(C) Arizona Mirror
This story was originally published by Arizona Mirror and is unaltered.
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Trump’s easy win in Iowa is more proof of GOP’s ultimate demise [1]
['More From Author', 'January', 'James E. Garcia']
Date: 2024-01-17
“Everyone knows they‘re going to die, but no one really believes it.” – Spalding Gray
The late great Republican Party (and it was once great) began its death knell the moment Donald J. Trump stepped from a golden escalator in Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his first run for president — but no one in the GOP quite believed it.
Or maybe they just didn’t see it coming. You know, the way some people step mindlessly into the line of traffic and get hit by a bus.
It happens. But we shouldn’t blame bus drivers for our bad choices.
More than eight years into the Trump era, the GOP faithful are still making bad choices. And they’re getting worse.
The results from this week’s Iowa Caucuses, which Trump won handily, prove that.
Forget all the parsing by pundits of “entrance” or “exit” polls asking “What does it all mean?” that more than 50% of Republican caucus-goers voted for a man I wouldn’t trust to mow my lawn (apologies to all landscapers) much less lead the country.
The truth is that the Republican Party is now Trump’s party, largely stocked with loyalists who one recent poll found would elect him president even if he gets convicted of a crime (a real possibility given that he’s facing 91 felony charges across four criminal cases). And don’t even get me started on the pending allegations against Trump of massive real estate fraud, sexual abuse and defamation and his looming hush money trial involving a porn star.
I know magnanimity demands that I not judge Trump’s followers too harshly and accept that they’re just expressing a different point of view, but, honestly, I just can’t.
There is something seriously wrong with these people.
Today’s Republican Party — Trump’s party — rejects those democratic ideals in favor of the GOP standard-bearer’s version of fascism and, yes, ultimately unbridled dictatorship.
Setting aside for the moment the 91 criminal charges he’s facing, to look the other way in the face of everything else we’ve learned about Trump over the past eight years is shameful and demands our condemnation.
It’s shameful because most of Trump’s supporters know better. They know what a despicable person he is and still back him because he serves their purposes: the maintenance of power, privilege and, yes, for many, white supremacy in the face of an inevitable demographic and cultural shift that, in a normally functioning democracy, requires greater equity, diversity and inclusion when it comes to determining who gets to represent us — all of us — and deserves representation.
Trump and his supporters proved this week in Iowa that the world they desire is wholly antithetical to the idea that we are all created equal and all deserve to have our voices heard.
I wasn’t alone this week in recognizing the great irony in the fact that a man who openly acknowledges he would terminate the Constitution and use every means at his disposal if reelected president to punish and suppress his critics emerged as the GOP’s presumptive nominee on the same day that our country celebrated the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
King wasn’t only a champion of civil rights and social justice, but a leading voice among the many who fought and often risked their lives for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — laws that, for the first time, allowed all Americans to exercise their rights as citizens.
Until these laws were passed, America was not yet a fully formed democracy. Segregation, our version of apartheid, was the de facto and often literal law of the land, keeping mainly people of color, especially Blacks, from enjoying equal rights.
Today’s Republican Party — Trump’s party — rejects those democratic ideals in favor of the GOP standard-bearer’s version of fascism and, yes, ultimately unbridled dictatorship.
Trump is going to win the nomination of his party, but lose the race for the presidency because, for the time being at least, I believe there are still more of us than there are of them.
More Americans who believe in the precept that no one is above the law.
More Americans who believe that no single person, party, or ideology should dictate our lives.
More Americans who believe that free and fair elections and the wider democratic process still matters.
More Americans who will go to the polls in November to prove Trump wrong. Because if we don’t, the fall election could signal the death knell of democracy.
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[1] Url:
https://www.azmirror.com/2024/01/17/trumps-easy-win-in-iowa-is-more-proof-of-gops-ultimate-demise/
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