Contempt For The People
By: Elizabeth Grey
Tags: Trump, Pandemic, Elections, Debate, Politics

Contempt For The People

Why the GOP can no longer be taken seriously.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

Being conscious these days is simply exhausting.

We have a pandemic; and a president who insists upon being a super spreader.

If I am not digging out from under the avalanche of lies, I am busy picking up my jaw from the floor. Trump’s actions are so antithetical to reason I am in a state of perpetual stun.

Writing about current events is a maddening exercise. The news cycle is so frantic that by the time I finish an essay, it is likely irrelevant. People are well on to the next atrocity.

I do hope there is a market for books filled with half-written essays in the Trump era. I have hundreds.

October is set to be a month of Sundays. He does not go gentle into that good night.

Trump is dropping like a rock in the polls, and can only be predicted to punish us for rejecting him. Trump’s America always has everything to do with his personal gratification, and almost nothing to do with us. He will say and do anything to cheer himself up.

Apparently, the GOP position is taken from the president’s playbook: lie.

I imagine the Vice-President’s debate prep:

Here we have a set of fictional talking points, which we repeat, over and over. Do not question the questions. Repeat the lie. It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to reflect reality. Just keep lying.

Republican sycophants in the Cabinet, Senate, House, and Governor’s offices repeat these fictions, without a trace of shame. Otherwise respectable news outlets entertain them. Right-wing media outlets broadcast them to their viewers, seemingly on command; the president speaks, it must be true.

Republican leadership simply could not be more corrupt.

Governor Abbott, of Texas, has removed remote voting boxes. A sitting Senator tweeted today that democracy isn’t the objective in America. The president tweeted “Liberate Michigan!” in April of this year; it appears some of his followers took that drivel to heart. The FBI just arrested thirteen men plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.

The Trump campaign wastes no time in responding. Jason Miller disparages Governor Whitmer for hating the president, only hours after the arrests are announced.

What a bunch.

As tired as I am of this truly awful time — and I am tired — I am not giving up.

I have two objectives.

1) Stay alive.

2) Vote.

Really, those are our two most crucial tasks. We have to survive this maniac’s term, and we must vote him out of office. The former appears a much more formidable task than the latter.

The Trump administration is like dealing with an insurance company that won’t pay your claim. They think they can wear you down so badly you’ll give up from exhaustion.

We are groomed for Trump and his family to take over the nation. He’s worked with all his might to prepare us. Trump has done exactly what he pleases for four insufferably long years. He has normalized criminal, sadistic behavior. He has normalized authoritarianism with a healthy dose of outright lunacy; he’s gone full North Korea.

Yet, there is reason to embrace this disaster; to whisper,

Bring it on.

The younger generation isn’t playing. I will take my cues from them, and not play, either.

Power is finally shifting in America.

The rich, powerful, and white men who cannot possibly imagine a world that doesn’t cater to their whims are shocked and enraged, as are the women still painfully loyal to their belittlers.

It’s the last stand of the patriarchy.

This system cannot fall without a horrendous fight. We are getting that fight. Donald Trump came along at a time when white America was just chock-full of resentment that their feather beds were not quite so soft. It’s how he got elected.

The patriarchy may not fall completely in my lifetime. That’s alright. I know it’s going. The process has started. I think of my part in it as less of an individual, and more of a part of the whole.

I’ll work to get more women and BIPOC in power. Without them, the men currently in charge will happily compete with each other in their race to burn down the planet.

With that in mind, I don’t think any of us can imagine how diabolically bad the last few months of Trump’s term will be. There is no question that the president will challenge the results of a Biden victory.

That’s what Amy Coney Barrett’s job is; to hand him the election.

We must survive. We must survive, overwhelmingly vote him out, and unite together when he balks at leaving. Then we start to rebuild, with Biden at the helm, and a competent woman in the wings, at last.

It’s going to be ugly, and that is unavoidable. Just do what you can.

It is absolutely crucial that while rebuilding an America that is truly democratic for all, we remember how we got here.

We got here because of cowardice. We got here because of racism. We got here because of misogyny. We got here because of personal ambition over the general welfare of the people.

We got here because of Mitch McConnell.

There is no Donald Trump without the Senate Majority leader. Without McConnell, it would be Joe Biden debating President Pence. Because of course Trump deserved to be convicted during his impeachment trial.

McConnell abandoned our nation when he blocked the nomination of Merrick Garland, continuing his plot to undermine Obama. It was an unconscionable act. His determination to push Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing through the Senate so close to the election tells you exactly what kind of American he is.

A bad one.

McConnell’s leadership in no way resembles the intent of our Constitution’s framers. America wasn’t designed to be governed like this.

The Legislative Branch must be independent of the Executive Branch. The Supreme Court, if it is to have any value at all, must be both non-partisan and independent of the president and Congress.

This is the crux of how our government works. It is designed as a co-equal triad; not two men in control of the whole ball of wax.

The Republican party, as it exists today, can no longer be taken seriously. Although their blind loyalty to the president is the most glaring example of irrelevance, it’s also its abandonment of the people.

It is truly incredible to even consider abolishing the ACA in the middle of a pandemic. Being straddled in debt to pay for necessities such as food is a terrifying way to live, while the 1% enjoy their tax cuts.

It isn’t practical to think that suffering people won’t have an effect on society as a whole. America is all of us, not a few of us. Serious people realize this.

Serious people realize that a life well-lived has more to it than personal wealth. A good life has to be more than greed and power for its own sake.

Serious people know that living by principles counts for a great deal more than personal ambition. It’s called character.

Serious American politicians read Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom and honor it; not use it with cynicism to insert religion where it doesn’t belong.

Serious people know that ignoring science results in deaths from a virus while trapping its survivors on a burning planet.

Serious people work hard to keep their word, let alone their sworn oaths.

Donald Trump will be blamed for the ruin of the Republican party, and rightly so. He did not, however, do it alone. Mitch McConnell deserves a large portion of the blame. Any Republican in power who did not stand up to these two men must own their decision not to challenge them.

It’s a cheap group of Americans. I am hard-pressed to think of cheaper ones.

We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, most vote the cheap ones out. See you November 3rd, and in this meanest of the meantime, hold on for dear life.

We have a nation to reclaim.