Salon: Weaponizing Republicans' Words
I saw this coming.
I don't remember the exact year, I'd say probably 1992 or 1993. I was driving home from visiting a friend in the hospital in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. It was sixty miles and the Ozarks are thinly populated with few towns large enough to have radio stations. The FM station I was listening to was fading out, and I couldn't find another decent station so I flipped over to the AM side of the dial, and picked up a talk show in the middle of its hour long broadcast.
The whiny-voiced commentator was droning on about everything that was wrong with the Clinton administration. It was mostly a run-down of conservative speculation about all of the bad things that would now happen as a result of Clinton's presidency. Nothing that he said ever came about, it was the kind of speculation aimed at scaring people who wouldn't be frightened by what was really happening. It bordered on hate speech in a few places, the voice not hiding its owners contempt for Clinton.
But the last half of the program was what kept me from changing the dial. Like many Americans, I was kind of naive about the extent that outright lies could be broadcast on the radio. But this guy was laying out plans to use democratic institutions to undermine democracy. He pushed for far right wing extremists to avoid any kind of compromise, and use the power of their elected office to undermine government. He was a huge proponent of gerrymandering, encouraging Republicans in power to redraw maps that shut out their political opposition and then fight in the courts to keep it from being undone. He advocated for voting rights to be extended to property and business owners only, and no one should be allowed to vote if they didn't own property or pay property tax.
My first thought was, "This guy is some kind of raving lunatic. Why does this radio station broadcast this tripe?" My second thought was that if this stuff caught on, it could create unimaginable chaos and to me, it sounded like some kind of intentional foreign plot to undermine the United States using its own government power to do so.
Oh, the guy's name? Rush Limbaugh.
And Look What's Happened
How it happened that a failed radio disc jockey, a guy who wasn't highly successful at putting an electronic arm with a needle in it on a plastic disc and telling the listeners the name of the song and the artist, could become one of the most influential media pundits of Republicanism, hijacking a political party and turning it into what is mostly a collection of extremist elements, is as grotesque as how it was that a failed postcard painter and homeless Vienna vagrant became the Fuhrer of Germany.
And what we have is exactly unimaginable chaos. Look at the news cycle. Eight people, who dressed in casual clothes and shoes and headed out for some shopping at a cookie-cutter, suburban outlet mall did not go home, murdered because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And while those images appeared on the screen, the corruption of the Republicans nominated to the nation's highest court, most notably Clarence Thomas, accepting massive financial gifts and failing to disclose them, just grows like a genie coming out of a bottle. Thomas' confirmation hearing was cluttered with evidence of his lack of the kind of ethics expected of court justices, including allegations of sexual harassment which have since been confirmed as accurate.
Limbaugh, who was a supporter of Thomas, insisted on ignoring his lack of ethics and the sexual harassment, criticism of which he compared to "lynching," which was an intentional downplaying of the terror endured by African Americans in the South in their efforts to secure justice, pushed his "no compromise" position supporting his confirmation. That opened the door to another confirmation nightmare, placing another justice on the court amid credible accusations of even worse sexual abuse.
The former failed President 45 himself, now indicted in a scandal involving paying off a pornography star with whom he had an affair, is also engaged in a rape trial. Had he been a Democrat, the caterwauling would be endless, with Republicans falling all over each other to mark the man guilty with no presumption of innocence, and completely write him off. I really don't know why more Democrats aren't doing the same, and taking full advantage of the opportunity, except that something like this, which would have been a political earthquake twenty years ago now barely gets a yawn.
The substance of this is nothing compared to the real danger, not only to national security, but to our whole constitutional democracy, that culminated in an attempted coup against the United States on January 6, 2021. Are we so desensitized to all of the carnage of kids in schools, shoppers in a mall, people watching a fourth of July parade, and all of the corruption and bribery that the newscasters reel off hour after hour without much emotion or emphasis that the impact and significance of January 6th will be lost on us? Or, what may even be unimaginably worse than that, the documents that were illegally transported and stored at Mar-a-Lago in the failed former President's possession, done at his orders?
Nothing that the Republican party ever stood for had an appeal or attraction for me. In my lifetime, the Republican presidencies were mediocrities, in terms of achievement that strengthened the country and benefitted the people. But as media coverage expanded, in terms of both coverage and the amount of time spend on the air, the political philosophy pushed by Rush Limbaugh, who was imitated by almost everyone else in right wing media who came along after his 1984 debut, has brought us to the place where achieving ends that are far right and extremist, justifies lying, inventing conspiracy theories, deceit, corruption and the subversion of government authority and the rule of law, even if it involves shooting kids in schools, worshippers in church or shoppers in a mall.
