Sometimes, one picture is worth a thousand words! Wednesday night’s TV screen showed
Republican
Party members sitting on their hands(?) while President Biden earnestly laid out (and recalled from his first 99 days
in office) solid actions needed now to capitalize on the opportunities
now before us for rebuilding this nation.
In my opinion, the Republicans demonstrated that evening why we are in the mess we inherited from them.
It started with the election in
2016 of an unqualified, incompetent
Republican candidate for the presidency---a man governed by values that
are anti-democratic in their essence, a man possessed by a sociopathic narcissism that prevented him
from taking any empathetic action on behalf of ordinary citizens. Donald J. Trump was called to serve.. But, with
no qualifying experience in public office, he proceeded to bumble almost
everything in sight, including:
- A pandemic virus attack
that killed over a half million people before he left office; the management
of the pandemic he had turned over
to state leaders perhaps hoping to escape any blame for the debacle.
- A whopping tax cut (and
other tax loopholes especially benefitting property developers) that overwhelmingly favored the richest
less than 1% in this country, leaving the largest number (99%) working
class and middle class folks paying for that largesse through cuts to
their healthcare, attacks on working class families through anti-union
legislation, budgetary cut backs in housing; loss of some tax deductions; hard-hit public
school budgets, mishandling of healthcare generally and of the public
health system in particular; plus,
government programs like rent subsidies, food enhancements, and
affordable child care—all these and more, took cuts or were terminated.
- all of which resulted
in stagnant wages, loss of benefits
such as a secure retirement, and even the loss of thousands of good jobs
as the economy took a plunge seen as the worst since the Great Depression.
- Response from
congressional Republicans consisted of greater support for (and
complicity in) the Trump attacks on
women, unions, immigrants, LBGTQ communities,, and upon our allies around
the globe with an unmerciful withdrawal from any responsibility for a
global response to the pandemic while mollycoddling dictatorial regimes
and dictators near and far, including those of Russia, China, N. Korea,
Turkey, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, to name a few.
- 9n the home front, Trump,
and his frenetically loyal band of sycophants in Congress, were
approaching an election that appeared to be theirs to lose. When that happened, all hell broke loose
as the pretend president attempted a takeover (coup d’état) of a duly
elected and certified Biden-Harris victory by promoting an unsupported BIG LIE
that galvanized his followers – that the election had been stolen from him
by widespread fraud engineered by Leftist Democrats. When his efforts to overturn the election,
results failed in the courts (for lack of evidence of fraud) Trump called
for his base to come to Washington DC and to prevent the Congress from
validating the Electoral College’s certification of the election results.
- The result: an attack by Far-Right extremists on
our Capitol, its inhabitants and its police force that suffered
fatalities and injuries. Although
the insurrection caused physical damage and death, the Congressional
delegations were not harmed and fulfilled their duty that same day of certifying
the election results. Trump and his
minions failed in their overthrow but nonetheless disrupted and destroyed
more than property by their attack – they also laid waste to our
ability to claim a leadership role in promoting our unique form of governing.
- They revealed the
cancer growing within our government and some organizations that seeks
overthrow of all the values and structures of democracy if given the
opportunity, and the tacit complicity of near half of the population of
this nation, many of whom still don’t understand that the very essence of
democracy and equal rights and the rule of Law has been threatened at
its core.
- Add to that sad commentary
the fact that there is going forward a movement of hate and
extermination that has its roots in our history and practices, and
that the Bumbler-in-chief and his white supremacist cohorts allowed to
fester rather than act to prevent its spread.
- We as a People now face—because
of Republican inaction legislatively but complicity in word and deed --a
Domestic Terrorist Movement of neo-Nazis, KKK, white supremacists
and other hate groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys – all Far-Right
attempts supported by fascist-style wealthy donors -- to convert our
democracy into an autocracy of Fascist killers who have already begun a
war of attrition against Jews, Latinos,
immigrants, Asian Americans, and African Americans
- Instead of embracing the
progress, the hope and the opportunities of the American Rescue Plans that
champion working and middle-income families– the Republicans sit on their hands (cans?) and tell us by
that one picture that they are not just opposers and do-nothings, they are
the very essence of the failures and flaws that haunted our past, disrupt
our present and will destroy our future.
They are the compliant leaders of BAMBOOZLING, BUMBLING AND
FUMBLING who intend to lead us all to a future that regresses all the way
back to the concepts that gave us George III and Louis XVI, Hitler and Mussolini, Franco, and Marcos;
Castro and Chavez; and now the tyrants of today, like: Xi, Putin, Erdogan,
Jung Un, the Saudi Arabian royals, Osama Bin Laden, and Donald Trump.
- You are looking at a
picture of the dismantlers of our world who support authoritarianism, not
to meet your needs, concerns, and problems, but to assure their futures as
handmaids of an absolutist state that will reward them like
successful (and unsuccessful) CEOs
of large corporations with bright baubles of riches and power.
- The screen shot tells us
all we need to know – our democracy is on the brink – it either follows
Biden-Harris and builds a re-invigorated democracy dedicated to the People
and to the long arc of a history bending toward equality, justice, and
opportunity for all; OR,
- It follows the supremacist
authoritarians to a society where hate rules, violence is rampant and
justice is tipped toward an elite that values protection of property above
protection of People’s rights; where disloyalty to leader can be anything that leader (Fuhrer)
says it is – like Vladimir Putin who declares opposition leaders must be
executed with poison or allowed to die of starvation., and a Trump who declares
absolute power over Congress by rejecting all their attempts at oversight.
- That picture is more
telling than the thirteen hundred words of this essay.
DO NOT FORGET REPUBLICANS SITTING
ON THEIR HANDS (cans?) WHEN THE PRESIDENT CALLED ON THEM TO “ACT NOW” TO
BRIGHTEN THE FUTURE FOR US ALL
DO NOT FORGET REPUBLICAN
REJECTION OF INVESTMENT IN THE PEOPLE WHILE PRETENDING TO BE CONCERNED
ABUT THE DEFICIT (which they have invariably increased when holding majority
power! – under Trump allowing an increase of over $2 trillion!).
