Let’s face it Donald Trump is most definitely everything we say about him. He’s a malicious, think-skinned, insane, ignorant megalomaniacal egomaniac that’s turned government into a reality show, which is the only thing he really understands how to do. But worst of all, and what gets the least amount of play, is that despite all the incompetence, incoherence and belligerence he displays, he’s actually doing his job, and it’s as likely as not that he doesn’t even know it. He and his minions are there not to be leaders of the country but to give cover to those doing the real and more permanent damage. Trump is a high profile distraction and he’s effectively deflecting attention while the GOP along with Wall Street, the Koch Brothers and major corporations like EXXON consolidate control of our country and wipe out all opposition both from the Democratic Party and grassroots.
This may once have sound like fevered conspiracy theory, but it’s the actual inconvertible truth and is unfolding right before our eyes.
The GOP has been working toward the situation we are now in for a long time, and has done it in broad daylight. In 2008, as soon as Obama and The Democrats had a huge political victory, they got mad, but they also got even. The Republican Party set about aggressively redrawing the districts in every state they could, using their power through control of the Supreme Court and the rightwing Citizen’s United decision to pour money into state races with the ultimate aim of reconfiguring the electoral map to their advantage. Karl Rove is on record laying out the entire plan. It worked perfectly. They won control in 2010, and haven’t lost it since (David Daley’s excellent book “Ratf**ked: the True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy” tells this story in painful detail). In addition to this, the Republicans in congress dug in lockstep to discredit Obama and subvert his agenda at every turn. When the Benghazi attack happened in 2012 they tried to use it against the sitting president, and as soon as that failed the guns of the special committees they controlled were turned on his perceived successor Hilary Clinton and kept it up until the next election.
These people are ruthless, cunning and patient. The Tea Party was a creation of the Koch Brothers and it just helped to popularize their cause and give fuel to the corporate anti-democracy fire, as fanatical fools fought against their own interests in the name of fanaticism. They made the GOP even more maniacal, and the whole juggernaut just kept coming at Obama, trying to repeal his signature law over fifty times, mainly because it bore his name, and despite the fact that the whole thing was a Republican construct overseen by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. When their star rightwing justice Scalia died, they successfully subverted the constitution to make sure Obama could not appoint a justice that might roll back their ill-gotten gerrymandering gains. This was when it became impossible to ignore the fact that a coup had taken place. Look at the beauty pageant of the putrid that was the GOP primary race and its obvious it didn’t matter who the winner was. The redistricting gift that kept on giving had already set it up for whoever the nominee was to squeeze out a margin of victory through the electoral college.
They point of all this is to demonstrate how craven these bastards are. McConnell and Paul Ryan absolutely do not care about anything other than getting their corporate loving budgets, healthcare and other insidious agenda’s passed. They operate as if the opposing party does not exist. There is no working with these people in a statesmanship-like manner. The only part of politics they are interested in pursuing is that which they immediately gain from. They openly declared war on the opposing party, and Democrats barely even noticed.
This is not a political debate we are embroiled it. It is a coup. The only way for the Democrats to have any hope of stopping what is happening would be to become as ruthless and undivided against them as they have been. If we see that as their victory because we’ve stooped to their level, then we’ve as good as handed the country to them.
We can get huge crowds of opposition to show up. It is the one advantage we have over them. But thus far we haven’t figured out a way to use it effectively. We won’t shame these people into mending their ways with huge demonstrations; they don’t care what anyone thinks about them. They are immune to genteel politics. The GOP congress really doesn’t care if Trump becomes a dictator and corporations take over the country and ruin the environment, destroy unions, social security, etc. This is what they want in fact. And if Trump gets too far out of hand and begins to blow it they will simply get rid of him, and Pence will be their perfect automaton with a hand and a pen, which it all they need, and indeed in fact, as they have stated, actually prefer.
This is war. And I wish I was presenting here some concrete methods of how to fight. At the very least we need to know our enemy, and push to get the media to recognize what has happened, despite their complicity in it by helping turn politics into a reality show and giving the enemy the benefit of the doubt, and promoting their both-sides-do-it doctrine every time.
But if we don’t figure out a way to fight this corrupting, insidious evil, this is a war we’re going to lose, and our freedom will be only the first of the casualties.