There is certainly more than enough hate in this country to go around. Another certainty is that it is accomplishing nothing, but you have to ask history, is it justifiable? Who is accountable for what we have become?
Looking at the past 22 years through the eyes of a now independent/ex-Republican, one has to say yes. At least the hate directed at the Republican Party and its politicians was deserved.
On the eve of the 2010 midterm election there was a “first” in American history. A Republican senator had the temerity to tell the public that “The single most important thing the Republicans want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He set the tone for politics from then till now. He failed but then proceeded for six years to obstruct everything and anything Obama tried to do for America.
This same senator in 2016 told the same president that he would be sure the Senate would refuse to consider any nomination for Supreme Court justice that Obama sent to Congress as he had in the past. The Republicans became the party of obstruction.
All of this was not done in the back rooms of D.C.; this was in the public’s, specifically Republicans’, faces. It was, unfortunately, the beginning of the destruction of the Republican Party and has placed us in the predicament we are in today.
The success of the Republican Party and its politicians, its wants, its demands, became paramount and the needs of America and Americans came in last. Millions and billions were squandered on a never-completed wall, Bush’s war with Afghanistan, military equipment that the military didn’t want.
Then, after an all-too-brief eight years of sanity, under the spell of this same senator and a snake-oil salesman, we elected the worst president America has ever known.
In 2018 under a Republican-controlled Congress banks were deregulated and allowed to take higher risks than needed for profits they wanted. You know how that turned out. We are still suffering financially.
January 2020 brought the Republican delay of any information about COVID — “just a tourist from China” — then another three-month of delay before any coordinated significant action. Unfortunately but not finally, the November 2020 election produced (backed by only Republicans) totally unfounded claims of a stolen election. This was followed by the snake-oil salesman inciting an insurrection of radical Republicans who stormed and took control of the Capitol building at the cost of seven lives and millions in damage. During the above the snake oil salesman, yes Trump, was continually aggravating and losing longtime world allies, establishing questionable relations with our arch enemy, demeaning and insulting Third World countries and their leaders. Republicans were running hither and yon trying to find any Democrat to pin anything on.
And it hasn’t stopped. Now these same Republicans back legislation to reduce Social Security payments by 23%, provide school voucher payments to other children from your taxes, reduce preventative medical care coverage and eliminate clean air-water incentives to name just a few attacks on our future.
Ya think maybe it wasn’t Trump? Maybe it was Mitch McConnell and his henchmen all along?
Speak out, folks. Write your letters and commentaries then vote and don’t go down silently without a fight.
Ned Sheats lives in Mission.
