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Any remote semblance of party cooperation on important
issues is seemingly out of the window with both parties
taking a "no prisoners" approach.
President Trump is, in my opinion, downright giddy with
excitement about the chaos he is both contributing to and
benefiting from.
Herr Trump, the P.T. Barnum of political Kabuki, is
quite content and cozy in his cocoon of mis-directions and
lies that foment intense blowback from the opposing party
wherever he campaigns and brazenly lies about obvious facts.
From where I sit, Herr Trump has no inner moral code or
compass and his levels of human empathy and compassion do
not even register on a humanity Geiger counter.
The Republican GOP has totally abdicated any remote
sense of checks and balances on the White House and are mute
and deaf when they are confronted about their professed
lofty standards of balancing the budget, fighting for the
middle class and having a vibrant foreign policy against
strong men and outright thugs who masquerade as national
leaders.
It appears that the GOP is quite content with being
amoral regarding the shenanigans of Herr Trump; and they do
not wish to or want to stand up to him for their fear of
being "tweeted to death" or Herr Trump castigating them at
one of his tax payer-paid pep rallies held in safe
red-ribbed states.
The Democrats are still using smoke signals to try to
cobble together a coherent message of healthcare,
infrastructure, saving Medicare and Social Security and a
compassionate plan for immigrants properly seeking asylum.
A curse on both houses! Neither party is winning any
plaudits for their negative conduct of not governing and
especially not working with each other for the good of the
commonweal.
Lest anyone forget, Herr Trump is simply the poster
boy of the seething anger and bitterness that his GOP base
is channeling through him and if Herr Trump constantly lies
and belittles people, so be it!
His base is "good to go" about that. They are willing
to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to his excesses and
apparently even in cases wherein they will not benefit from
any anticipated GOP sponsored plans to cut back on the
social financial safety net of this society.
A word of caution: Do not let the GOP con you by
saying that your Medicare and Social Security benefits are
"entitlements!" They are not. They are earned and you need
to fight tooth and nail to prevent the GOP from slashing
those benefits so that they can make up for the giant
financial hole they created when they brazenly gave away the
treasury to give their cronies and corporate fat cats
mammoth tax cuts.
You would think that Herr Trump's base would be wise to
the switch and bail tactics that the GOP is using but as
long as Trump gives them a nightmare that millions of
immigrants will be any day at their front door eating their
beans and bread and stealing their cars, his base will stay
put.
The politics of fear is not new. White landlords in
the South have used that tactics for decades to divide and
conqueror poor white and black sharecroppers so that they
would not organize and demand the rudiments of fair housing,
pay and benefits.
The fear mongers used race and intermarriage as their
fear tactics to tell the poor white farmer that big, black
and burly Negroes were wild eyed about their fair-skinned
white daughters or that black people would be sitting next
to them in schools and in their churches...so watch out!
Herr Trump is reading out of the same racist playbook
that George Wallace and David Duke used and he is doing so
with gusto accompanied by bucking his eyes and saying how
only he alone can solve these problems.
Mussolini would be green with envy if he could watch
the sordid tactics of Herr Trump continually rip holes in
the delicate gossamer fabric that we call democracy.
Trump has stirred the bottom crusty dredges of the pot and
they have responded to his call (no longer a dog whistle!)
and there is a coarsening of the political relationships
between people. The battle lines have been drawn and there
is no foreseeable end in sight.
If I was to get "spiritual" on you, I would say that a
negative spirit has been unleashed in America and it is both
energizing Trump and his base.
Trump has no use for democracy since it does not
elevate him to the pinnacle of unbridled power and
privileges, like the sultans of Saudi Arabia enjoy or Kim
Jung Un (his lover in Korea) or other despots that rule by
absolute fiat.
The only check that the populace has on autocratic
wannabees like Trump is the power of the ballot box. If
citizens are satisfied with the institutional gutting being
done by Herr Trump, they will stay the course and continue
to vote for him if only to spite Hispanics,
African-Americans and uppity women voters.
One can only say as former president Harry S. Truman
noted: You get the government that you deserve.
If Herr Trump keeps the Senate and the House stays as
is, he will see it as a mandate to go further rogue and
create deeper havoc in and among the three branches of
government.
If the political correction does not happen with the
upcoming mid terms then the country will suffer through two
more years of a developing story that will show whether or
not Americans have the stomach to wait it out until the next
presidential election of 2020 before they have the courage
to give Herr Trump his walking papers and only then start to
remedy the damages that he and his ilk have gladly did to
the republic.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
tolliver@juno.com
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