pray that your leaders, that you’ve appointed, you say you’ve sent leaders in places, may they listen and take note. May their hearts be softened to the cries of the people. That they would yield.”
“We pray that all the leaders in Canada from the top down would yield to the cries of the truckers, to the pleas of the people, to the rights that need to be respected, that there would be peace in the land. I pray for peace across North America, from the north to the south across all borders, across all highways, across all people. I pray there will be unity in this land. I pray for the respect of our medical freedom and liberty.”
“I pray that our grocery stores would be filled again and not out of tyranny, but out of liberty. I pray that us standing on the sidelines would step into the game, that we would not be dictated to because we’ve been imposed upon, but that we would be united with. That people never thought about stepping up before would say, you know what it’s worth it, you modeled that for us God, you paid the ultimate price.”
“May we follow in that model and say, ‘It is worth it to lay down our lives for our friends because greater love has no one than this.’ And so today we stand together, we say we might not know each other fully but we love each other completely.”
“We ask for freedom, you set us free. Amen.”
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