Today’s GQP has two problems, one short term, one slightly longer.
Surprisingly, Trump himself is probably neither. His “Use By Date” is so yesteryear that the next crop of voters won’t even know who that fat, old, moldy, diaper-wearing, doddering fool was or is. By June, July, his obvious deficiencies, both mental and physical, will be so overt that not even late night comedians will bother mentioning them - it won’t be funny or amusing, or even slightly entertaining. It will simply be sad.
The short term problem is the smoldering, hot, vile view that has been stoked and grown by Murdoch, Rush, Sean, Anne, Alex and that fTucker. They worked for more than a decade, perhaps two, to feed the fear, stoke the anger, and let loose the rabid and somewhat contagious madness of crowds. Lying and making up crap is not rare today, it is the norm. The attack on modern medicine is just one great example of our society’s failure, both present and future.
It was not Trump who created this mess. But, clearly, more than anyone else, he capitalized on it and profited from it. Being a cunning, greedy, self-serving, egotistical, whore-loving, attention seeker, he correctly sniffed out just what levers would be most effective to cement temporary power, then to continue stoking the outrage and fears of the uneducated, muddle class, especially those who believe in the fairy tales told from the pulpit. Add to that, his utter lack of shame and using a standard counterattack as his one and only rule of life, and his ruthless innate nature and you can see how easily he disposed of his GQP opponents in 2015.
As an aside, if humanity survives the next 10 years, one big topic will be how conservo-christianists managed to corral their followers and support one of the least deserving persons on this flat earth. And when he lied in their faces,when he sold his schtick, when he held their hands and preyed with them in the Oral Office, they ate it up as eagerly as they swallowed their preachers’ greedy demands for tithing to pay for their next Gulfstream.
Actually, factually, the short term problem for the GQP has two facets - one, anger can be stoked but only for limited periods of time. Try feeling rage on your own. You cannot sustain it for long. It wears you out, it erodes your internal foundations, it causes myopic, misguided, missteps. Eventually, people break out of the spell and in many cases, start to reassess the mess their anger made of their lives.
The other short term facet is far more dangerous. Once the mob becomes rabid, there is no controlling it. They hate taking instructions or suggestions before, especially from the “libs,” and just as much from their GQP handlers. Except the handlers have not quite been bitten hard by the mobs. But, rest assured, they will be.
The long term problem involves our way of life, our democratic system, our freedoms. The willingness of so many, so easily, to be be swayed by a fascist pig like Trump has to resound with other up and coming mini-Adolfs. The best example is obvious in Florida. The current governor is shrewd in all the wrong ways, he is just as greedy for power and money as his political step-father Teh Donald, and he already realizes that he has created his own messes. THe whirled of Disney will come back to haunt him. His social policies, while pleasing to a few John Birchers, will anger and energize folks who may have been conservative supporters, but are nauseated at the extreme policy changes being forced upon them by Abbott, DeathSantis, and others on the Reich side.
Their biggest problem is both subtle and obvious. The very protections they have relied upon for their own freedoms (Speech, Movement, Decision-making, Voting, Association, and more) are in their cross-hairs. With enough erosion and outside attacks, they won’t be there when they realize that they need the same safety net they just destroyed for those not as rich or powerful as their billionaire puppet master-baiters.
By eroding our social protections, they are screwing themselves.
The culprits are several - obviously Fox News and the Murdochs, Koch Bros, and several other billionaires who view America as their plaything, among others. But one group has missed getting a full review - today’s corporate owned media: NYT, WAPO (although to a lesser extent), TribCo, and all too many other “news” outlets. They were and are far more concerned with selling a story, pushing inane both-sider-ism, and avoiding the big picture. Their tacit complicity with democracy’s possible destruction lies squarely on their corporate shoulders. They are too fixated on the shiny, dangling story, instead of the damage their own incompetence is causing.
With a war in Ukraine, the media get to pretend to care about real news. But they ignore so many stories as important and dangerous. Climate change. Racist policing across the country. The growth of fascism and undemocratic “solutions” to make believe, non-existent problems. (Honestly? Critical Race Theory? Sex education of 4-5 year olds? Grooming by Disney?) The Reich side is pushing insane ideas and today’s media does little or nothing to call them out. Just a 5 minute segment of reflection would put most of those stories to bed permanently, but the media thrives on them and keeps pushing them no matter how ridiculous they are in retrospect. For a prime example of out of control Both-sider-ism just look for UpChuck Todd, still polluting the airways with almost obscene (non) examples. And how did his station respond to his many failures? They gave him MORE airtime.
Cable news hasn’t been news for a decade. It is a display of personalities and pretty faces, of concocted stories and lies, and faux horror when someone spills an awful and uncomfortable truth.
I used to be convinced America could handle a lot of issues and strife. It seems in retrospect, 9/11 was a turning point. The resulting pro-war cheerleading, the destruction of rights with a nationalistic banner called Homeland Security, the refusal to dig into the internal causes of systemic failure (Condi Rice, Dick the Cheney, ignoring clear warnings from our intel groups, But when the largest media outlets are little more than brain-washing propaganda centers for the ultra-right, and the rest of the media seem to follow an idiotic script, our future is not just murky, it is pitch black.
Just imagine if a democrat had been in office on 9/11. The knives would still be stained with fresh blood. Instead, not one failed admin or office holder ever paid a price. Not a one.