Tag Archives: Republican Party

Christian Values vs. Political Power: A Critical Look

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It is becoming difficult not to feel cynical about the trajectory of the nation and the world as propelled by the “visionary” concepts of Donald Trump. A first concern is the environment. Climate change and global warming will not cease to exist because he claims it is a hoax, nor is it the inevitable cost of having a vibrant economy. Droughts, floods, and violent storms are the new everyday life on Earth. Denial of reality is an addict’s path. A second is the Conservative Right’s claim that America is a Christian nation. In my Sunday school education, I learned that the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ stress on compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and charity, were the core essence and distinguishing exception of Christianity over earlier religions. This is in sharp contrast with hard-right beliefs, be they evangelical or Catholic, which are more in line with the exercise of vengeance and power portrayed in the Old Testament, wherein humanity is a tooth-and-claw struggle for dominion. Care of the Earth and of those less fortunate are dismissed in today’s social and economic stratification. The power of wealth is valued above all. That this ethos thrives foremost with the President, in the halls of Congress and Justice, and in corner corporate offices leaves little optimism for the future of humanity in America, or, for that matter, life on planet Earth.

RP

Clash of Titans: Trump and Musk’s Impact on America

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The Elon Musk/Donald Trump Alliance appears to be holding for now. Both are serving the other’s needs, such as they are. Elon dreams of colonizing Mars and being a messenger of the salvation of humankind, while Donald, oblivious to the suffering loss of Palestinian lives and homes, envisions a Trump Hotel and golf course rising from the rubble of the Gaza Strip. Both of these egocentric sociopaths, hungry for power and certain of their brilliance, are off the charts of psychiatric normalcy. Both have severely damaged psyches enthralled with wielding power. Thus far, they are working in tandem to lay a broad axe to the structures of American government, an act no less globally unsettling than that of the Trotsky/Lenin overthrow of the Russian Tsars. Some speculate that a Clash of the Titans is inevitable, perhaps an Alien Versus Predator scenario raging through the halls of the White House and Congress. Someone has to emerge as number one. In the meantime, confusion and anxiety over the ramifications of Trump 2.0 hang over everyone’s future.

Racing apace

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Everything everywhere all at once. The breakneck speed and urgency of Donald Trump’s first days of imposing his will on government and the American people is dizzying to anyone trying to analyze and comprehend what is emerging. Confusion is enervating and Trump is the master of manipulation, adept at bending anger and mass hysteria in his favor, and tweeting doublethink for and against nearly every issue. All the while, Congressional members are trembling in their suits in fear of stirring his anger. Welcome to 1984. George Orwell was eerily prescient in showing the overwhelming power of Doublespeak in propaganda messaging when it is omnipresent and unquestioned. With the rise of social media and data mining, personal privacy no longer exists, and Big Brother, aka Donald Trump, is ever watchful and demanding.

RP

Wave Boarding

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Leaders of nations around the world, autocratic and/or elected, are all riding varying waves of political and cultural history and momentum. The United States is no exception, but what Donald Trump has ingeniously done is change the American ethos from one of being an amalgam “Melting Pot” of diverse peoples and cultures to the earlier one of “Manifest Destiny”, the belief that the bounty of New World was God’s gift to enterprising, primarily white immigrants claiming ownership of land and utilizing the newly arriving labor to create personal wealth and build a nation of winners and losers based on capitalist exploitation. Black slavery was eventually abolished, but “people of color” and women have long belonged to a distinctly lesser class to be put to use. In Donald Trump’s view, America has always been a white man’s world.

For those who thought and hoped his semi-coherent rambling was merely political bluster and posturing are today waking up to the realization that America has elected an ego maniac who fully intends to do everything he said he would do in leading the free world into the 21st Century. Those less zealous riding his coattails into the future should be questioning just what exactly they have signed up on.

When the unelected million/billionaire Tech titans are seated in the front row with the incoming Cabinet members behind them at the inauguration, it is clear who Trump sees as the best Americans to be rewarded, those making the most money. His pardon of the Capital rioters indicates his concept of law-and-order is that criminals supporting him are heroes, not criminals, and he intends to “weaponize the Justice Department” against his perceived enemies. The talk radio spin and doublethink on all this is mind boggling, but having January 6th made a national holiday looms as an actual possibility. Further, on the subject of mania and beyond, Elon Musk, the Buck Rogers dreamer of space travel and the colonization of Mars and self appointed Czar of government efficiency is not the first genius mind in history to go off the rails. His dalliance and embrace of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany is more than sadly disturbing. It is dangerous in our next four year journey into the future.

