GOP’s Moral Failures Imperil Our Democracy

By Donald A. Collins | 20 July 2021
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

This past week several books came out depicting the final months of Trump’s disgraced presidency. My recent op ed’s have cited three specifically which elevate the behavior of his reign with incisive reporting which tells WHY he may end up incarcerated, but worse the permanent long term damage he has created to our nation.

At this point in trying to reach the 70 percent of vaccinated Americans we are told daily that 99 percent of COVID deaths are to people likely in Trump’s unvaccinated base. This should give one an idea of how much his and FOX and other liars have resonated there. These people are just stupid. After all anyone who would buy into QAnon can’t be all there.

Lest you feel I am solely speaking about the GOP’s current behavior, let me go back in history to point out that the evil of 400 years of slavery relates to all of our colonists and their heirs in both parties.

After the Civil War with Lincoln’s VP now President Andrew Johnson, a Southerner, was impeached in 1868 by the US House but not convicted by the Senate. You can read this fascinating story here.

When the North’s victorious general, U.S. Grant, like Eisenhower after WWII, became a 2 term President, his Administration initiated the period known as Reconstruction in the defeated South. Many African Americans got elected to public offices including the Congress. If racism hadn’t intervened, this could have led the nation to resolving our long legacy of racism, but unfortunately Grant, a very honest man, had rascals in his inner circle who were involved in a so called Whiskey Ring scandal at the end of his tenure.

Then in a contested Presidential election in 1876 the Northern Republican Hayes was given the office and the Republicans acquiesced to the end of Reconstruction withdrawing troops. Then the Southern whites began their racism with the Jim Crow Era which began in 1877 and extended until 1954!

You can read about it here.

The white Southerners also tried to obscure their defeat by erecting statues everywhere of their military heroes, such as for racist Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, which stayed in place until their removal recently in Richmond.

You could argue that the GOP precipitated in their abdication on Reconstruction as furthering continuance of our sad racial history.

Long before Grant’s tomb was constructed in New York City in 1897, the black population was suffering viciously under white supremacy.

Read about the Jim Crow Law era here.

So there is plenty of blame to go around for both major parties but that was then and is now. We have overturned some impediments to racial equity such as “separate but equal”, which further created poorer black education, but far too few changes have occurred and now it is the Democrats who have supplanted the GOP in their efforts to end racism. The Supreme Court ruling that followed on May 18, 1896, and that bore the names of Plessy and Ferguson solidified the establishment of the Jim Crow era.

The current GOP efforts in the multiple states they control to lessen minority voting really represents the ultimate fault which must NOT be instituted in the US.

The behavior of the twice impeached Trump and most of his elected GOP colleagues since the November 3rd Presidential election and the Capitol insurrection on January 6th represents the renewal of the immoral conduct of 1876, but now Trump’s creation of a deep and dangerous political crisis has been driven by GOP immortality could potentially topple our fragile democracy.

One commentator I heard recently opined that the recent books about Trump, which I commented about in earlier op eds, would not greatly change GOP immoral behavior about voting and the chance for a Trump resurgence in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 Presidential election should not be underestimated.

Those who haven’t read 3 books I found particularly informative about the truly gross dishonest and disgusting conduct of Trump and too many in the Trump era should not fail to do so. They are 1. Landslide by Michael Wolff, 2. Frankly, We Did Win This Election by Michael C. Bender, and 3. I Alone Can Fix It by Carol Leonnig and Phillip Rucker.

And I am sticking to my earlier prediction that Trump is on the downward skids and will for years keep the GOP from winning the White House.

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, Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive? and We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?.

Michael Wolff Reveals New Details On Trump Presidency

New book goes behind the scenes of the Trump presidency and re-election campaign

‘I Alone Can Fix It’ Documents Trump’s Reactions To The January 6 Riot

Texas Republicans making another attempt to pass voting restrictions

Be sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here