Trump Wins, the GOP Gulps, Democrats Uneasy about Hillary, and Truth Twists in the Wind!
These are not happy times and they are dangerous times, even though they did not just suddenly appear on the scene in the last few months. All of us—whites, blacks, and browns—are worried that justice and truth have fallen into disarray and demons spew out headlines suffused in lies and fear. While it is supposed to be a common belief that we live in a democracy in which government is presumably accountable to the people, it actually turns out in our history that the people is reduced to someof the people.
In our recent history notice how the people have suffered at the hands of some of the people who have power. Violence and money are the tools of the powerful some.
The war in Vietnam was an unmitigated disaster in which the hubristic politics of both Democrats and Republicans colluded in bringing about a war without peace that left over 58,000 U.S. military dead and over 300,000 wounded, an estimated 42,000 draft evaders living outside the U.S, over 1 million Vietnamese combatants and over 3 million noncombatants dead. The pathos of that war still hovers over we Americans as a war we hardly dare to remember.
As we prepared for war, our President, John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and as war rages in Vietnam, racial conflict explodes, two public figures—Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are assassinated. A drug culture that continues today, provoking the rise of ‘Fox News’ that blames Democrats for war, draft-deserters, drug addicts and racial hatred and conflict.
Then the scandal of the Nixon crimes and fall from grace and office. Reagan is elected amid racial slurs and assuring whites that the poor are themselves to be blamed for their terrible economic condition and social prospects. But he did make ‘peace’ with Russia! Then, after years of slurs and witch hunts, Clinton leaves office amidst an astonishing sexual scandal. But he did leave a balanced budget!
Bush slips into the presidency by virtue of the intervention of a Supreme Court gone rogue, and his first goal is to dismantle Clinton’s balanced budget and give the rich indefensible tax breaks. But worst of all, in response to the destruction of life and buildings on ‘9-11’, he ignores the obvious fact that nine of the sabatoers were Saudi Arabians, begins a charade of searching for a scapegoat and persuades congress to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq—precipitating a conflict in the Middle East that haunts the world to this day.
Then the first black person is elected President and the GOP began a ruthless campaign to discredit and delegitimize Obama. The claim was advance that Obama was not born in the USA and therefore is ineligible to be president, a conviction that recent polls suggest is still believed by more than 30% of the people, most of whom adore Trump as admirably white, rich, and a hustler. The Republican party is the primary agent of these disgraceful lies about Obama and it is that lie that Trump’s campaign has used to vilify Hillary and the Democratic Party.
In short form: I believe, as many others do, that the rise of Donald Trump has depended on the common lies that the Republican Party has repeatedly used to discredit Clinton, Obama, and now Hillary.
Yes, there is more to say about these matters so briefly mentioned. But my concern is Donald Trump who I, and most Democrats and many Republicans, believe would be an instant danger to our country and the rights of many citizens if he were to be elected.
Yes, I assume all of my subscribers read much and are concerned about the fall election and its frightfully angry and divided citizenry. But here is an insightful writing by Thomas Edsall in the NYTimes on July 20, 2016. I have posted his work on this website before.
You might have noticed that many leaders who refer to themselves as “Evangelical Christians” have come out in support of Trump. That should be a confession of heresy and bankruptcy by those folk. There are two books published in recent years that should be helpful in understanding the rise in the 19th century of this tradition and its impact on politics to this day and its support for so-called ‘Republican values’.
Matthew Avery Sutton,American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.
Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, Basic Books, 2015.
And for those of us who are truly alarmed at the way religions are playing the roles of justifiers of violence against those others who are evil and death-dealing, take a look at a long but interesting book by Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.
Start with the Edsall article and then take your time and read the books and pray! And I do confess that some of my dear friends are Republicans with generous hearts and Christian virtues, and I suspect Trump is not the political correction for which they had hoped.
Peace, Joe
Responses welcomed.
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