I’ve been trying to understand for years now the draw that people like Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, and groups like “The Proud Boys” et al. for the American right wing-especially for the CHRISTIAN right wing. I think I may have thought that it was simply because of the issue of abortion; no discussion of conservative politics ever took place in my discussions without the issue of abortion asserting itself somewhere along the way. But with the election of Donald Trump and the repeal of Roe v Wade, the bile oozing from Republican candidates across the country is still spreading, smothering any kind of rational discussion of political policy I once believed possible between the left and right.
Of course, the election of Donald Trump was a shock to our political system on all sides. Republicans were shocked and delighted. We liberals were shocked to see such an ill-informed, narcissistic buffoon elected to the office of the Presidency of the United States. We suffered through four years of embarrassment as his lies, his racist and anti-semitic bloviation, his ineptitude and his obvious sense of entitlement made a mockery of our image of ourselves as Americans here and abroad. The disdain we saw on the faces of foreign allies and adversaries alike, the shifting of traditional alignments of the U.S. with other democratic governments to the “love letters” from leaders of authoritarian nations like North Korea, Russia, Hungary, and Argentina were indications of the transforming of American culture from the top down. Even those who rarely engaged in political action or conversation have been drawn in by what Polish writer Ann Applebaum calls the “seductive lure of authoritarianism” developing in all aspects of our American life.
The frightening part of the reign of Donald Trump, though, was not simply the alliances he discarded or insulted, or even the coarseness of his language and lies. The frightening thing is that because of his belief that he alone knew what was best for all of us, that what he wanted to do, legally, criminally, or personally, was what we “should” also want and be satisfied with, and that nearly half the citizens in this country fell for it. The glee that many of our citizens have for following his lead, for being “allowed” to spew racist and anti-semitic rhetoric, to feel entitled to violence against those who disagreed with them, and to demand his continued presence in the White House even after 60-SIXTY!-judges, many of them judges that he himself had appointed, declared that he had not won the right to continue as President has been bone-chilling.
Even worse, if possible, has been the acquiescence of the Republican Party to the influence of Donald Trump and his despicable stooges. That grown men, some who have been in Washington for decades, have deprecated themselves, politically, personally, and spiritually to bow down to this bloviating bully, cowering in fear that he will use his truly “bully pulpit” to call them out, revealing or lying about their loyalty to him, which means loyalty to the country, or calling into question some aspect of their “manhood”, virtue, intelligence, or whatever he recognizes as a weakness he can use to corrupt. The voting public has no such fear, as they know they are anonymous to him. The Republicans in Congress, however, so brash and self-righteous in their belief that THEIR way is the RIGHT way, cower in fear of Donald Trump’s wrath, even after his expulsion from office.
Now, the Republicans stepping into the fray and running for offices at every level of government in their attempt to seize or maintain power are seriously emulating the example that Donald Trump set for them. It is almost a badge of honor to be hateful, foul-mouthed, and extolling vitriol, propaganda, and violence toward those who disagree. They are angry-very angry, it seems-that their guy LOST in the 2020 election, and that means their grievances won’t be heard. So they are running themselves. And they are using every nasty trick in the old Republican playbooks ever used: they are lying outright, having learned from the “master” of propaganda Josef Goebbels, they know that a lie, repeated long enough and often enough will become “truth” to those predisposed to believe it. They are mocking rivals for their health, for their non-religious politics, their quiet demeanor, and for “goodness”. They are even “darkening” the skin of their African-American opponents in advertisements, believing (or knowing) that their almost entirely Caucasian base will be frightened by a candidate they see as “too black”.
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