By Dr. Tom H. Hastings \PeaceVoice
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
Driving at 90 toward the cliff–that is such an irresponsible teen image.
That’s the current Republican party.
Thanks to the past fiscal cliff poor deals that squeak through a paralytic Congress, here we are again, at the cusp of a government shutdown, a completely self-inflicted wound by the sclerotic Republican members of the federal elected government.
“We are mere days away from a partial government shutdown on March 1. Unless Republicans get serious, the extreme Republican shutdown will endanger our economy, raise costs, lower safety, and exact untold pain on the American people,” is what Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer wrote to colleagues.
Seriously? Again? Hey, Rs–you’ve made your point. You hate the government. You want it to stop protecting the environment, to stop even the minuscule taxes on the rich, and to somehow keep people of color in line and in the minority, where they belong. Every time you can, you jam up Social Security payments, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, and all the other normal federal government operations.
We are witnessing children in charge of the daycare center–or perhaps inmates running the asylum.
Guess what, Republican infantile “leaders”? Even your own voters, as cult-like as they may be in rapt adoration of the least adorable leader imaginable, do not want to suddenly lose the basic functioning of the government that all our hard work funds. And even your own colleagues, such as Patrick McHenry (R-NC), call this completely avoidable and unnecessary.
But you are instead engaged in the double masturbatory actions of impeaching the Secretary of Homeland Security and the President. This is a derailment of choice, not of imposed necessity. If you could walk and chew gum at the same time, the country would not be as laser-focused on your ineptitude right now. But clearly, your actual important duties are actually unimportant to you.
Even dirty trickster Mitch McConnell–more than anyone in America responsible for packing the Supreme Court with far right jurists who dutifully stole women’s control over their own bodies–says the current path is a bridge too far and too out of step with what Americans want, saying that the basic duty of Congress, funding the government, “will require that everyone rows in the same direction: toward clean appropriations and away from poison pills.”
When McConnell is afraid of voter punishment for self-harming incompetent leadership, that is notable. Voters look at their federal taxes in disbelief, wondering how such massive chunks of their hard-won earnings can be torn out of their pay and then all the services denied them and their loved ones by rich gamers in office.
Are you beginning to sense the outrage?
The outrage is related to what the Republicans seriously intend to do, as enumerated by the MAGA man Jack Posobiec at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference (where Trump was the keynote), when he said, “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.”
He held up a cross necklace and continued: “After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.”
Shut it down, burn it down, and take revenge. That is the Trump platform. End democracy, crown his monarchy.
If you don’t take this threat seriously, you are part of the problem.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings, PeaceVoice Senior Editor, is Coördinator of Conflict Resolution BA/BS degree programs and certificates at Portland State University.
