The Witness Chronicles, May, 21, 2024
The GOP virus
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Something is Seriously Wrong With the Republican Party
It’s not just Donald Trump
It’s hard to know where to start with this one, not because there are hints here and there but because it’s rampant. The GOP seems to have succumbed to some kind of disease that renders once sensible people mad. And it gets worse every day.
The obvious cause is the former President, but the fact that the party is following his lead no matter how scary and weird it gets is extremely disturbing. A Governor angling for the VP job brags in a book about shooting her dog, thinking that will get her street cred. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, third in line for the Presidency in an emergency, skips out on his job to appear in court supporting a guy accused of screwing porn a star while married and covering it up to win an election.
And he brings a cadre of prominent Republicans with him, all dressed in Trump duds like a bunch of frat boys, and then proceeds to make statements that Trump cannot make because of a gag order.
House member Marjorie Taylor Greene reverts to personally insulting a colleague during a congressional hearing, a week after trying to get her own House leader fired for working across the aisle, which is how things actually get done in DC.
But with this Party getting things done is not what they want, in fact they openly oppose any positive attempt to govern.
Many party members support the dictatorial leader of Russia, a country we have been enemies with for 75 years, after he is accused of war crimes.
Those vying for the role of Trump’s running mate are refusing to accept the results of an election that hasn’t even taken place yet, basically admitting that they would support a dictatorial regime under Trump.
The major policy arm of the Party, the Heritage Foundation, has authored a 125 page document detailing how the party will take apart our democracy piece by piece, put immigrants in concentration camps, install judges that will not enforce the rule of law and rebuild white male supremacy across the country.
It goes on and on and we have not even seen Trump tried for the serious and potentially treasonous crimes he is charged with, as his appointed Judges stall his trials over and over again.
The really scary thing about all of this, if it is not already scary enough, is that all of this is done in the open and on the record. We even have a senior Supreme Court Justice displaying an upside down flag in his yard, signifying support for a failed insurrection, then lamely blaming his wife for it.
The willing loss of dignity is appalling, but a whole segment of the voting public appears to either support it or doesn’t seem to care.
Some of these actions seem designed to fail on a grand scale, particularly the draconian anti abortion and women’s rights laws states on the right are enacting or trying to. This despite clear evidence that this action alone could cost them the election.
In fact they are actively preparing to ignore the election results and install a guy who everyone knows cannot be trusted, may be losing his mind to dementia, lies so much he cannot remember all of them, and viciously turns on his own at the smallest whim.
Loyalty, truth, and civility are mocked as weakness, as the media tries to pretend there is balance between the two sides in the election. They are complicit in empowering these people by reporting these outrageous stories as though they are normal. They are far from normal.
If a few party members have retained their perspective and disavowed all this, finding it repugnant and un-American, they are shunned and powerless. Yet even many of them will not turn against the Party.
As for the official Party apparatus, the Republican National Committee, it has become entirely a Trump operation under the leadership of his daughter-in-law, who has dedicated it solely to raising money for Trump, with most of it going to mounting legal bills already totaling an estimated $100 million plus.
None of that money is going towards the campaign and they have dismantled their once formidable get out the vote operations around the country, essentially starving their own state and local candidates. Yet wealthy donors continue to pour money directly into Trump’s pockets.
All of this leads to one inescapable conclusion: they have decided to abandon democracy and any pretense of decency in the pursuit of power and greed. Why bother actually running a campaign if your intent is to simply seize power at the end, through violence if necessary?
I wish I were making this up or even finding myself caught up in conspiracy theories, but as I stated earlier, this is all on the record and out in the open. The cynicism of it all is breathtaking, but history tells us this is how great countries fail and we are watching the playbook unfold in real time.
We can only hope there are enough decent people not caught up in this collective insanity to stop this in November and after. I still have faith in that, but that faith is being chipped away at with every news day.
~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your support with a paid subscription helps make that happen.
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“Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in all of them. A Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is capture by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king.” — Mark Twain
History repeats itself. The Republican party is History. And so is our country.
This is what you get when a major source of news i(Fox) s permitted to lie about anything and everything and have a devoted group of viewers. You also have oligarch-funded podcasters and social media owners dedicated to making money off disinformation. It's just capitalism--may the loudest voices win--because that's what America is all about- the sport.