I’m usually a big believer in forgiveness. After all, stuff happens and none of us are without error or regrettable things. Mistakes, it’s been said, are the greatest of all teachers.
Republicans are “waking up” from their Trump Coma because even they can’t lie about 130,000 plus lives needlessly lost due to Republican bungling and incompetence deserve no forgiveness, second chances, or pats on the back for finally doing or saying the right thing. Ditto those who only now are supporting removing Confederate Flags and statues.
They’re not waking up to realize that tRump has been lying or that their own constituents are being affected and infected at alarmingly escalating rates. They weren’t born yesterday although some are close to pretending that.
They’re not waking up to realize that they’re racists. They KNOW that they’re racists and have been fanning racism for generations. It’s part of their electoral strategy. They’ve been promoting injustice for generations, too, as the “party of law and order”. They’ve been up to their eyeballs in rolling back the flimsy civil rights and voting protections that were put in place after decades of blood, sweat, tears, and death. They’ve already had plenty of time to care more about live Americans than about dead Confederates.
They’re not waking up to realize that there’s blatant, in-your-face, publicly displayed graft and corruption stinking up the government worse than ever. The corruption of the past looks like petty theft when compared to what’s going on now. After all, they’ve been part of it all along on behalf of themselves or their donors.
No, they’re not waking up because this country has gone to shit; they’re pretending to wake up because Donald J Trumps crashing poll numbers are an anchor around their own necks.
Many of them are (or will) act surprised at “how bad things have gotten”, pretend they “didn’t know” or “weren’t involved”, claim “no responsibility” for themselves or, in true GOP fashion, simply lie. If they want to know how things got so bad, they need only look in the nearest mirror.
Republicans have had innumerable opportunities to do the right thing, but they haven’t.
- They counted on a lazy, underfunded media more interested in gaining “access” and arguments of bothsiderism than reporting factual information. A media who like stories with video and pretty pictures because those are the easiest to report. A media in love with “he said, she said” reporting even when what “he” said was totally bogus because they can “just leave it there” when the article reaches its desired length or it’s time for a commercial.
- Because of that, they count on an uninformed public who will be swayed by hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising and attack ads.
- Republicans also count on all the gerrymandering they’ve done over the decades, particularly since the Red Tide of 2010. They count of those manufactured districts to elect and re-elect any clown with an R next to his or her name no matter how awful, insane, or incompetent they are (see Gohmert, Louis (Lunatic, Tx) and Grothman, Glenn (Nutjob, Wi).
- They count on rewriting history. They do it every time they talk about how Republicans “voted for” Medicare, forced Richard Nixon to resign, and everything they claim about their Sainted Ronnie Reagan. And it works for them, too, since they literally own the school board in Texas which orders the most textbooks in the nation and writes the rules about what they want included and omitted.
- They count on the tried and true formula of staged gatherings of lawmakers to celebrate the passage of legislation they pass and the counter of lowering their heads and running past reporters when asked about some new horror tRump or the GOP has done. If they can’t run that fast they mumble that they didn’t “see” or “hear” or “don’t know about” the latest outrage. Perhaps they should carry a poster of the “hear no evil, see no evil” monkeys to save time?
- They count on making sure their donors are well taken care of so the re-election money and dark money they rely on keeps flowing.
- They could have supported the impeachment process or demanded an investigation and witnesses, but, no, they didn’t. Party uber alles no matter what.
- They could have supported a national lock-down instead of the piecemeal state by state, locality by locality strategy we’ve been forced to use. But, no. They didn’t.
They didn’t do the right thing despite many opportunities because they thought the tried and true Republican formula would work as it always had.
Then Covid 19 came along and the formula stopped working as people saw their friends and family get sick and die. While a few boisterous yahoos drank the kool aid and got media attention for public stunts, most people saw the numbers and realized they were being lied to on a grand scale. They had been told that Coronavirus was going to magically disappear while they saw the numbers going up before their own eyes, The lies were no longer working.
They saw most Republican leaders doing the wrong things and fighting with Democrats trying to do the right things. In states like my own Wisconsin, they saw a Democratic Governor putting Safer at Home orders in place while being fought tooth and nail by the GOP dominated legislature and those orders being overturned by a GOP dominated court. They saw Republican led states where nothing was being done and the pandemic being ignored.
And now they see that Republican led states that sneered at protective measures are now reaping the consequences of those bad decisions. Those Republican leaders aren’t going to be able to lie their way out of this and will likely resort to saying they “woke up” to reality. The media will dutifully report those excuses and pat them on the backs as a reward. They shouldn’t.
To make matters worse (for them), they’ve seen the undeniable diversity of the protests over the injustice they have not only not addressed or corrected, but have largely encouraged as an open dog whistle to their Republican supporters. No amount of taking down statues and removing the treasonous confederate flags provide cover for hundreds of years of ongoing racism and injustice.
They deserve no forgiveness, no second chances, no re-election. They’ve earned ridicule and derision. The US Senate deserves the majority of the blame since they could have supported a nation wide lock down. Countries that did that lowered their infection rates, their death rates, and are now re-opening. The US sickened and killed people in a country with no universal income or health care because Republicans could care less. They own that. We should make them own that. After all, they have been supporters and accessories to mass homicide.
Republicans never do the right thing unless there’s an extreme political reason to do so. Nixon was taking them down so they made him leave. Civil Rights and Medicare bills were going to pass so a token number of them were allowed to go along ONLY for the final vote to ensure their own political futures after working vigorously to defeat those measures. They received undeserved appreciation for that blatantly self-serving act.
For the most part they ignore problems, create worse problems, but move at the speed of light in a vacuum if there are personal political consequences.
And now that the Emperor is going down in flames, they’ll work to salvage what they can for themselves. Don’t believe their excuses or lies no matter how often repeated by the press. Not.A.Single.One. They’re all lies and BS.
Vote them all out. Show them the door no matter how many phony apologies they serve up, crocodile tears they cry, promises they pretend to make, or public lies about being mislead or forgiveness. They deserve no forgiveness. It’s way too late.