By Ruth A. Sheets
We the People are living with a sizable political and social mess which didn’t begin with Donald Trump. It is true he is incompetent, but he, alone, did not create this destructive anti-American cadre of incompetence, although he did release them on the people and institutions of this nation.
As I see it, so much of it began with Gerald Ford's pardoning of Richard Nixon, claiming pardoning a criminal for his actions while president would help to heal America. The pardon told political operatives that a president, if properly groomed and paid off, can pardon anyone from Federal crimes. Folks can complain but, pardons can’t be challenged. In the wrong hands, as we have seen, a president can pardon insurrectionists if he can call them “patriots” or “heroes,” just don’t call them traitors.
Ronald Reagan seemed like such a "good guy," an actor, you know,” but he had little positive experience of governing. He was a crappy governor of California, having law enforcement attack college student protesters. He claimed illegal drug use and poverty as excuses to harm his fellow citizens and to give rich white men more power, a chunk at a time. While in office, his efforts ended a lot of the support for California’s public universities, and cut property taxes for the very rich. As president he encouraged big business to move into nearly every facet of life, giving them big tax cuts and the warped idea of “trickle-down economics,” if the rich got more money it would drip down to everyone else; it didn’t.” He blamed people for needing welfare, claiming they were stealing from the American people (welfare queens). Under Reagan, wages were cut and cost of living raises were not maintained. Unions were “discouraged.”
Bush Sr. went right along with the big business good program, even getting us into a war many thought was just great, giving lots of business to large corporations who would produce the weaponry needed for the war. Racism got a boost too with the “Willie Horton” ad that “hinted” that Black men are unredeemable criminals. Future president Donald ?Trump used that “theory” to take out an ad in the “New York Times” demanding the innocent Black men accused of the infamous Central Park murder, be put to death.
Bush,Jr. was not actually "elected" by the popular vote, but with the electoral college, his brother in charge in Florida, and cheating just part of the way things are done in Florida,he became president, again no real experience of governing beyond signing death warrants in Texas. Bush,Jr. got us into two wars and a major economic crisis (the Great Recession) that Democrats were required to clean up after, just as they had to do after his dad left office.
The whole time, Republican presidents and members of Congress were being manipulated to blame all the ills of the world on Democrats, poor people of color in particular and immigrants whenever they could work it in. They ran McCain in 2008, but his age and his pick of Palen as his running mate were marks against him. The “Great Recession” didn't help him either.
President Obama and VP Biden, inaugurated in 2009, got about 50 days to get the mess cleaned up. That couldn’t happen because the crisis was deep and they had next to no support from Republicans. Instead of giving the “bail-out” money to the homeowners, they paid the banks who had helped bring about the crisis and millions of people lost their homes. Many are still trying to recover completely, 17 years later.
Rich conservatives desperately looked for someone who could "relate" to the Republican base and would buy and spread the BS Republicans and the oligarchs were pushing. They found their guy in Donald Trump, an incompetent rich white businessman who was manipulatable, hateful, resentful of everyone who had things he wanted and would do anything to acquire, in short, a child-man. A show “The Apprentice” was built around him, an entire fraud. It was sold as "reality TV," but it definitely was not reality. Trump was a loose canon, but workable. While campaigning in 2016, Trump would mouth the lies fed to him by the last guy to talk to him out of his collection of sycophants or from the voices on “Fox News.” He didn't win the popular vote either, but the electoral college negated 3 million votes and he took office.
Democrats were shut out of most of what was going on until 2019 when they took the House. They did keep Trump and his crazies from doing more damage, but what Republicans had done was enormous: cutting taxes massively for the very rich, allowing immigrant children to be separated from parents and thrown into cages on behalf of scared white guys who can't stand immigrants who are smarter, harder-working, and just all-'round “better” than they are. Their Supreme Court picks were sycophants who would do what they were told, most of the time. They mismanaged a pandemic and left the economy in shambles. Lying was and still is the order of the day for Republicans in power. There seems nothing they won’t lie about!
Russell Vought, a rich nobody, and his whiny white friends at the Heritage Foundation wrote an anti-American white supremacist 900+ page diatribe called "Project 2025" during Biden's term to undermine our government, and turn Americans against each other solely for the benefit of the very rich, mostly white men with far too much money. Then, I do believe that during the 4 years when Biden was working to make significant advances, particularly related to climate change, international relations, and transportation and general infrastructure, you know, the things America needs, The project 2025ers went to work to get a system in place for “stealing” the election in 2024, and keeping power permanently, possibly practicing on certain races in 2022. There is some evidence related to AI interference in "swing state" voting in 2024. Democrats, fearing to be seen as just like Republicans whining over the 2020 election which Trump definitely lost, didn't challenge the results and allowed the project 2025ers into office to put their nefarious plans in place. They should have been arrested the night they entered our departments claiming to be the DOGE, a non-existent government entity that was designed by Musk and friends to steal Americans' private information for his own benefit. The lying, cheating, militarization, etc. continue.
We are not helpless, despite Trump’s desire that we should be. There are things we can do to clean up this mess!
1. Get everyone we know and even don't know to be sure they are registered to vote, signing them up NOW and encouraging them to vote in every election.
2. Pressure our media to report the truth. For example, Ms. Good and Mr. Petty, in Minneapolis were murdered by an ICE operative and Border Patrol officers! There is no real controversy, no mistake about that, despite Noem’s and Trump’s lies. The liars need to be called out on their actions and lies, all the time on every social media platform, newspaper, NPR/PBS, and traditional network, as creatively and by as many people as possible.
3. Continue to protest the ICE and Border Patrol killings and abuse, in Minneapolis and in all our communities. Report on the bad treatment in the concentration camp prisons, so people will know that this evil is going on in our name and with our tax money.
4. Write letters, make calls and sign petitions to lawmakers at all levels demanding they follow their oath of office and stop this Trumpian anti-Americanism.
5. Do not lose hope, give up, or allow ourselves to think that Trump and his crazies are worthy of any respect beyond that of being human beings; they do not care what they are doing except that it will hurt people their boss Baby Donnie doesn't like.
6. Encourage a lot of people to read our Constitution over and over so we can knowledgeably demand our Congress start following and living by it and the oaths they swore.
Those are just a few things, each doing our little or big part to stop this Trumplican mess. Trump has dementia and needs to be gone from office, but so do Vance and Trump’s handlers whose plot is to destroy this nation so their rich buddies can take over. We don't have to allow it, so let’s not!
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