RP

Media Machine

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Between Elon Musk’s Twittersphere and the country-wide talk radio echo chamber Donald Trump’s Republican Party has a media propaganda machine equal to that of the Communist Party in China, Vladimir Putin’s autocracy in Russia, and Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. Information available to the public is to be tightly controlled and manipulated to favor the ruling regime. 1984 explores, in combining Orwell’s experience and insights expressed in two earlier novels, the callous oblivion of British capitalism in Burmese Days and Stalin’s betrayal in the Spanish Civil War of a truly populist people’s rebellion in Homage to Catalonia, the end of truth, love, and caring in power politics. Like Big Brother, Trump continually expresses an aura of absolute certainty of his correctness. More than ever Orwell should be required reading for everyone of voting age.

The Future of Trumpism

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The MAGA rioters who stormed the Capitol and the Neo-Nazi Fascist Klansmen marching at a Trump rally in Charlottesville regarded themselves as patriotic revolutionaries acting under a romantic illusion that brute force was a realistic means to keep Donald Trump in the White House. The real insurrectionists today are the authors and proponents of Project 2025 who recognize that the true power in capitalist America is money, even more so since the Conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that it had unlimited “free speech” power. Project 2025 is structured around a Libertarian ethos of freedom from regulation, maximum profit, and concentrated wealth that will radically alter the historical arc of American democracy. It has deep pocket corporate and individual backers. Donald Trump aspires to personal autocratic power, able to hire and fire as he sees fit, but at the forefront of Project 2025, he is largely a storefront manikin and incoherent entry level drug to an authoritarian rule of wealth. J D Vance has had a few opening glitches, but with his manly White embrace of religious and family values, his roots in the Midwest, and time spent in the tech world of Silicon Valley, he stands as a reliably malleable successor to lead the Project 2025 revolution. In this election, America stands at a crossroads of its self-definition.

RP

Rush to Judgement

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It is a miracle that not one Republican Senator has been trampled in the rush behind Mitch McConnell to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court with yet another Federalist Society approved Conservative Justice. They are an orderly, lockstep group. Overturning Roe v. Wade is a hot-button issue Republicans have used for decades to court anti-abortion voters, but the 2020 elections have wider concerns. In the minority, RBG’s dissent on removing protections for voter rights was plain and simple–In a rainstorm, don’t put your umbrella away because you are not getting wet. With a 6-3 majority, we can look forward to more Court-sanctioned voter suppression, and in decision after decision, including Citizens United, the Conservative Justices have ruled in the favor of corporate and monied interests over those of everyday Americans. The Republican Party first and foremost uses the Court to be its voice for big money

-RP

Trump and Putin

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To the Editor:
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not much different from the America envisioned by Donald Trump and his high-end backers.  It is an economy and nation controlled by monied interests. i.e. wealthy oligarchs, and we can be certain that the Supreme Court will be fully (5-4 for now) in support of this Libertarian/Ayn Rand concept of small government and unregulated enterprise.  The deck is loaded against Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people”.  Regaining control of the House and Senate is now the only antidote to this turn of injustice to the majority of Americans.
Robert Porath

Manifest Destiny

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To the Editor:
The most depressing aspect of the Trump Presidency and the Far Right takeover of Congress and the Courts is the thought that this is the real America, its Manifest Destiny.  White male supremacy and capitalist exploitation are its highest ideals.  Women, “people of color”, and the working classes are lesser, subservient beings to a ruling elite for whom wealth and dominance are the guiding principles. In essence, Donald Trump is the primal scream of fear and outrage built up during the eight-year nightmare of the Obama Presidency and the arrival of black faces in positions of power and influence.  Similarly, the Great Southern Border Wall is the expression of the fear that the Native Peoples of the Americas are returning to a land once theirs.  This is today’s true reality show.  This is not a carefully staged media event.

Robert Porath

The Politics of Race

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To the Editor:
It is becoming clear that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are continuing to count on the White backlash to the Obama years to ensure their political majority in 2018 and 2020, that and gerrymandering and voter suppression   Mike Pence’s media stunt of abruptly leaving the Indianapolis Colts game could have not been more blatant to that end, and the NFL  seems now so afraid of losing its fan base that it has joined in on the platform.  One has to wonder how Black athletes feel about being thrown under the bus and how might they react.  Steve Bannon may no longer have a position in the White House, but he is still dominating both the political narrative and the Republican agenda.

Robert Porath