By Donald A. Collins | 6 February 2021
Church and State
With Trump’s false information amplifiers gone—without Fox at whipping up frenzy and Twitter fully locked out forever from his use—Americans can now fully and clearly see that this would be racist king has no clothes!
As I have reported early and often—most recently in my 2/2/21 op ed—Trump is a goner! Now with $2.7 billion lawsuit against FOX for its comments about a voting machine maker that suit puts realistic teeth in the Trump habit of spreading false information! That BIG LIE about the 11/3/20 election must be paid for.
The now disgraced former President declined to testify at his 2/9/21 Senate trial under oath, proving that his big lie about who won the election deserves his conviction.
So Trump is a political goner and thanks to the gutless Kevin McCarthy leadership so is the credibility of the present GOP to anyone who can listen or read the facts.
Ann Applebaum Editor of The Atlantic, appearing on WETA’s 2/4/21 News Hour estimated that about 20 percent of Trump’s manic supporters remain dangerously alienated. Hard to be certain.
These zealots of course need to be carefully monitored lest they plan more violence.
“I don’t think conservatism can do its job in a free society in opposition to the institutions of that society,” Yuval Levin told me. “I think it can only function in defense of them.”
You can listen to — or read — our whole conversation here: https://t.co/FathSYHjCw
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) February 5, 2021
But these types have been around for a long time. Recall the 1995 Murrah office building bombing by Timothy McVeigh which killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others! As Wikipedia tells us,
Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was an American domestic terrorist who carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others, and destroyed one third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The bombing was the deadliest act of terrorism in the United States prior to the September 11 attacks. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
A Gulf War veteran, McVeigh sought revenge against the federal government for the 1993 Waco siege that ended in the deaths of 86 people, many of whom were children, as well as the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident and American foreign policy. He hoped to inspire a revolution against the federal government, and defended the bombing as a legitimate tactic against what he saw as a tyrannical government. He was arrested shortly after the bombing and indicted on 160 state offenses and 11 federal offenses, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction. He was found guilty on all counts in 1997 and sentenced to death.
McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. His execution was carried out in a considerably shorter time than most inmates awaiting the death penalty. Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier were convicted as conspirators in the plot. Nichols was sentenced to eight life terms for the deaths of eight federal agents, and to 161 life terms without parole by the state of Oklahoma for the deaths of the others. Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment and has since been released. Lori Fortier was given immunity in exchange for her testimony against the others.
But, Folks, as I am sure many Americans who voted for Biden, now understand completely what is so serious and what is unique about this case! Seemingly dismissed by coverup Republicans like McCarthy in the case of Charlottesville, or Trump’s hour long recorded phone call to Atlanta’s Republican election officials, asking them to find 11,000 votes, and now his clear instigation of the US Capitol insurrection was that these acts were willfully performed by the President of the United States.
Retired Republican House member from Philadelphia, Charlie Dent on the 2/4/21 Don Lemon program called Trump’s behavior “political malpractice”. I call it treason.
After her AM press conference on 2/5/21 defrocked of her House committee assignments, House member Marjorie Taylor Greene said that Trump still controls the GOP.
Many Republicans as their voting behavior proves now seem to believe that Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene are far more popular than McConnell and Liz Chaney.
Greene’s 2/5/21 news conference produced banal, childish and dangerous phases like: “I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true”. Oh? Her humungous racism was dismissed by Marjorie Taylor Greene as “words of the past”. Greene blames the media for what she said on tape and recorded. Sound familiar?
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said she was “freed” after the House voted to end her committee assignments over her promotions of violence and misinformation on social media. https://t.co/Zc9WnehqAX
— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) February 6, 2021
I don’t believe Trump’s control of the GOP will be a position which can be sustained very long.
Biden will do a competent job, even if Republicans say he spends too much. Republicans of course in the Trump years were delighted to give the rich big tax cuts and add trillions to the national debt!
Trump’s administration brought America to its knees, morally and emotionally as behavioral traditions we had assumed were inviolable were replaced with hate, racism, greed and immorality at every turn.
As I watched his term unfold, I could not help but think of the decline and fall of earlier empires as our government dismissed core values we had long treasured.
We seemed to be moving away from the institutional racism that George Floyd’s murder had exemplified when all of a sudden the party of Lincoln proved to be even more racist, tribal and corrupt with Republican leaders unwilling to make the move they did with Nixon at Watergate. We slid backwards under Trump to an unbelievable degree. This is not politics this is self-destruction.
The ridiculous argument most Republicans are hiding behind is that since Trump is out of office to convict him is unconstitutional. Highly questionable but worse highly immoral in light of Trump’s behavior.
Yes, a smooth, honest, professionally competent, perhaps too liberal but very transparent Biden reign will help, but Trump is lurking and the worst elements of our society stand ready to grab power.
So to have a trial without a conviction will administer a stain on our democracy which will not be easily translatable into wide recognition of America’s uniqueness or even to encourage our model’s emulation by others.
We should not, as the spineless Republicans advise “get over this and move on”.
NY Times columnist, Tom Friedman pointed out that our failure to embrace the facts of our situation will destroy our fragile democracy.
The GOP is now called by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the Q Party! Are we ready, Mitch McConnell, to do the right thing in this upcoming acid test of our republic?
Following news that the Republican caucus would not remove Majorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Pelosi referred to Kevin McCarthy as a member of the “Q” political party. https://t.co/csuzukuVPB
— Truthout (@truthout) February 4, 2021
Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013.
From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013
By Donald A. Collins
Publisher: Church and State Press (July 30, 2014)
ASIN: B00MA40TVE
Kindle Store
Rep. Greene blasts 11 GOP lawmakers who voted to remove her from committees
‘Cancer’ For The GOP: Mitch McConnell Takes Aim At Republican Conspiracy Theorists | NBC News NOW
Life after Trump: what’s the future of the Republican Party? | The Economist
Be sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook
