I write sometimes just to get thoughts out of my head and where I can organize them. This is the result of a very interesting conversation with a couple of people who I would consider marginally Republican, but not capable of the kind of discernment that comes with rational thinking, without some kind of help, which I tried to give them.
We've finally got to the point where they understand that it was simply not possible to commit the kind of "massive voter fraud" Trump claimed, and that the election of 2020 was the most secure in all American history. But moving from that has been slow progress. Then, the news came down about the most recent indictments, this time, for January 6th. So this is where I am now.
This is Wrong in so Many Ways
We live under a constitution that guarantees individual rights, including the right to a "speedy" trial by a jury of our peers, and under which we are considered innocent until proven guilty. But even if proven guilty of a crime, which involves a conviction and a sentence, unless that crime specifically involves an act of disloyalty to or rebellion against the United States of America, it does not disqualify the criminal from being elected, and from serving, at least in principle, as President of the United States. That is, in my opinion, a serious flaw in the constitution.
As much as we might think our society and our country would not elect someone to its highest office who is not of the highest level of integrity, that's just simply not the case. Even compulsory public education, which was aimed at providing an educated and informed electorate, does not preclude the election of a tyrant. We looked down our noses as the fledgling democracy in Germany failed to prevent the rise to power of a demagogue dictator, who almost destroyed the whole world, and whose twelve years in power left Germany, and a good portion of the rest of Europe, in ruins, physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. We clicked our tongues, believing it couldn't happen here.
Then, Donald Trump got elected as President. That was partly the result of our quirky, antiquated, anti-democratic electoral college, a device born out of fear of the commander in chief somehow turning into a dictatorial monarch. But it was also the result of a breakdown of trust and of the age of technology making the spread of conspiracy theories about the "deep state" and a cult-like following developing around all of that nonsense. The political divide we face now can't be solved by reason, logic and rational thinking, because the far right has abandoned rational thinking and has been overcome by fear. I'm a rational thinker, at least, I hope that I am, so I have no way at all to relate to someone who is driven by fear and I cannot understand how someone can believe something that has no evidence or facts to support it, and which flies in the face of reason and reality. But his followers do.
Trump's popularity and base is pulled together by conspiracy theory. The idea that there is some kind of sinister evil out there, wrapping itself in government power and it's out to get everyone who is not rich, prosperous and powerful plays very well and Trump panders to that like nobodies business. His followers are incapable of rational thought because they are brainwashed like the mindless members of a death cult. They don't believe facts staring them in the face that don't support what they already have concluded is the truth. And while many of them are high school dropouts and weren't good students even during the few years they spent in school, it defies all reason and logic that many of them are highly educated, but have lost their appreciation for their education, why they got it and their ability to use it.
And that's where many of us have difficulty understanding this. We think rationally, understand facts, and don't believe outlandish lies. Trump supporters are confronted with facts and evidence that proves him, and them, wrong about almost everything he says. He can't get behind a microphone without lying. For him, its a character flaw. For them, it's a lack of discernment. But there's a mental blockade there, somewhere, that prevents them from understanding or even recognizing rational though and reality. And he plays that like a fiddle.
And, while I hesitate to say this because such comparisons to extremes aren't always appreciated, even if they're true, Trump's pathological lying, repeating the same falsehoods over and over again and never acknowledging any contradictory evidence, is taking a page from Mein Kampf. Hitler wrote about the short memory, and the blatant stupidity of the masses. His modus operandi was to continuously repeat big lies over and over again, until people believed them because they'd heard them so much.
Such comparisons and similarities should be chilling. They certainly are to me.
Selling Out to the MAGA Cult has Made Much of American Evangelical Christianity an Apostate Cult
The biggest irony, in my own opinion, regarding the fact that someone like Donald Trump, who is completely lacking in any ethical or moral foundation, whose lifestyle is a model of a kind of self-centered, worldly indulgence that is as far on the opposite side of American Evangelical Christianity as it is ideologically, philosophically and practically possible to get, found a supportive constituency among American Evangelicals. In fact, had their support been even marginally less for him than it was, just 1% in fact, he would never have been elected. He should never have been nominated by a party that claimed to be the superior example of law and order and honest, conservative politics. But many Evangelicals, and most of their self-acknowledged "leaders," turned out to be just as power hungry and morally bankrupt as Trump.
Those Evangelicals who follow Trump do so because he threw them a few bones in exchange for their support. They got the Supreme Court justices from him that they wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. That's really all he's given them. For their part, they think they can now use him to establish their misguided, heretical theocracy that they think was the intention of the founding fathers. For his part, he thinks that he can lead them to abandon those bothersome principles of the Christian gospel that he himself flatly denies, and actually transform them into a cult that worships and adores him personally. He's been successful in getting some of them to throw Jesus under the bus and burn their Bibles, or at least, cut the ethics, morality and virtues out of theirs.
Their support for Trump exposes their hypocrisy. Trump himself lays no claim to being Christian, and, in fact, goes to great lengths to avoid any answer to questions about his faith that would be interpreted as some kind of acknowledgement of it. He denies that he has done anything requiring God's forgiveness, which is an outright denial of an essential Christian belief leading to conversion, or salvation as Evangelicals use the term. He has claimed that turning the other cheek makes one a "sucker" and "loving your enemies" is the reason why Christians have been excluded from the centers of worldly power and influence. He's slowly, but certainly, attempting to get Evangelicals to replace their loyalty and commitment to Jesus Christ with loyalty and commitment to him. And some of them have done just that.
He is an immoral philanderer, adulterous, misogynistic, narcissistic liar. He's the direct opposite of the character Jesus defined in the Sermon on the Mount, diametrically opposed to every Christian principle, living a life that defies everything Christians believe and practice. The fact that many Evangelicals accept his leadership and support him is a denial of their faith and abandonment of its values.
The Power of the Vote
We do have the power to stop an indicted, corrupt demagogue from becoming President again. We got a good taste of just how inept, incompetent and unAmerican his leadership was during his first term in office. We saw his disdain and disrespect for the Constitution and the will of the voters. We don't need that again. The power we have to stop him from ruining this country is the power of the ballot box. If we are going to save our democracy and preserve our freedom, we are going to have to vote.
I get frustrated at the casual manner in which Democratic party leadership often reacts to things that they should be pro-actively working to defeat, and one of those things is the flirting with the electorate from left wing, progressive candidates who want to make a third party run for President. Do these people not understand that their biggest political enemy is Donald Trump, not Joe Biden? Whatever it takes to stop these fringe third parties from putting Trump in the White House again needs to be done.
Surely, after the election results were analyzed in 2016, Jill Stein had to come to grips with the fact that she handed the election to the candidate with whom she and her party had the least in common. She helped a demagogue whose political position and personal opinion were far more detrimental and damaging to her party's cause than Hillary Clinton would have been. But, out of fear of giving them publicity, or angering some small constituency, Democrats fume and fuss about the third parties that take away their party's power, but do nothing about them.
That must change. Now.
And What About the GOP?
Republicans still have the ability to turn their party back from the disaster that is already happening to it. Of all people, I certainly did not expect Chris Christie to be the one Republican with the courage to tell the truth about Trump. After all of the crawling and begging he did, for most of Trump's political career, the former New Jersey governor is earning a little bit of respect from me, for what I see as too little, way too late.
But half of the GOP hasn't shown up in polling data as supportive of Trump.
It's difficult to overcome intimidation and the fear of retribution, which is what happens to Republicans who don't give their loyalty to Trump. He, and his party minions have already fixed things with the nomination process to make sure he doesn't have much opposition on the way to the nomination. Unless they come to the conclusion on their own, apart from his influence, that he is going to lose the election, the party will make this as smooth as possible.
Conservatives tend to be groupies and conformists by nature, not independent thinkers. So there's already a disadvantage in having anyone speak their convictions against nominating this brute. I doubt that anything which will put any more of a dent in Trump support among Republicans than there already is. Where he will encounter trouble will be on the national stage, where more than 60% of the electorate now say they will not cast their ballot for him.
So, the question is, will Republican leaders see where things are headed and figure out how to put a stop to it, or will they be the wimps that we know them to be, and let it go? If that's what happens, and they don't try to take the party back, it will dissolve in the aftermath of what will be defeat at the polls, both in Congress and with the Presidency, in 2024.
Can Democrats do anything to hasten this demise? Find some good, third party person to undermine the Trump vote, or will one of the republican ego maniacs now running in the field collectively gathering less than 10% of their support, get angry and launch out on their own? And will that make any difference.
Well, that's enough word salad for the day. Have a nice one. Go get the popcorn ready for the upcoming trials, lots of television to watch in coming weeks and months.
No comments:
Post a Comment