America had come through the violent period of the 60s, and bipartisan agreement in the country was that it was time to STOP killing our leaders! Reruns of the Andy Griffith show with him blowing cigarette smoke in Opie’s face while telling him it was terrible to shoot a mama bird from her nest were finally viewed as irony. When I was a young man, and my then-wife and I were having our children—in the 70s, parents were encouraged to instill ideas of non-violence. Studies were done tracking the amounts of weekly killings by our heroes on tv. Kids playing cops, robbers, and gun-toting sheriffs fell out of vogue. My three children were born during the zenith of the anti-abortion movement—between 1974 and 1979, the six ensuing years after the Roe decision. The question or notion of abortion was never broached, but had it been, except for what came to be known as the moral majority, we would have been left in peace by friends to make the best decision for our family.
I marched, shouted, and protested the Vietnam War. As a Black man, I was especially aware of friends being used as cannon fodder because the poor and minorities were first in line and first at the front line. Eventually, White America finally joined, tired of seeing their kids coming home limbless or in flag-draped coffins. The last three boots-on-the-ground incursions of consequence, the invasion of Grenada, the Gulf War, and of course, the 20-year pseudo-wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, happened under the leadership of Republican presidents. Donald Trump was not the first celebrity President; it was Ronald Reagan. He cut secret deals with rogue governments who exchanged weapons for drugs. In the run-up to the 1980 presidential election, many believe he worked out a deal with the Iranians to keep the hostages scuttling Jimmy Carter’s re-election hopes.
In the 2000s, the GOP perfected the steal, highlighted by the sham loss of Al Gore to George W. Bush based on a Hanging Chad and the Supreme Court. His re-election centered around war, revenge, abortion, guns, and the anti-LGBT+ movement. Liberals retreated to what they had always believed peace and inclusion. What was ignored was the creeping intolerance of conservatism dragging the center to the right. The reinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment has graduated into weapons of war on the streets of America. What used to be a bipartisan effort for ‘comprehensive immigration’ has become a rallying cry for white nationalism. Young men now march in white masks instead of hoods, wearing non-matching khakis, desperately trying to normalize white supremacy, and carrying banners that read “Reclaim America.” One member [identified as Wade Searle], a follower of white supremacist Nick Fuentes, is a legislative aide for GOP Arizona Congressmen Paul Gosar.
Abortion is no longer an honest debate between life and death; it is a cudgel to beat young women and girls into submission. When classic comics Flip Wilson, Milton Berle, and Dame Edna Everage popularized drag, southern conservatives and Birkenstock-wearing liberals laughed together. For conservatives, the comfort that these were straight men making fun of the community was confirmed, and for liberals and the gay community, it was a crack in the wall. Guns are no longer a tool for hunting deer but for people. They have become an accessory; like a diamond, the bigger, the better. The center of American politics has not moved to the right; it is being dragged by redrawing the line. Republicans no longer protest elections; they deny the results and riot. What was once a tale of handmaids is becoming a reality for women and their autonomy. If war cannot be inflicted on foreign enemies, they declare war on books, black history, and Jews.
The GOP road to nowhere
I am a liberal who is not fooled by the fake move to the right. Liberals like myself occupy the spaces we have consistently championed, peace, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Any further movement to the right hastens the creeping fascism infecting our body politic.
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