The Second Civil War is Here
We have tended to imagine a second civil war in this country in the same way that the first one materialized. I would place the start date around 2010, when Republicans, following Limbaugh's blueprint, took advantage of Democrats sitting out a mid-term election to put themselves in position to gerrymander state legislative districts and congressional districts in as many as 30 of the 50 states, to secure for themselves what had been an illusive majority. The relentless attack continues as county supervisor boards, school boards, city councils and other levels of government are captured.
Evangelical Christian churches and denominations were early battlefronts. Abortion, and LGBTQ rights are single issues that activate voters, but Christian nationalism has always been simmering beneath the surface. The susceptibility of Christian churches to infiltration by deceivers who know the lingo and how to "baptize" an agenda and make it appear as part of the gospel itself goes back to the early church. One of the early Apostles, Jude, wrote an epistle warning about intruders who would bring in destructive heresy in the form of false doctrine, tempting leaders with political influence. In spite of hair-raising immorality and corruption, many Christians abandon the principles of the Christian gospel and throw Jesus under the bus in their support for Trumpism.
The attack on the integrity of the election process, which actually began when Trump was nominated the first time, and claimed that if Hillary Clinton won, it could only be because of massive voter fraud, is another front of this civil war. I heard a radio pundit, one of Limbaugh's wannabees, outlining the ways that President Obama could stop Trump from getting to the White House, including mentioning that then Vice-President Biden only needed to find a way to get alternative electors into place, or declare martial law on some pretense of "national emergency," and simply stop the inauguration.
The judiciary has been targeted and everywhere and every time Republicans are in charge of appointing judges, they find the most extremists they can gather. It's difficult, though not impossible, to find Ivy League-trained judges who will set aside the law to legislate conservative issues from the bench, so they are relying, increasingly, on those trained in the law schools operated by white Christian nationalists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, both of whom controlled universities that cranked out high volumes of law student graduates with the goal of packing courts with them. Look at their resumes. Many of those appointed by Republicans at the state and federal level, even with advanced law degrees from the Ivy League, or places like Stanford or some of the more liberal state universities got their JD from schools like Liberty or Regent.
We Can't Sit Back, Play Politics as Usual, Twiddle Our Thumbs and Click our Tongues
This war is quite far along in its progress already. The influence of money is the big weapon used by the evil invasion to win their ground. The second weapon they have is blatant, inexcusable ignorance. They turn out and vote in every election. They narrow down the rhetoric to catch phrases and easily repeatable memes that people remember, whether they are true or not. They take the tools at their disposal and make them work. Their leaders acknowledge that they are getting their votes from the uninformed, most prejudices and biased, least educated and most ignorant elements of society. That there are so many Americans in that position is unfathomable, and tragic.
Democrats debate policy issues, play the political game and keep thinking that compromise and making deals across the aisle will work, in spite of almost universal failure. That all has to stop. The stakes are too high. If, by chance, the Republicans manipulation of the election process lead to nullification of large blocks of Democratic votes, even in red states, and massive voter suppression, which it is very close to achieving now, and Trump is still running around free at election time, and happens to win, the war is over and they win it. American constitutional democracy will not survive his second term.
That's one of the reasons we are adamant and insistent that the DOJ get the indictment process under way, raining them down on him for everything possible on January 6th, and with the documents, and then use their power and influence to fast track the trials and get enough convictions to nullify his candidacy and keep him from securing the GOP nomination, perhaps, if there is justice, getting him incarcerated for the rest of his life. That has to happen. If it doesn't then we are doomed. The corruption that is already running rampant will take over.
In hindsight, Democrats had the wherewithal to remain in complete control of Congress as a result of the mid-terms. We lost the House, not because of red state gerrymandering, but because Democrats in stronghold states like California and New York did not turn out and vote! New York losses alone, turned around, would have produced a draw. But once again, there was a gap in leadership, people were asleep at the wheel, politics as usual and "woe is us" in midterm elections helped the GOP win a battle in this civil war.
The judiciary is a battleground, but we're arguing about the distinguished career of a California senator who sits on the judiciary committee. That's what I'm talking about here. Do you think the Republicans wouldn't figure out, in a short minute, how to speed up the process and would do whatever it took to make that happen? These are people who lie to God and then laugh in his face and challenge him to do something about it. Thank you Senator Feinstein, for doing the right thing and either sucking it up and heading back to the Capitol, or going home to California for the last time, letting Gavin Newsom put an even more liberal left winger in your seat.
If we are to have any chance of making our schools or shopping centers safe places again, we have to fight for this and do whatever it takes to keep it from happening. That may involve turning things upside down and taking advantage of the gifts that the Republicans are handing us through Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Ron Desantis and of course, the failed former President 45. And we need to make sure we are getting seats on school boards, city councils, county supervisor boards, and everywhere else that we can make a difference.
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