I’m going to try as hard as I can never to use the name of the current President of the United States again.
I don’t want to add even a scintilla of energy to the PR juggernaut that has turned that name into a household word and used it as a cover, a gaudy camouflage, to divert our attention from what the Republican Party has become in the 21st century.
It’s the Republican leadership, not just him, that has embraced the darkest, cruelest, and deadliest realms of the American psyche.
How astonishing! It’s the old familiar milquetoast GOP we’re talking about. Their image used to be that of a pasty-faced Chamber of Commerce mansplainer who lived on cottage cheese, bored his wife and kids, thought halitosis was far worse than false advertising, and believed in the biblical maxim that what’s good for business is good for the country.
The face the GOP showed to the world, its bobble-head doll, wasn’t pretty but it wasn’t drop-dead demonic either. Granted, it used to have an expression that looked like Joe McCarthy with a Richard Nixon four-o’clock shadow and a Ronald Reagan grin. Not lovely. Now, though, the Republican bobble-head is a hissing hydra with the growling faces of terrorists, cop-killing and cop-wounding insurrectionists, vile sexists, billionaire round-heel political patsies, white supremacist elitists, “Christian” nationalists, felonious thug enforcers, blithering anti-vaxxers, closet arsonists disguised as down-to-earth climate change deniers, budget-wrecking killer scrooges, and Project 2025 destroyers of absolutely everything fundamental to the survival of tens of millions of Americans.
This is the party whose leadership, with its phalanx of secretive think tanks, dithers on incoherently about being the champions of “radical common sense.”
Of course, like everything else, a political party is more than the sum of its parts. There must be many people who voted Republican last year who are merely team players, good folks when you meet them one on one, who either don’t know about or have managed to overlook the horribly grim and shady specter that their party now projects.
It’s not quite the same with the Democrats. But they’re letting their party go to the dogs, too. Their leaders subject the party’s membership to the prattle of a perpetual-motion scare machine that shamelessly pleads for money virtually every hour of every day, never explaining what it’s for, and never saying thanks. When it comes to fundraising, it’s hard to tell Republicans and Democrats apart.
Even if politics is a team sport, revelations last week about the GOP’s real agenda of draconian xenophobia, fiscal brutality and irresponsibility must have left some Republicans of conscience and good will dumbfounded and wondering how they could still belong to the GOP in 2025.
By unleashing a pack of growling executive orders that not only made heroes of violent criminals but turned MAGA into MADA with policies hell bent on Making Americans Destitute Again, the GOP’s billionaire-worshipping higher ups threw the finger at everyone in our country who isn’t white, a boy and comfortably wealthy. There’s a whole lot of them, including the not-well-to-do membership of their GOP’s own party.
Some 77 million plus American’s voted for the GOP ticket last year, 423,391 New Mexicans among them. Some 75 million plus American voted for the Democratic ticket last year, 478,802 New Mexicans among them. This is according to the Federal Election Commission. In contrast, Joe Biden beat the current president by some 7 million votes in 2020.
What’s stunning to me is that many Republican voters are apparently among the 38 million Americans, or nearly 12% of us, who live below the poverty line with annual incomes of less than $24,230 for a family of three. The poorest of the poor include female-headed households, young adults who don’t have high school diplomas, families whose head of household is unemployed and minorities, especially African Americans, according to Debt.org.
Research from the Brookings Institution shows, “that most poor people in the United States live in a community represented by a Republican.” So, when the GOP froze all federal funds last week, and then momentarily rescinded the order while threatening worse to come, millions of impoverished right-wing Americans felt the bite. Republican leadership denies that “direct assistance programs” like Medicaid and food stamps would have been affected, but who can really believe anything they say anymore? Already numerous lawsuits have been filed arguing that direct assistance would be illegally cut for some or all of the 42 million people who need food stamps and the 80 million on Medicaid. Such a freeze runs afoul of both the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution that limits federal interference in the affairs of state governments, and the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 that limits a president’s ability to thwart the will of Congress by withholding federal funding. I just don’t see how anyone can still root for a team like that.
How is it possible to cheer on the firing last week of 17 independent Inspectors General who act as government watchdogs overseeing federal agencies? Could it be that independent oversight collides with the GOP’s aim to cripple the federal establishment by appointing it’s own partisans who don’t want anyone looking over their shoulders as they sabotage the government?
How is it possible to support a political party that champions a candidate for the Secretary of Defense whose own mother thinks he abuses women? Or support a candidate for Attorney General who rode the Big Lie bandwagon claiming that Joe Biden lost the 2020 election when the numbers are clear that he won by a landslide? Or support a candidate for the director of the Office of Management and Budget who played a prominent role in creating the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that lays out a blueprint for destroying the federal government as we know it, a government that much of its own membership depends on to keep financially afloat?
It’s the job of the loyal opposition to aggressively fight against such damaging inanities. I believe it is possible to do that without empowering the circus of name calling and name adulation that’s apparently dulled the wits of so many of our fellow Americans. The ring master doesn’t own the circus. In fighting the good fight, let’s put the blame for the heartless racism, the hatred of women, and the fiscal brutality of the GOP where it belongs — on the delinquent leadership, the corporate funders, the billionaire sycophants and noxious think tanks that rule the roost of right-wing America today.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
During the first nightmarish term, I vowed that I would never use the words “President” and the name of the vile Agent Orange in the same phrase. My son, who is a patriot and anything but a conspiracist, currently living in England, sent me the link to this very interesting and troubling article strongly suggesting that there may have been significant tampering in the last election. I looked up the organization behind the report and it appears to be entirely legitimate. So what can we, the people who truly love our country, do about this? As always, you are the most informed and articulate analyst of the sad state of our beloved country.
https://youtu.be/QDWwLDejg8Y?si=fY9kbwxbK9E2mfQR
Your arrow hits the bullseye — as pretty much always/.
Consider having an alternative photo/signature for columns like this.
We have been calling him – He shall not be named.
I now refer to it as “felon 47”.
We have all created names for them. Musk Rat, T-rump, and it gets much worse. Like the apposing sports team. Typical, when we get up set we say I am not going to even say their name.
What we need more to say is We are going to make the Democratic Party Strong, show to other why we love it. But yet listen to others about what they did not like. Make sense out of it. People will return once they understand.
One friend said Trump does not like to make war, he tries to stop them. Have you ever listened to the other sides YouTubes, maybe they will give you an idea of what we did wrong!!
The biggist thing is to watch YouTubes on Narcissism, even the Bible mentions that type of person. The rat and the lier are Narcissists and there are sites that tell one how to stop them.
We need to go back to the basics. Play Chess, out maneuver them. Show strength, even though we are a peaceful party
WE CAN BE STRONG TOO
Talk to those on the other side and find out how we can bring them back to sensible thinking.
I am not afraid to say his name. They chose to burn the books, put people back in closets, But we will know when they have gone to far when they start building kilns.
Not saying a Name will not make them go away.
Remember the movie, where each person would memorize a book ?? So they could pass on wisdom. What book would you want to become? Who will you talk too next so you better understand where we went Wrong??