(Cape May County Herald opinion from a year and a half ago on Trump and GOP complicity, as relevant as ever.)
By Kevin McKinney, May 11, 2016
As Donald Trump sells out America, leaving behind a slew of defeated establishment candidates to squirm and sweat before the funhouse mirror in this Twilight Zone playing on an endless loop, one thing is clear: these United States of America aren't what we've cracked them up to be, and we wonder, were they ever?
Our once great nation's standards, values and hopes have seemingly crumbled right before our eyes into a reality TV rubble, where the truth is a joke, the disingenuous reigns, insults are hip, fear motivates and a walking, talking tabloid caricature has a serious shot at the Oval Office.
How did we get here? How did the most powerful democracy in the world become so desperate as to welcome the phony, inciting declarations of a billionaire successfully bidding for the highest office in the land?
The Republican Party only has itself to blame. The unmitigated rise of ‘The Donald’ is as much about the tangible as the intangible, about a twisted, single-minded, conservative ideology which has long catered only to a powerful, select few.
In truth, it’s been a slow fade. Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Trump is just the tip of the iceberg, the most visible symptom of an insidious disease that for decades has been quietly compromising many aspects of American life - our security, health, finances and overall quality - certainly since Reaganomics trickled down, trickled out and left the people dry.
But, only now, in the flotsam wake of unprecedented, ultra-conservative, think-tank-orchestrated, corporation-endorsed, alarmist manipulation of the people's hearts, minds and lives since the watershed 2001 high-jacking of the White House is the devastation suddenly and sickeningly obvious.
Donald Trump is what happens, he's the result, the divine justice administered, in the wake of so much criminal negligence and inexcusable abandonment of the people in their most desperate times of need.
After eight hellish years of George W. Bush's "War of Terror" against the American people - through the inexplicable Sept. 11 failures, Iraq War lies, profiteering and bloodshed, domestic spying, bungled Hurricane Katrina response and the deregulation-instigated 2008 Great Recession - untold damage was done.
Then, while millions of Americans were losing their homes, jobs and savings, obstructionist Republicans blocked hundreds of bills, including those designed to help veterans, senior citizens, women victims of violence, ill Sept. 11 first responders, the jobless, middle class families, teachers and the underpaid.
Today, more than 16 million American children are living in poverty and the richest one-tenth percent of Americans have almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The only time congressional Republicans have lifted a finger for the past seven years was to point it accusingly at the president.
Fear-mongering and personal attacks became common. Trust in the Republican establishment evaporated like so many campaign promises.
Emerging from this atmosphere was the bright and shiny political outsider, ‘The Donald,' to the rescue of the disenchanted.
Promising change in loud, condescending, childlike declarations - repeating his adjectives, "great," "amazing," and "special" - devoid of substance, the grand illusionist gradually won the hearts of the forsaken and desperate.
Who can resist a peep under the sideshow circus tent?
Despite his anti-establishment appeal, Trump, in essence, is the amplified embodiment of everything ugly about today’s Republican Party.
Rock bottom line: Obsessive greed and the relentless pursuit of absolute power, is the mad scientist that inadvertently electrified and enlivened this amalgamation of our lesser selves, Trump, to run amok, deceive, disparage and ultimately destroy with impunity.
Friday, November 24, 2017
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Holding America Hostage
It's as if someone is holding a gun to their heads.
They can't talk about it. Not now. It's too early, they say. Just pray.
In the wake of another horribly senseless shooting massacre, this time at Sutherland Springs Baptist church in Texas, where 26 men, women and children were killed, and more 20 injured, while praying, Congressional Republicans insist that it's "too early" to discuss ways of stopping the next one.
They just throw up their hands -- and keep them up. Nothing they can do. Can't talk right now. In fact, they don't like talking about a lot of things.
Like how the National Rifle Association dumped $50 million into the 2016 campaign coffers of Republican Senators and then candidate Donald J. Trump to, in effect, buy an assured Republican majority.
And there's the gun.
Our Republican congressmen, whose job it is to listen to the American people, can't talk about trying to make our country just a little safer. They are being paid to keep their mouths shut and sit on their hands.
They are getting paid to sit idly by while we watch some 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence.
And make no bloody doubt about it. These so called representatives of the people have blood on their hands.
Much of this same crowd are professed Christians who like to talk about prayer a lot. But they are phony Christians. They are the deceivers, the wolves in sheep's clothing that Jesus and Paul warned us against in the New Testament.
James warned that "Faith without works is dead." And these posing Christians are dead inside, corrupted by greedy corporatist policy.
Prayers can be powerful and are absolutely needed. But talking about prayers without backing it up with urgently needed, doable action, is dead.
Yeah, they talk about prayer, but when it comes to practicing Christian values, even when so many of their brothers and sisters of the same faith were slaughtered just a week ago, they are powerless to take the most basic and sensible of steps to keep killing machines out of the hands of the unstable.
It's long been a matter of record that the overwhelming majority of Americans -- Democrats, Republicans, white, black and brown -- want stricter gun regulations in this country so queerly obessed with firearms.
But all we hear from the National Rifle Association, and their puppet Republican congressmen, is a whole lot more shucking and jiving by about infringing on Second Amendment rights of gun ho gun owners.
Never mind the Second Amendment was written at a time when "the right to bear arms" referred to the single shot musket, which allowed on a good day maybe three lead slug firings a minute.
Today, with the aid of presently legal "fire bump stocks," a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle can be converted into a virtual machine gun, firing hundreds of rounds per minute.
How do these Second Amendment, gun rights advocates reconcile that?
