If, as now appears very likely, the Trump candidacy implodes, some very serious questions arise. How did a monstrous, egotistical buffoon with psychopathic tendencies ever get so close to assuming the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth? Can it happen again? How can we stop it from happening again?
The blame for this complete betrayal of the democratic system must lie fairly and squarely with the Republican Party. They nominated him. Most of them endorsed him. Many of their congressmen and senators are now scurrying rat-like to and fro on the ropes between two sinking ships – the rotten hulk of USS Trump and the water-soaked decks of their own fragile candidacies.
Earlier this year and before Trump was selected, and in the context of warning against complacency that Trump would be easily defeated, I wrote here:
“If the GOP has allowed itself to become the political catspaw of a coalition of “birthers”, racists, homophobes, creationists calling themselves “evangelists”, plutocrats who regard state-funded health-care as a threat to their savings, “pacifists in the war on poverty”, and nutters who want to water-board and bomb their way to international respect, we should worry not just for America but for ourselves.”
You may think that it was a tad harsh of me to ask how the GOP has become so easily manipulated by extremists, but the fact remains that it has.
I ascribe a lot of the problem to the failure of the GOP to deal with the Tea Party. The Tea Party hi-jacked the Republican Party and drove it to the right and to the extremes. And they were let do so by moderate Republicans who became ashamed to describe themselves as “moderate”. Moderate became the “M-word” just as Liberal earlier became the “L-word”. Immoderate and illiberal became, by necessary logic, badges of praise.
Then there is Fox News. The damage Fox is doing to American democracy is very clear and obvious now.
Take, for instance, their erstwhile resident looney-right nutter, Glenn Beck. No responsible mainstream current affairs channel should ever have given him a regular spot to peddle his hateful bile. He looked crazy and constantly on the verge either of insane laughter or absurd tearfulness.
He broadcast every form of nuttery on Murdoch’s news channel which, all the while, constantly claimed to be “fair and balanced”. The constant sub-text on Fox is the suggestion that there is a monstrous conspiracy among the rest of the media to distort and suppress the truth.
The GOP played footsie with Fox instead of preventing it from becoming the mouth-piece of Republican thinking – an integral part of the Republican political family and apparatus.
Fox has become the assassin of truth and reason – and the progenitor of anti-politics. It has created an alternative universe in which it is made seem reasonable to suggest that the way to stop campus shootings and slaughter in black Baptist churches is for all students, teachers and adult members of congregations to carry weapons – open or concealed.
This alternative universe is one in which belief that the other universe was created 6,000 years ago is respected and promoted. Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Fox favourite, famously claimed to be reasonable and open minded on evolution, saying: “If anyone wants to believe they are descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it”. Most GOP candidates either flirt with creationism or conceal their doubts about it.
Thought transference has become the GOP norm: “Hillary has tremendous hate in her heart”, said Trump last week. Fox tells us Obama is “divisive”. They say Hillary is “dividing the nation”. Are they thinking of themselves?
What is the evidence that Hillary has hate in her heart? Or that Obama is divisive? Just how is Hillary dividing the “nation”?
Which candidate speaks of wanting to punch other people? Which candidate brags about getting away with groping women and grabbing their genitalia? Which candidate abases American politics by threatening to jail his opponent?
And all this week Fox News, by way of distraction, furiously peddles the line that Clinton knowingly caused the death of a US ambassador in Benghazi. Or that she should be jailed for using a private e-mail account. Or that she cruelly attacked women abused by her husband.
What about the GOP? Why hasn’t Paul Ryan roundly condemned this descent to gutter politics years ago?
Why won’t he even now approve the non-partisan appointment of a moderate Republican nominated justice to the Supreme Court?
Why was the loathsome Ted Cruz not out-right condemned by the leaders of the GOP for his bizarre, filibustering stunts?
If Trump were elected, America would implode. That is why Putin’s people want him to win. Far from making America great again, the Republican Party has collectively nudged America towards the abyss.
Collectively, the Republican Party is responsible for Trump – and for all of Trump. They owed us the duty not to nominate him. They betrayed that duty. They have collectively endorsed or equivocated about him – until he endangered their own seats.
If the GOP had any merit at all, it would have found a candidate who was better than Hillary – a candidate who could unite America and inspire and lead it.
But the toxic politics that the Republicans created in alliance with the Tea Party and Fox News over the last ten years resulted in the weak, wretched list of contenders for the GOP nomination.
All of this is a shame. But the shame is that of the Republicans. Shame on them collectively – the utterly unworthy inheritors of the party of Abraham Lincoln.
From the politics of Lincoln, we have witnessed a descent to the politics of the “ primates” as practised by Trump and the GOP. Small wonder they say they don’t believe in evolution!