Whence the GOP?

Those of you who have known me for a substantial amount of time know that I was a born and bred Republican but that I became a political atheist in the Sixties. Since then I have wandered the fields of political discourse, attacking all that appeared to need a poke. But suddenly, like so many others I find that the entire political scene in this country has changed, shifted from policy based to personality-based identification.

The Democrats, who were never as doctrinaire, never as focused and certainly never as organized as their opponents have finally realized that they are fighting in a different game and must find an entirely different way to present their valid case for support even as they struggle to take advantage of the gift of a President so bereft of truth and morals as to seem to be a cartoon.

But it’s the Republicans that are really shocking. A Party that once stood for serious, or at least appealing faux moral and cultural positions has virtually disintegrated into a disaster that will applaud a President who is ripping babies from their mother’s arms just to gain support for a ridiculous, unnecessary wall that no one except him really wants and no one at all can afford.

Trump swears that he hates separating children from their parents and of course, like in everything else, he lies. There is only one reason for this egregious policy and it is to give him bullets in the gunfight over the Wall. So far he has come up completely empty and now he is getting anxious. Now he is willing to reveal the true depths to which he is eager to sink just to satisfy his ego.

And the Republicans know this. They would have to. One would have to be completely without the ability to reason, to ascribe any other motive to his actions. And that’s the problem. Most of them don’t care. They can clearly see what he is doing and they just don’t care! What was once the Grand Old Party has now split into factions that bear absolutely no resemblance to any organization guided by principle. What happened?

Well, in 2010 led by the Bush/Cheney destruction of banking regulations, the economy crashed and a significant segment of our poor and middle class white population saw their jobs disappear and their lives go into the toilet. Obama saved the economy but he never sold it right and so he never got credit for it.  Then he forced his desperately needed health care plan through congress but never even came close to selling that one either. Obama had saved the economy and provided health care for millions but the GOP did a masterful job of explaining it all away and then came 2010 and the invasion of the Tea Party.

Angry white men with no background in government but big mouths on the campaign trail flooded into the capital and took over the House. It was the death of legislation. And then Obama won a second term and all those angry, vengeful little men, re-inflamed by having a black man still in the White House went bonkers and by 2016 they were all out there running in circles, infuriated by all the previous politicians who had promised them everything and delivered nothing. And suddenly out of nowhere, they were presented with a candidate who talked like one of them, who promised to save them from the bureaucrats, to drain the swamp. They were so mesmerized they never bothered to ask about all the criminal activities in his background, never noticed that most of what he said bore no faint resemblance to the truth.

The conventional Republicans, including the ones who opposed him, realizing that they were going to lose this one, sat back, held their council and waited to see what would happen. The rest of them jumped on the wagon and created a base. And what a base it is. One the likes of which we have never seen in any significant numbers in this country. It is imbedded in the Evangelical Movement, overwhelmingly white and male, selling the concept of religion as a unifying force, but the reality is that Evangelicalism really has very little to do with religion as one would normally think of it.

That is basically why liberals and others can ask repeatedly how a supposedly faith based movement can ignore all the moral failures of those now leading it. How do these people ignore Trump’s racism, bigotry and misogyny? How do they accept his monstrous and repeated lies, his disgustingly transparent use of innocent children as chips in his gamble for a Wall?

It’s quite simple really. Evangelism isn’t a religion but a social movement like the Protestantism from which it came, it is not based on differences in religious philosophy but on man’s refusal to follow the precepts of whatever religion he was involved in before moving on. Using the same negative precepts that have fed the Trump wave, Evangelists flooded into the 20^thcentury spreading a doctrine that supported the needs of the dissatisfied in exchange for their financial support. The goal of Christian Evangelism is not the attainment of Christ but the gathering of money and power. In exchange for that, men in private jets race from one mega church to another, preaching a doctrine that their parishioners want to hear and are willing to pay for. It is based not on the teachings of Christ but on the need to satisfy the congregation and keep the flow of money and power rolling in.

It’s no wonder that truth, justice and morals have no place in this faux religion and do not call its followers to commit. It’s no wonder that the Trump base can look at what is happening along our borders where screaming children are being ripped from the arms of their mothers and just shrug. Like the man they follow, they have no empathy, no sympathy, no human feelings other than greed and ego.

But what about the rest of the GOP, the remnants of the group that in 1854 founded the party as an anti-slavery force; that group around which the Party has been built? The true conservatives who battled the Democrats for a century over principles on which a government should be designed seem to have vanished. Some of them battled Trump right up into the White House but most of them retired early from that fight and are sitting on the sidelines watching and waiting. The battlers, epitomized by the likes of Jeff Flake, Bob Corker and now Mark Stamford, appear to have surrendered. They still make feisty statements, negative to the President but they have basically all quit. None will be running for re-election and all will be gone from Congress after the fall elections. Even worse, they seem to have abandoned even the small amount of clout they still possess, afraid to step up and make one last statement. Those three along with Susan Collins who still retains her integrity could have effectively stopped Trumps border atrocity simply by banding together and stating that they would no longer vote for any of Trump’s judicial appointments until the children are released and returned to their parents. Unfortunately they will never be subjects for Profiles in Courageas they simply wilt into the woodwork.

Then there are the rest, led by Mitch McConnell, the cowardly politicians who are more interested in holding their good paying jobs than they are in governing. These are the castrati who have handed the crown to Trump. They don’t have the guts to fight for the right even if they could manage to see what the right is, so they will sit back and do what they are told until the last of them are driven from office by infuriated voters who have lost their addiction to Trump or those who are intelligent enough to see the terrible mistakes that have been made and understand that the only solution is the complete dissolution of the entire Trump machine and the burning of its parts.

Indeed we may be seeing the first glimmer of fire today as those few in the administration who can still reason have seen the horrible results of Trump’s policy that separates babies from their parents. It appears that they have been able to convince the sick ego that fouls the White House that he may have miscalculated, that the polls showing 83% opposition to his policy may be worth listening to.

Of course Trump didn’t apologize. He didn’t say he had been wrong. He still tried to lie and spin the decision to stop the separation policy as his saving a situation created by the Democrats. He still tried to make it look like he was saving the nation from the brown hordes pouring over our borders, but unless you are seriously brain dead, it just didn’t work. Unless you are so far gone that you lead the Evangelical bigots and racists you couldn’t possibly buy it. No real American could.  Is this the first big crack in the dam? There will be no wall and those that backed the monster Trump in this despicable effort are now facing sure defeat in the fall. Is it possible that the torture of these families could have a positive result down the road? I never believed in ill winds bearing good but who knows?