It was "too early" to discuss reasonable gun law changes after the Las Vegas shooting massacre last month that left 58 people dead, and hundreds injured.
And in the meantime, it's getting way too late.
After the Vegas shooting, it was the legality of Bump stocks, that was supposed to be addressed. So, what is Congress waiting for?
Another mass shooting so they can say it's "too early" to amend the laws and simply call for prayers again?
Despite all the posturing last month, bills to make bump stocks illegal are languishing on Capitol Hill.
No one wants to talk about keeping high-powered killing machines out of the hands of killers.
We also know that the Texas shooter should have been prevented from buying firearms for various reasons, including his discharge from the Air Force related to a domestic abuse case and involuntary committal to a mental institution.
Clearly, there is work to do on many fronts to seriously address America's gun epidemic.
The President says the Texas church massacre is a "mental health thing." As if guns weren't involved.
This is the same guy who, earlier this year, signed a bill reversing President Barack Obama's restrictions on mentally ill people buying guns.
While the President and Conservatives stretch the boundaries of reason in responding to these terrible tragedies and shift the blame on anything or anyone but guns, I lay much of the blame on our lip service congressional representatives and the President himself.
We'll never know just how much damage Trump's exhaustive, relentless fear and hate mongering has inflicted on the American psyche these past two years or so.
And that's the whole point. It's not something easily measured.
We do know that hate crimes spiked more than 20 percent in major American cities in 2016 during Trump's divisive, caustic presidential run.
Trump has fanned the flames of hatred and bigotry with his sheer callousness and constant childish, inciting tweets.
As a so-called leader, if the President isn't making this country a better place, he's aiding and abetting the bad guys who want to do it harm.
They can't talk about it. Not now. It's too early, they say. Just pray.
In the wake of another horribly senseless shooting massacre, this time at Sutherland Springs Baptist church in Texas, where 26 men, women and children were killed, and more 20 injured, while praying, Congressional Republicans insist that it's "too early" to discuss ways of stopping the next one.
They just throw up their hands -- and keep them up. Nothing they can do. Can't talk right now. In fact, they don't like talking about a lot of things.
Like how the National Rifle Association dumped $50 million into the 2016 campaign coffers of Republican Senators and then candidate Donald J. Trump to, in effect, buy an assured Republican majority.
And there's the gun.
Our Republican congressmen, whose job it is to listen to the American people, can't talk about trying to make our country just a little safer. They are being paid to keep their mouths shut and sit on their hands.
They are getting paid to sit idly by while we watch some 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence.
And make no bloody doubt about it. These so called representatives of the people have blood on their hands.
Much of this same crowd are professed Christians who like to talk about prayer a lot. But they are phony Christians. They are the deceivers, the wolves in sheep's clothing that Jesus and Paul warned us against in the New Testament.
James warned that "Faith without works is dead." And these posing Christians are dead inside, corrupted by greedy corporatist policy.
Prayers can be powerful and are absolutely needed. But talking about prayers without backing it up with urgently needed, doable action, is dead.
Yeah, they talk about prayer, but when it comes to practicing Christian values, even when so many of their brothers and sisters of the same faith were slaughtered just a week ago, they are powerless to take the most basic and sensible of steps to keep killing machines out of the hands of the unstable.
It's long been a matter of record that the overwhelming majority of Americans -- Democrats, Republicans, white, black and brown -- want stricter gun regulations in this country so queerly obessed with firearms.
But all we hear from the National Rifle Association, and their puppet Republican congressmen, is a whole lot more shucking and jiving by about infringing on Second Amendment rights of gun ho gun owners.
Never mind the Second Amendment was written at a time when "the right to bear arms" referred to the single shot musket, which allowed on a good day maybe three lead slug firings a minute.
Today, with the aid of presently legal "fire bump stocks," a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle can be converted into a virtual machine gun, firing hundreds of rounds per minute.
How do these Second Amendment, gun rights advocates reconcile that?
It was "too early" to discuss reasonable gun law changes after the Las Vegas shooting massacre last month that left 58 people dead, and hundreds injured.
And in the meantime, it's getting way too late.
After the Vegas shooting, it was the legality of Bump stocks, that was supposed to be addressed. So, what is Congress waiting for?
Another mass shooting so they can say it's "too early" to amend the laws and simply call for prayers again?
Despite all the posturing last month, bills to make bump stocks illegal are languishing on Capitol Hill.
No one wants to talk about keeping high-powered killing machines out of the hands of killers.
We also know that the Texas shooter should have been prevented from buying firearms for various reasons, including his discharge from the Air Force related to a domestic abuse case and involuntary committal to a mental institution.
Clearly, there is work to do on many fronts to seriously address America's gun epidemic.
The President says the Texas church massacre is a "mental health thing." As if guns weren't involved.
This is the same guy who, earlier this year, signed a bill reversing President Barack Obama's restrictions on mentally ill people buying guns.
While the President and Conservatives stretch the boundaries of reason in responding to these terrible tragedies and shift the blame on anything or anyone but guns, I lay much of the blame on our lip service congressional representatives and the President himself.
We'll never know just how much damage Trump's exhaustive, relentless fear and hate mongering has inflicted on the American psyche these past two years or so.
And that's the whole point. It's not something easily measured.
We do know that hate crimes spiked more than 20 percent in major American cities in 2016 during Trump's divisive, caustic presidential run.
Trump has fanned the flames of hatred and bigotry with his sheer callousness and constant childish, inciting tweets.
As a so-called leader, if the President isn't making this country a better place, he's aiding and abetting the bad guys who want to do it harm.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)